Shopping in Madrid
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Los Bebés de Chamberí
This small shop showcases that wonderful individuality of Spanish children’s clothes; you’ll leave laden with bags for your own kids and for friends back home.
reviewed
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El Rastro
A Sunday morning at El Rastro is a Madrid institution. You could easily spend an entire morning inching your way down the Calle de la Ribera de Curtidores and through the maze of streets that hosts El Rastro flea market every Sunday morning. Cheap clothes, luggage, old flamenco records, even older photos of Madrid, faux designer purses, grungy T-shirts, household goods and electronics are the main fare. For every 10 pieces of junk, there’s a real gem (a lost masterpiece, an Underwood typewriter) waiting to be found.
Antiques are also a major drawcard for traders and treasure hunters alike with a concentration of stores at Nuevas Galerías and Galerías Piquer; most of…
reviewed
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El Corte Inglés
In the great tradition of department stores the world over, there’s everything you need here from food and furniture to clothes, appliances, toiletries, electronics, books and music. Although you’ll pay extra for the convenience of one-stop shopping, the after-sales service is better than most.
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Iñaki Sampedro
Arguably Spain’s most colourful and innovative collection of hand-painted handbags and other accessories are available at this wonderful little shop. They’re not cheap, but are unmistakably Spanish and superstylish.
reviewed
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FNAC
This four-storey megastore has a terrific range of CDs ranging from flamenco and world music to classical, as well as DVDs, video games, electronic equipment and books (including English-language titles); there’s a large children’s section on the 4th floor.
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Zara
Popular men’s, women’s and kids’ wear with a sideline in homewares.
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Art Market
Sells local art and prints of the greats.
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Gil
You don’t see them much these days, but the exquisite fringed and embroidered mantones and mantoncillos (traditional Spanish shawls worn by women on grand occasions) and delicate mantillas (Spanish veils) are stunning and uniquely Spanish gifts. Gil also sells abanicos (Spanish fans). Inside this dark shop, dating back to 1880, the sales clerks still wait behind a long counter to attend to you; the service hasn’t changed in years and that’s no bad thing. Our only complaint? Kitsch tourist souvenirs (T-shirts and the like) have made an appearance here.
reviewed
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Plaisir Gourmet
This is not your ordinary delicatessen. With products from every corner of the globe, you’ll find all manner of things that you didn’t know existed (who knew that essence of cotton from Mali could be used in cooking?) or can’t find anywhere else in Madrid. At noon on Saturday, it has tastings of wine and cheese, a nod to the shop’s French owners. In 2008 this stylish place won second prize for Madrid’s best deli.
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El Tintero
Terrific T-shirts are all that El Tintero sells. So if you’re looking for a colourful camiseta (T-shirt) with Spanish-language slogans that translate as ‘I'm maturing – apologies for any inconvenience’ or ‘Does anyone have an instruction manual?’, this is your place. It's all good, clean fun and they also take a similar approach with kids’ wear, from newborns to aged 10 years.
reviewed
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La Tipo Camisetas
T-shirts in bright colours, T-shirts you’d have to be feeling pretty preppy to wear and T-shirts with witty (Spanish-language) slogans that rarely stray into the question-able taste that can be Malasaña’s forte are what this shop is all about. It’s all good, clean fun that would be out of place in the heart of hard-rocking Malasaña, but they’ve found a good home here in Conde Duque.
reviewed
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Helena Rohner
One of Europe’s most creative jewellery designers, Helena Rohner has a spacious boutique in La Latina. Working with silver, stone, porcelain, wood and Murano glass, she makes inventive pieces and her work is a regular feature of Paris fashion shows. In her own words, she seeks to recreate ‘the magic of Florence, the vitality of London and the luminosity of Madrid’.
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Oriol Balaguer
Catalan pastry chef Oriol Balaguer has a formidable CV – he worked in the kitchens of Ferran Adrià in Catalonia and won the prize for the World’s Best Dessert (the ‘Seven Textures of Chocolate’) in 2001. His chocolate boutique is presented like a small art gallery, except that it’s dedicated to exquisite finely crafted chocolate collections and cakes. You’ll never be able to buy ordinary chocolate again.
