Andalucia Steve

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Posts in Category: tourism

The demise of supermarket baskets.

I'm not a number, I'm a free man, and I don't want to use a trolley
The demise of supermarket baskets.

1st world problem I know, but I'm really cheesed off that my favourite supermarket here in Spain, Mercadona has phased out hand baskets - we're trolley only in my branch now, and while I've been suffering in silence about this for nine months or so, now is the time for the worm to turn.

So I wrote them a letter of complaint about it yesterday in both Spanish and English, so let's see what happens. (My money is on nothing, as corporations always value profit over customer convenience). Here it is:

El inglés es mi lengua materna, por lo que primero escribí mi queja en mi lengua materna, luego hay una traducción a continuación creada por ChatGTP, a la que le falta un poco de matiz:
 
I find myself spending less money in Mercadona and more in supermarkets that actually have convenient handbaskets for light shopping.
 
I wasn’t happy when the baskets disappeared from my local branch in Olvera, Cádiz some nine months ago, but I thought rather than complain right away, I’d give it a fair amount of time to try and get used to the ‘new normal’ but here I am complaining because I remain a very unhappy shopper.
 
This letter is prompted by my most recent visit, where I bought 23 euros worth of groceries. On my arrival there were no small trolleys which makes me angry, so instead I took control of a large trolley, knowing this was an unnecessary encumbrance for the small list of shopping it was my ambition to purchase. I tried to store my groceries in the child seat, since that was all the space I needed, but I still had to negotiate the aisles with a trolley that was far too large, that it struck me it was like driving a car around my living room.
 
The checkout queues were enormous but a new one was opened up by a chap called Valle, whom I know from previous encounters is one of your best employees in the branch. His checkout was near the door, furthest from the trolley bay. As has been my practice in the past, knowing this would be perfectly OK with Valle, I put my shopping on the conveyor and parked the oversized trolley behind the counter inline with the impulse purchase items, knowing it wouldn’t be in anyone else’s way. As I reached for my bag for life, some old codger behind me prodded me and pushed the abandoned trolley towards me, I protested saying I don’t need it. To calm the situation, Valle motioned for me to move it to the far wall near the entrance.
 
I was flustered. Since Spanish is my second language I tend to avoid arguments because I may not be able to finish what I started. I wanted to say “I don’t get paid to work here, so I don’t walk around parking trolleys that I didn’t want in the first place”.  I wanted to say “I only had a few items so I just needed a basket, and if I had a basket I could just leave it at the end of the checkout without being accused of being a bad citizen by failing to maintain my environmentally friendly FMCG collection device”.
 
This is the latest in a plethora of mini-disasters that have come to shape my Mercadona shopping experience. I’ve lost count of the number of times I have arrived to find there are no trolleys at all on the shop floor, and so I have delved into the limited timebank God gives me in a day to venture down to the car park in search of a trolley, having to get the elevator to return to the store – an experience I hate because I have mild claustrophobia when it comes to elevators thanks to movies like Speed and Die Hard.
 
The fundamental problem here is that motorists use trolleys while pedestrians use baskets (or used to before you took them away). Now that all the FMCG collection devices are trolleys, they all end up in the car park, in a way baskets never did.
 
I’ve also lost count of the number of times I’ve seen shoppers walk in, ‘tut’ because there are no trolleys (or baskets) but venture in to the store to do their shopping carrying what they can in their arms.
 
Look I’m not a muppet, I know how it works. You’ve probably hired some management consultant straight out of university whose promised to increase you profits by doing away with baskets because then shoppers aren’t limited by the volume of stuff we can carry. He was probably the same genius behind the pineapple PR campaign to get folk to warm to the new trolleys and distract them from the theft of the baskets.
Well this person hasn’t accounted for the positives of using a basket. Being a pedestrian who doesn’t own a car, I deliberately carried my basket by hand so as I shopped, I could gauge the weight of what I was buying – I need to know because I can’t be walking home with too much stuff. With a trolley I have to do that visually so I tend to be cautious and most times buy less than I would have done before. Also baskets promote quick shopping – this is the goal isn’t it? They’re called Fast Moving Consumer Goods for a reason! I’m sure between folk carrying shopping in their arms and folk like me, increasingly using Dia and Albeyco because they do have baskets, any increase to your bottom line is offset by such losses, meanwhile you’re making Mercadona a far less popular place to shop.

