Life in the Old World: The Mercado

Madrid has about 10-20 Mercados scattered throughout the city. These Mercados are large warehouse buildings filled with small individual stalls. Each stall is owned by a different family or farm. One of the largest of these Mercados is “Mercado Maravilla” 3 metro stops north from our house. I love Mercado Maravilla. Encased in this warehouse are well over a 75 stalls and small shops selling everything imaginable. The fruits and vegetables are grown locally and sold by farmers. Most of the produce are Heirloom varieties and several of the family owned farmers boast unique “family” varieties of tomatoes, squash and various vegetables. I have found dark purple tomatoes, 3 foot long orange beans, and red and yellow stripped “Ángel” pumpkins. The lady I buy olives from makes them herself and let me sample all 15 different kinds before I ended up buying some. The butcher shops have every single part or organ of the animal on sale. The fishmongers have fish less than a day old from the ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. The crabs, snails, shrimp, lobster, and mussels are all still alive and moving. Many times there will be an occasional snail or crab crawling across the floor attempting to escape. The best way to find the really good stalls is to watch where the little old ladies congregate. These stalls have the best prices or the best quality produce. Every time I have gone to Maravilla it has been packed, and I am usually the only one that speaks English. I have found that I am a bit over confident in my level of Spanish. Most of the time the stall keepers just look really confused at what I am saying and the conversation degrades to a lot of pointing and gesturing.

Last week I was waiting for my number to be called at an extremely popular fruit and vegetable stand for almost 10 minutes. I was getting impatient and was about to leave when finally my number got called. As I reached up to hand the stall keeper my number a little Spanish lady grabbed my arm at the elbow and pulled it down. Shocked, I look at her and she said something to me in Spanish and then pushed in front of me and started to hand her number up. I caught a glimpse of her number and noticed that it was higher than mine and realized that this woman is actually cutting me in line. So I taped her on the shoulder and told her in perfect English “Hey I was first.” She then turned around muttering in Spanish and gesturing wildly. There was no way I was going to let this little 5 foot tall Spanish lady cut me in line. I began to reach over her and she in turn started ramming her small rolling cart into my legs and trying to give the stall clerk her number first. At this point another little lady starts yelling at the cutter providing enough of a distraction for me to get my number in and tell the clerk what I wanted. I win.

The street view of the market.

My meat guy.

Dried fruit and nuts.

Jamon, Chorizo ect...

After I am done buying all our food for the week I will stop just before the last row of stalls and have a drink and some tapas at a local Spanish bar. I order a cana of beer and get a free tapa.