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
El Rastro, Europe’s largest flea market, is a Madrid institution. It’s been an open-air market for half a millennium.
The madness begins at Plaza de Cascorro and the maze of streets branching off it. Cheap clothes, luggage, antiques, old photos of Madrid, old flamenco records, faux designer purses, grungy T-shirts, household goods and electronics are the main fare, but for every 10 pieces of junk, there’s a real gem waiting to be found.
A word of warning: pickpockets love El Rastro as much as everyone else.
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.
reviewed
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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, DVDs, electronics and books; English-language books are available on the 3rd floor.
reviewed
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Zara
Popular men’s, women’s and kids’ wear with a sideline in homewares.
reviewed
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Gil
The exquisitely 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.
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.
reviewed
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El Tintero
Terrific T-shirts are all that El Tintero sells, so if you’re looking for a colourful camiseta with Spanish-language slogans that translate as ‘I’m tired of being good’ and ‘Looking for a habitable planet’, this is your place. A few doors down, El Tintero Niños takes the same approach but with kids’ wear, from newborns to those 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 re-create ‘the magic of Florence, the vitality of London and the luminosity of Madrid’. She has also recently branched out into homewares.
reviewed
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Oriol Balaguer
Catalan pastry chef Oriol Balaguer has a formidable CV – he worked with Ferran Adrià and won the prize for the World’s Best Dessert in 2001. His much-awaited chocolate boutique opened in Madrid in March 2008 and is a combination of small art gallery and fashion boutique, except that it’s dedicated to exquisite chocolate collections and cakes. You’ll never be able to buy ordinary chocolate again after a visit here.
reviewed
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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 it’s often out on location.
reviewed
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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 children’s clothes and intricate dolls’ houses that are works of art; for the latter, every single item (furniture, saucepans etc) can be purchased individually. None of it’s cheap, but they’re once-in-a-lifetime purchases.
reviewed
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Popland
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.
reviewed
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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 handmaking 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 Moyano Bookstalls
Madrid’s answer to the booksellers that line the Seine in Paris, these second-hand bookstalls are an enduring Madrid landmark. Most titles are in Spanish but there’s a handful of offerings in other languages. There are more than a dozen stalls climbing the hill and opening hours vary, with many closing between 2pm and 5pm, especially in summer.
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; this is the place to pick up your copy of Shanguide, Shangay Express and MENsual.
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 second-hand 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 wine 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. They specialise 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.
reviewed
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Radio City Discos
In these days of music megastores and internet downloads, it’s nice to find small, specialist music shops still going strong. True to Malasaña’s roots, Radio City’s small collection of CDs and vinyl spans the 1970s, roots, funk, rock and occasional pop, with a small section devoted to Brazil’s Tropicalismo.
reviewed