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Me encuentro gastando menos dinero en Mercadona y más en supermercados que en realidad tienen canastas de mano convenientes para compras ligeras.
 
No estuve contento cuando las canastas desaparecieron de mi sucursal local en Olvera, Cádiz, hace unos nueve meses, pero pensé que en lugar de quejarme de inmediato, les daría un tiempo razonable para acostumbrarme a la “nueva normalidad”. Sin embargo, aquí estoy quejándome porque sigo siendo un comprador muy descontento.
 
Esta carta surge tras mi visita más reciente, en la que compré 23 euros en comestibles. A mi llegada no había carritos pequeños, lo que me enfureció, así que en su lugar tomé el control de un carrito grande, sabiendo que era una carga innecesaria para la pequeña lista de compras que tenía la intención de adquirir. Traté de guardar mis comestibles en el asiento para niños, ya que era todo el espacio que necesitaba, pero aún así tuve que sortear los pasillos con un carrito demasiado grande, que me pareció como conducir un coche por mi sala de estar.
 
Las colas en las cajas eran enormes, pero se abrió una nueva atendida por un tal Valle, a quien conozco de encuentros anteriores y que es uno de sus mejores empleados en la sucursal. Su caja estaba situada cerca de la puerta, la más alejada de la zona de carritos. Como he hecho habitualmente en el pasado, sabiendo que a Valle le parecería perfectamente aceptable, coloqué mis compras en la cinta transportadora y aparqué el carrito sobredimensionado detrás del mostrador, alineado con los productos de compra impulsiva, convencido de que no estorbaría a nadie. Al alcanzar mi bolsa para la compra, un viejo cascarrabias que estaba detrás de mí empujó el carrito abandonado hacia mí, a lo que protesté diciendo que no lo necesitaba. Para calmar la situación, Valle me indicó que lo trasladara a la pared lejana, cerca de la entrada.
 
Me sentí alterado. Dado que el español es mi segundo idioma, tiendo a evitar discusiones porque puede que no sea capaz de terminar lo que empiezo. Quería decir “no me pagan para trabajar aquí, así que no ando estacionando carritos que no quise en primer lugar”. Quería decir “solo tenía unos pocos artículos, así que solo necesitaba una canasta, y si hubiera tenido una canasta, podría dejarla al final de la caja sin ser acusado de ser un mal ciudadano por no mantener mi dispositivo ecológico para la recogida de productos de consumo masivo”.
 
Este es el último de una plétora de mini-desastres que han venido a definir mi experiencia de compra en Mercadona. He perdido la cuenta de las veces que he llegado y me he encontrado con que no hay carritos en absoluto en la tienda, y así he recurrido al limitado tiempo que Dios me da en un día para aventurarme al aparcamiento en busca de un carrito, teniendo que usar el ascensor para volver a la tienda, una experiencia que odio porque tengo una leve claustrofobia con respecto a los ascensores, gracias a películas como Speed y Die Hard.
 
El problema fundamental aquí es que los automovilistas usan carritos mientras que los peatones usan canastas (o lo hacían antes de que se las quitaran). Ahora que todos los dispositivos para la recogida de FMCG son carritos, todos terminan en el aparcamiento, de la misma manera que las canastas nunca lo hicieron.
 
También he perdido la cuenta de las veces que he visto a compradores entrar, murmurar “tut” porque no hay carritos (o canastas) y aventurarse a la tienda para hacer sus compras llevando lo que pueden en sus brazos.
 
Mira, no soy un tonto, sé cómo funciona. Probablemente hayan contratado a algún consultor de gestión recién salido de la universidad, quien prometió aumentar sus ganancias eliminando las canastas, porque así los compradores no están limitados por el volumen de cosas que pueden llevar. Probablemente fue el mismo genio detrás de la campaña de relaciones públicas de la piña para que la gente se familiarizara con los nuevos carritos y se distrajera del robo de las canastas.
 
