The Spanish crumbly shortbread cookie often dusted with powdered sugar is the polvorón. Its name comes from polvo, the Spanish word for “powder” or “dust,” evoking the way the cookie crumbles.
Polvorones are soft, dense, and deliberately fragile. Traditional versions use flour, sugar, nuts—especially almonds—and a fat such as lard, though recipes vary by region and may use butter or olive oil. They are strongly associated with Andalusia, particularly the confectionery-producing towns of southern Spain.
The cookies are popular holiday sweets in Spain, Hispanic America, the Philippines, and other Spanish-influenced communities. In Spain they are often wrapped individually, both to protect their delicate texture and to make them easy to serve during the Christmas season.
“Polvorón” is sometimes treated as interchangeable with mantecado, but the terms are not identical in every context. Mantecado is a wider category of Spanish shortbreads, while polvorón specifically emphasizes the powdery, crumbly style. The answer is therefore more precise than the generic option “mantecado.”