In Mayan and Aztec cultures, cocoa beans were highly valued, since they were used as currency and as a nutritious food.
Spaniards didn´t know the cocoa until Hernán Cortés tasted the xocolatl in 1519, a cocoa drink that Aztecs offered him in a gold glass with all the honors. Aztecs used to consider cocoa a holy gift calling it Gods food, and they used to keep its consumption for the high society.
It was a very bitter drink made of cocoa, flour and pepper, which took the spaniards attention powerfully, due to its invigorating qualities that gave them strength and energy for walking the whole day with no other necessity of food.  

Cocoa was brought to Spain by some monks that used to travel with Cortés in his expeditions. It is believed that these monks, who belonged to the Cistercian order, added the sugar to cocoa. They noticed that the bitter drink turned into an exquisite drink. It reached a huge popularity in our country and became the official drink of kings and the spanish court.  
At the beginning of the XVII century, the spanish princesses were introducing the habit in the french court, and then, from there, cocoa consumption was spread throughout Europe.
At the end of the XVIII century, it starts to be prepared with milk. But it is in the XIX century when chocolate is produced in bars, the same as we know it nowadays.  

Chocolate, along its history, it´s been the cause of innumerable controversies. Sometimes it was considered good, nearly miraculous, and others it was not so good, and then it became good again. Day by day we are witnesses to constant exaltations of food that was not well considered in the past and to attempts of defenestrating habits of a whole life.  
Chocolate is considered a caprice or a candy lots of times. But this is an inaccurate definition. Chocolate is a food rich in nutrients, very energetic and offers a lot of mineral elements.
Culture demands to know things about the food we eat, specially when it is something we like so much as chocolate. .

Behind chocolate food there is a lot of legend, lot of history, customs and way of living influences, technical and scientific advances, and it is necessary to know them, as well as the fact that there are a lot of people and families that have taken part in its process improving it, and people who devoted their lives to this food.

We should not have chocolate in any case, with indifference or absently. When having chocolate, we should also have all the cultural, human, affective and gastronomic load that involves it.

The passion for chocolate is big and there are no reasons to hide it. It is not a vice, nor a defect, but a proof of exquisiteness and good taste.