Bueno, esa persona no ha tenido en cuenta los aspectos positivos de usar una canasta. Siendo un peatón que no posee coche, llevaba deliberadamente mi canasta a mano para, al hacer las compras, poder medir el peso de lo que adquiría —lo necesito saber porque no puedo llegar a casa cargado con demasiadas cosas. Con un carrito tengo que hacer esa estimación visualmente, por lo que tiendo a ser cauteloso y, la mayoría de las veces, compro menos de lo que habría comprado antes. Además, las canastas fomentan una compra rápida —¿no es ese el objetivo? ¡Se llaman Productos de Consumo de Rápido Movimiento por una razón! Estoy seguro de que, entre la gente que lleva las compras en brazos y aquellos como yo, que cada vez utilizan más Dia y Albeyco porque sí tienen canastas, cualquier aumento en sus beneficios se ve compensado por tales pérdidas, mientras que, al mismo tiempo, están haciendo de Mercadona un lugar mucho menos popular para ir de compras.
 
Saludos
 
 
Image attribution: Er nun wieder, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mercadona_Cadiz_2012.jpg)
Posted by Steve Gould Thursday, March 20, 2025 12:11:00 PM Categories: Andalusia dystopia Shopping Spain Spanish culture tourism
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Funny Things They Eat in Spain

Warning: Don't read this if you are vegan/vegetarian
 
It was during my first week in Spain that I ascended an escalator in a big supermarket, turned a corner in to the meat section and was greeted by a rack of pig faces. It was quite a bizarre sight! It looked as though the left half a pig's head had been placed in a polystyrene tray and wrapped in cling-film. There were dozens of them, all looking the same way, which of course prompted a question in my ever curious mind. Where were the right hand sides of the pig's heads? Was there another shelf somewhere with dozens of pig faces looking the other way? I never found out. I consoled myself that at least they all had their eyes closed. Were they open, now that just would have been weird!
 
Even though I'm a meat eater, I was still troubled the first time I bought what I thought was an oven ready chicken in a small local supermarket. It looked like the ones in blighty, again sitting in a polystyrene tray wrapped in plastic. However when I unwrapped it I was in for a surprise. The head was still attached and dropped onto the counter with an unexpected thud! What I was supposed to do with it I don't know to this day. I think I actually closed my eyes when I cut it off with scissors and threw it in the bin. Yuk!
 
Spain is obviously a different country with a very different culture to the Britain I grew up in. The food they eat here and the relationship to food and to animals takes some degree of adjustment. The first house I bought was a country house, and the owner had a shed full of rabbits he bred for the table. I had him remove them before I took possession of the house as I didn't fancy myself having to kill and butcher rabbits. However a short time after I moved in, a neighbour invited me around for Sunday lunch. He introduced my wife and I to our meal, which was a live, white rabbit that was hopping around in his garden shed. You know what's coming next don't you? Yes he killed and skinned the rabbit before our eyes. Within the hour, bits of poor bunny, including his head were on a plate in front of me. I understood being served the head was quite an honour, but one I could have lived without if truth be told!
 
Heads are quite a thing here. One of the restaurants in Cehegin used to serve roasted goat's heads on a Monday night. They were brought out on a tray from the oven and placed on the bar. Each head was sawn in half, and as I recall served face down, so you could see the brain, tongue, sinuses etc. I'm going back a few years, but I think half a head and a few roast potatoes was pretty good value for one euro fifty.
 
