Andalucia Impressions: Shopping in Andalucía - shops and supermarkets

Shops are usually open from 9/10 until 13/14 and then from 17/18 until 20/21.

Ordinary shops are closed on Saturday afternoon and Sunday. Supermarkets usually stay open all day from 9 a.m. until 9 p.m. but are  closed on Sundays.

We found Mercadona to be the best supermarket chain. It has a lot of own brand products but it has a good selection of items and always an excellent fish section with fresh fish, with a label saying when it was fished and the sell-by date, and extremely competitive prices. In Spain it's normal that when you buy fish it's cleaned and cut up as you want. Mercadona tended to be cheaper than other traditional supermarkets over a wide range of items, not much more expensive than discount supermarkets such as Lidl. Fruit and vegetables tended to be fresher and better quality than other supermarkets, whether discount or not. Ok this is empirical, I didn't do a survey, but we bought bananas and mangos everywhere and Mercadona won on  price and quality consistently. 

There is a good selection of local wine. We also liked the fact you could get jamón serrano freshly sliced to order, fresh bottled gazpacho and salmorejo and a good selection of meat including lamb, sliced loaves with seeds or spelt with sell-by dates of four or five days. Mercadona supermarkets always have parking, sometimes above or beneath and you may have to get a ticket but it's free if you're shopping there. Most of the stores have free and clean toilets near the covered car parking lifts. Mercadona is always closed on Sundays and holidays even if other supermarkets may be open. 

We also found Consum to be a good chain, with competitive prices, a good choice of fish and a wider range of brands than Mercadona. Consum have Cruz Conde wine, which had become our favourite and in touristy places (near Mojácar for example) a wide range of foreign items, for example from Britain John Smith's beer and shortbread. 

Prices of food are generally much lower than Northern Italy, especially for fish and bread.