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La Buena Vida
If your idea of browsing in bookshops involves perusing a range of choices over a coffee, you don’t have many options in Madrid – most Spanish bookshops are a commercial transaction of buying, then leaving. Thankfully, this new bookshop allows you to do both; we could spend hours in here. It has plans to stock a small selection of books in English and French alongside the mostly Spanish titles.
reviewed
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Futuramic
Looking for that 1960s jukebox? Or a real-life parking meter? Just about anything you can imagine in memorabilia (either original or in replica) from the 1930s to the 1980s is available here. Not everything is for sale (the life-size London phone booth, for example), as many of the items are in demand for movie sets, but much of it is. Ring before you head here as the staff are often out on location.
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Así
Exquisite handmade children’s dolls, all beautifully attired and overflowing from the shop window, are proffered here. Inside it also sells toys and intricate dolls’ houses that are works of art; for the last, every single item (furniture, saucepans etc) can be purchased individually. None of it’s cheap, but they’re once-in-a-lifetime purchases. They also sell some select homewares.
reviewed
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Popland
‘Curiosity and Retro’ are the buzzwords here and Popland has both by the vinyl-suitcase load. ‘Go Eighties’ T-shirts, Pink Panther dolls, Elvis card games, candy handcuffs, mirrored disco balls, Space Invaders handbags… If you can’t find it here, it simply didn’t exist in the world of street pop art.
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Gandolfi
A jewellery store with attitude, Gandolfi blends Malasaña edge with the sophistication of the new Madrid. The rings and other accessories are pretty outlandish, but you’ll figure that out as you soon as you walk in and find yourself confronted with a full-size Texaco petrol tank and larger-than-life human statues as props, which are works of art in themselves.
reviewed
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Casa Hernanz
Comfy, rope-soled alpargatas (espadrilles), Spain’s traditional summer footwear, are worn by everyone from the King of Spain down, and you can buy your own pair at this humble workshop, which has been hand-making the shoes for five generations; you can even get them made to order. Prices range from €5 to €40 and queues form whenever the weather starts to warm up.
reviewed
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Mercado de Fuencarral
Madrid’s home of alternative club cool is still going strong, revelling in its reverse snobbery. With shops like Fuck, Ugly Shop and Black Kiss, it’s funky, grungy and filled to the rafters with torn T-shirts and more black leather and silver studs than you’ll ever need. This is a Madrid icon and when it was threatened with closure in 2008, there was nearly an uprising.
reviewed
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Cuesta de Claudio Moyano Bookstalls
Madrid’s answer to the booksellers that line the Seine in Paris, these secondhand bookstalls are an enduring Madrid landmark. Most titles are in Spanish, but there’s a handful of offerings in other languages. Opening hours vary from stall to stall, and some of the stalls close at lunchtime.
reviewed
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Librería Berkana
One of the most important gay and lesbian bookshops in Madrid, Librería Berkana stocks gay books, movies, magazines, music, clothing, and a host of free magazines for nightlife and other gay-focused activities in Madrid and around Spain.
reviewed
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Holalá
If you’re into tattoos, Black Sabbath and can relate to T-shirts that announce ‘My Space is the Devil’, Holalá is your spiritual home. Zombie Clothing is the name that drives everything you’ll find here, from cool-again fur coats to retro sportswear that wouldn’t look out of place on a Malasaña night out.
reviewed
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El Templo de Susu
It won’t appeal to everyone, but El Templo de Susu’s secondhand clothes from the 1960s and 1970s have clearly found a market among Malasaña’s too-cool-for-the-latest-fashions types. It’s kind of like charity shop meets unreconstructed hippie, which is either truly awful or retro cool, depending on your perspective.
reviewed
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Reserva y Cata
This old-style shop stocks an excellent range of local wines, and the knowledgeable staff can help you pick out a great one for your next dinner party or a gift for a friend back home. It specialises in quality Spanish wines that you just don’t find in El Corte Inglés and there’s often a bottle open so that you can try before you buy.
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