My rabbit murdering neighbour invited me out a few weeks later to go snail hunting. Eager to integrate myself into Spanish society I was accepting all such invitations at the time as it seemed the right thing to do. The day came and I went with him and some family members on a walk in the 'campo' along a quiet road where I was assured lots of snails would be found. Now I'd seen bags of snails for sale in the market and they all had ornate spiral shells, which I'd assumed was the hallmark of some special edible species. How wrong I was. All sorts of varieties and sizes of snails were apparently fair game, some looking distinctly like the ones I'd had to put pellets down for in blighty to stop them chewing my Hostas. After a while, we had amassed several buckets full of sundry snails, which my neighbour took to the kitchen of his country house. I was hoping they would be well cooked or at least boiled for long enough to kill any remnants of 'snailness' but alas no. All he did was put them in bowls of vinegar and pop them in the fridge. The next day I was invited around for a snail feast. They were served in some kind of sauce which I had not been privy to the making of, but it tasted quite spicy, as though some cumin and chilli was involved. Much to my surprise they tasted quite good, though I don't think I'd go to the trouble of making them myself. Incidentally, this incident revealed the answer to question that had puzzled me since I first bought my house. The grounds were fenced in, and the fence mounted atop a small wall, two breeze blocks high. Dotted around the property, ceramic tiles were lent up against these walls. It turns out they were snail hotels, deliberately placed to provide a cool, moist, comfortable space for the snails to repair to so they could be easily harvested. I'd inadvertently purchased a snail farm!
 
Probably the most unsavoury thing I've known the Spanish to eat are wild birds. I've not seen this with my own eyes, but someone who does it showed me the equipment he used. I visited the country house of a friend of a friend one Sunday morning for a barbecue. Breakfast barbecues are not uncommon on a Sunday in Murcia when the weather is good which is often. On this occasion we were eating six week old goat (yes I know, animal lovers must be cringing by now, but when in Rome). So we were talking about barbecue and the bird topic came up. The guy went into his shed and brought out a large black net and a device that looked like a camouflaged military radio. It turns out it was a bird-caller. He turned it on and within a minute or two, birds started flocking into the olives trees around us. He explained how he would setup the net between the trees, play the bird sounds, and when enough birds had arrived, he would gather the net entrapping them. Then he would pick them out of the net, and, miming the action, described how he would spike them on a skewer, presumably while still alive, and cook them on the barbecue. 
 
"Which birds" I asked, visibly wincing a little in anticipation of the inevitable answer.
 
"All types" he said. "Whatever is in the net."
 
As you can imagine, I was extremely glad not to be invited back to see that in action.
 
The same chap provided the meat for a birthday party I was invited to a few months later. He worked in sales and drove all over Spain for a living, so contrived to bring back two baby pigs from a trip to Segovia, which those in the know will tell you is the best place to go in Spain if you're into eating piglets. The pigs were placed on olive branches which were laid inside a bread oven. I can't remember the cooking time but I think it was a good few hours, and when the pigs came out of the oven, the meat was succulent and falling off the bone. As is traditional, they sliced the pigs up with dinner plates which were then ceremonially smashed, and everyone was served piglet slices on a paper plate, which seemed somewhat ironic. I must say though it was delicious. 
 
The list of odd things I've seen in bars here goes on and on. Pancreas was something I tried but didn't care for. I was hoping it would taste like liver but no, it tastes, well, like pancreas. One bar surprised me by selling frogs legs as tapas. On the bar in a glass case in lots of steel trays were all the usual suspects. There was Russian salad, eggs stuffed with tuna, anchovies, tigres (stuffed mussel shells), then, unusually, a tray full of frogs legs. The tapas was free with a beer so I had to try them. They tasted a little like chicken. I was surprised to see them in Spain. This was in a transport cafe on an industrial estate, so it is possible they were there to delight visiting French lorry drivers. I pondered for a while as to what happens to the rest of the frog when it loses its legs. Perhaps there were choruses of ribbiting frogs pushing themselves around in wheelchairs somewhere.
 
Possibly the weirdest thing I've seen someone eating was after a bullfight one day. When a bull is killed, the animal is taken out and butchered. The meat, known as lidia is quite prized, as a bull bred for fighting is in pasture for five years to gain the necessary weight for the ring. I've never eaten any myself but it must be along the lines of Wagyu beef. Anyway, I happened to be in a bar near a bullring one day after a bullfight and witnessed a chap chewing a raw bull's testicle! I know it's rude to stare but it was hard not to look!
 
