Last Minute X-mas Shopping

¡Hola! ¿Qué Tal? In need of presents for los primos, Madrid-Uno wanders up to the massive El Corte Inglés shopping mall on the Paseo de la Castellana at Nuevos Ministerios, where there’s also a whole load of street stalls and a number of boutiques in the streets around. Should be able to find something here, but where to start? The shop is massive with like seven floors and a hundred and five different departments.

After studying the floor plan a quick itinerary is worked out and we work our way from the top down. But before we find the lifts (ascensor) Madrid-Uno is side-tracked in the childrens toys area. It’s not exactly Hamleys but it’s quite large and has an excellent selection – Madrid-Uno should have come here earlier. Special respect goes out to the cuddly toys department (pictured) which every young child should be brought to.

El Corte Ingles

¡Hola! ¿Qué Tal?. In pursuit of a new tarjeta for Madrid-Uno’s mobile phone (so he can make local calls on local tariffs) Misterio leads us into the big El Corte Inglés department store on Goya. This national chain of stores dominates Spanish retailing, selling almost everything you can think of, either in large multi-format department stores (like the one we’re in today), in smaller specialist shops (there’s a furniture ECI just up the road from here), in out-of-town hypermarkets (Hipercor / Supercor) or online. It’s kind of like Tesco, Selfridges and Marks & Sparks rolled into one. Other offshoots of El Corte Inglés include ‘Viajes El Corte Inglés’ (a travel agency), ‘Opencor’ (upmarket convenience stores), ‘Informática El Corte Inglés’ (IT services), ‘Sfera’ (clothing), and ‘Bricor’ (DIY stores). To give you an idea of the size of this operation, in the fiscal year ended February 2006, group revenue was just under 16 billion euroweenies. Our man at the counter is clearly new and is sweating a bit when we grill him about pay-as-you-go tariffs but eventually we settle on a Telefonica Movistar card. Later that evening, at closing time, we see lots of people hanging around the staff entrance. The reason for this gathering becomes clear when the staff themselves, mostly still in the green / grey uniform of the shop, come streaming out. The groups are waiting for their ECI worker friends before going out to party. Bien, claro.