The Smaller Spanish Villages
♫ Thursday, August 25th, 2011
There are two types of shopping in Spain, that which you do in larger towns and cities and that which you do in the small villages. The shopping that you will do in the big city malls and shops is far less interesting (and challenging) than that which you will do in the villages.
In the smaller villages there still is no such thing as the one-stop shop. Women seem spend the whole day shopping just to get through the day. However, in this day and age, most of us are more accustomed to going to that great big “Super” market that has everything under the sun, loading the 10 heavy bags of groceries into the car and driving up to our front door to unload everything.
It doesn’t work like that in the smaller Spanish villages…… first of all, everyone walks to the store and can only buy what you can manage to carry home as you wobble down the cobblestone streets while your fingers turn purple from the lack of blood circulation. For this very reason, most people (typically the woman) shop once in the morning to buy fresh food for lunch (almuerzo) and then once again in the afternoon to buy food for dinner (cena).
Shopping also includes making many stops; one to the butcher (carniceria), one to the street market or fruit & vegetable store (fruteria), one to the fish monger (pescaderia), one to the bakery (panaderia) and one to the general store for miscellaneous items. This shopping ritual is done daily, except for Sunday when ALL the stores IN SPAIN are closed. So, this means double duty for Saturday shopping. This is when you drag the kids with you to help lug the extra groceries back home!
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