Probably my favourite curious culinary delight is Mondongo. There was a gastronomical society that met once a month in Murcia, mainly patronised by elderly folk who revisited their youth by dining on some of the meals they ate during the Franco period. As a foreigner it was quite an honour to be invited to join the club and I went to many meals over a number of years. We were even featured on regional television, such was the interest in what we were eating. You may know, the Franco years were characterised by extreme hardship, so good meat was expensive and hard to find. Mondongo was an ingenious use of two cheaper more readily available cuts of meat, sheep's stomach and cow's knees! It doesn't immediately sound very appetising, but trust me it was delicious. The dish is rice based and cooked in a large paella pan (I know I know, you don't have to say 'pan' because paella means pan). The tripe, bones and a little stock is added and, as it cooks, something magical happens. The cow's knees have very little meat on them, but the gelatinous fat in the bones melts and gets soaked up by the tripe and the rice. When it is served, the trick is to get a palm full of oregano, then rub your hands together to grind the leaves over the rice, and then the flavour of the herb gets drawn in by the fat. I really couldn't believe how something so simple and potentially unpalatable could taste so good. I don't have much contact with Murcia anymore these days, but if there was one reason to go back it would be to relive the Mondongo experience!
 
 
 
 
 
 
Posted by Steve Gould Sunday, October 25, 2020 2:02:00 AM Categories: Andalusia Cusine food Murcia Spanish Spanish culture tourism
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Eight Great Reasons to Visit Spain

Why Spain is a great place to take a vacation

 

I felt I was unduly negative in last weeks blog post. To be fair, I was directly ranting at the folk in charge of tourism in Spain, not the country, which is rich in reasons to visit. So, to redress the balance somewhat, here are my eight great reasons to visit Spain.
 
 
1) People have been here since prehistory.
 
The first time I stayed in Cehegin, the town in which I spent my first six years living here, I booked into a hotel that had copies of rock art on the wall. I didn't think too much of it at the time, but these images were taken from cave art found in the Peña Rubia, the big hill behind the town. It's said that the Peña protects Cehegin from the worst of the rain as the clouds tend to go around it one way or the other. I'm not sure how true that is but the town does seem to have a favourable climate. It was some time later I learned about the caves and rock art in the Peña Rubia and I hoped to visit them but they were unfortunately closed for security, restoration and research. I understand the caves can be visited today if one makes a booking in advance with the tourist office. https://www.laverdad.es/murcia/planes/larutaconunpar/201405/07/cuentos-edad-piedra-20140505190930.html After I learned about it I often marvelled that as long ago as 3500 BC people had made the place where I was living their home. Of course, the Peña Rubia is one of many prehistoric caves containing early rock art in Spain, the most famous of which is Altimira in Cantabria, the discovery of which was the subject of a fascinating movie 'Finding Altamira' starring Antonio Banderas.
 
2) The Romans
 
The Romans had an enduring relationship with Spain which I first learned about when a neighbour told me the land on which my house was built in Cehegin was the site of a Roman cemetery! No names no pack drill, but a Spanish chap I met in the same town invited me round for a family lunch one day to his country house. The garden was full of Roman columns, statues, busts and frankly looked like a museum. He told me he ran a construction company excavating roads and railway lines. Work would often stop because another piece of history had been unearthed. Such delays were as unpopular with him as they were with the firm contracting him, so often isolated pieces would quietly disappear into the boot of his car so that work could continue! The rape of Roman ruins was not limited to the private sector though. I saw a group being guided around the ancient Roman ruins of Acinipo near Ronda in Malaga province. A woman stumbled across a piece of pottery which she showed to the guide, who much to my surprise told her to keep it as a souvenir!
 
 
3) Nightlife
 
The Spanish certainly know how to party. Ibiza is the party capital of the world but nightlife is great all over the country. My wife and I stayed with a friend in Alicante for a week while first looking for houses here. Towards the end of our stay, he suggested when went night-clubbing and he showed us around all of the local gay bars. There seemed to be dozens of them. I recall dancing along to something camp like Kylie Minogue in one of them, when I noticed video being played on the walls around the bar, then I realised they were filming the audience and playing the tapes on subsequent nights. I suddenly had an overwhelming feeling of sympathy for the future punters who would have to endure my interpretation of The Locomotion. Despite this it was one of the best nights out ever, as partying with gay people often are. You don't know you've lived until you've been 'cruised' by a George Michael lookalike in the Bang Your Head bar at 2:30 in the morning! Changing tack slightly I've noticed a marked trend for nightclubs in Spain to be empty one minute and full the next. It seems the locals move in packs from one bar to another, so if you happen to arrive at the wrong time you might think the place is not happening. Don't panic though, have a look for evidence of activity. If there are glasses waiting to go in the dishwasher you may have missed the 'pack', but if it looks 'clean', have a drink and give it half an hour. Chances are the party is on the way! (Also nightclubs in Spain never have the word 'Club' in their name - that is reserved for another type of establishment altogether where the dancing is more horizontal than vertical if you get my meaning!) 
 
 
4) Beaches
 
I'm not much of a beach bum but even so I've visited dozens of beaches over my many years in Spain, all the way from the Mar Menor in the East to Tarifa in the West. With over 5000 km of coastline, Spain has all kinds of beaches imaginable, so you're guaranteed to find something to your taste. My favourite is probably La Playa de la Cortadura at Cadiz which is a sandy shoreline so long you can't see the end of it. Even in the busiest part of the season you're able to find a quiet spot!
 
5) Quaint Villages
 
The Spanish landscape is pockmarked with picturesque towns and villages. I recall reading somewhere there are about 5000 though I've been unable to verify that figure for the purpose of this blog. While I've mentioned in previous blogs the threat of rural depopulation hangs over the future of many of these, it's also true that there are more opportunities than ever to find accommodation in them thanks to the Internet and services like Airbnb. I met some American cyclists recently (well, pre-Covid) who were riding from one side of Spain to the other with no formal plan other than accepting the hops that booking their next accommodation online took them. I thought that was a great idea. I wish I was brave enough to do it!
 
6) Architecture
 
Whether you love modern architecture or megalithic monuments, Spain has it all and everything in between. We have 2500 castles and just shy of a 100 cathedrals. Particularly notable in the south west of Spain where I now reside, is the influence of the Moorish period and the colonial period where huge wealth came back from the country's expansion into South America. Much of these riches came via Seville and spread out all over the region, reflected in fine old buildings all over the Western provinces of Andalusia.
 
7) Scenery
 
Spain has a remarkable variety of countryside. I've driven back and forth between Murcia and Andalusia many times and I'm always struck by the way the views change. Driving out of the elevated pastures of Caravaca that look like a scene out of the Sound of Music, I would round a bend at the other side of the Puebla de Don Fadrique to reveal a break in the mountains revealing a huge plain, then keep driving to see the snow capped mountains of the Sierra Nevada then beyond them on to the desert of Almeria. The landscape is constantly changing. How many places in the world can you be skiing in the morning and swimming in warm sea water in the afternoon?
 
8) Wine 
 
I don't think Spain's wines get the international recognition they deserve, which may well be because their focus has most recently been on the domestic market. Grapevines were thought to have first been brought to the peninsula by the Canaanite tribe of the Phoenicians roughly around a thousand years before Christ when they settled in Cadiz, (making it one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Europe). The Romans later fell in love with the sweet wines from Cadiz province, particularly from around Jerez, much more of which was turned over to grape production back then than it is today. The Roman poet Marcus Valerius Martialis wrote of the primitive sherry saying it was "highly regarded in Roman circles". Winemaking in Cadiz is currently undergoing a renaissance with many farmers replacing olive trees with vines. The olive oil industry is under threat from stiff international competition from New World countries however there is little to differentiate one brand of oil from another. Although wine faces similar competition, the difference in character between one bottle of wine and another is much more marked and so today's marketplace is rediscovering the wines of Cadiz with similar joy to the Romans 2000 years ago. 
 
These are my solid reasons for visiting Spain but there are many more. What is your favourite?
Posted by Steve Gould Sunday, October 11, 2020 4:15:00 PM Categories: Andalusia Spanish Spanish culture tourism
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