Close To You: Tourist supermarkets

When I was at university, there was a Spar on campus. I hesitate to use the word supermarket to describe it, because supermarket and student in the same sentence, back then, meant little more than tins of corned beef and those sausages they shoved in with baked beans.

Nowadays, there are probably Tesco Metros on British campuses, pandering to a student class that places purple-sprouting broccoli and gourmet fresh pastas above getting bladdered in the union bar or being served up with the sort of animal droppings my university's refectories specialised in.

Sophistication may have grown these past thirty years, but the Spar is still with us. In Mallorca, as elsewhere in Spain and on the Continent, Spars have become good Europeans. They are EuroSpars.

The Spar always was European, in that it was originally Dutch and still is. Though the logo of a fir reflects the Dutch word for the tree ("spar"), the word can also mean save, as in saving money.

It is here, the saving money angle, that the original Spar philosophy of everyone regularly profiting has tended to become a tad one-sided. In favour of the Spar operator. The Spanish slogan for EuroSpar has been, may still be, for all I know, "always close to you". It sounds soothing enough, in a Karen and Richard Carpenter way, and is probably necessary in order to soothe a customer startled by a price tag.

It is not just EuroSpars that are close to you. The tourist supermarket of whatever name appears to be taking over as the main representative on the streets of Mallorca's resorts. The restaurants are disappearing and are being replaced by emporia with stands of flip-flops and Bells whisky piled high.

The tourist supermarket, like the Chinese bazaar, is very much on the march. In Alcúdia, a large, now ex-restaurant has been supermarketed, bang opposite another that has been there for some years. Why do you need two of them in such proximity, especially as there would appear to be at least partial common ownership? Perhaps it's all the McDonald's strategy of street saturation.

Or perhaps it's ... . No, actually I don't know what it is. I can't think of any good reason why so many of these supermarkets are in fact necessary. Some, but not so many.

The trend towards tourists eating in may have something to do with it; where food shopping is concerned at any rate. But any savings on eating out are eroded by the prices that can be paid. You can hand over up to twice what you might expect to pay in an Eroski, a Mercadona and others; more perhaps.

Unless it is a matter of convenience or sometimes necessity, it is hard to understand the attraction of the tourist supermarket, though there is a further factor. Bone idleness, to which you can add heat. In ninety degrees, the nearest supermarket, even at higher prices, becomes distinctly attractive, compared to schlepping a kilometre or so with bags of spuds, bottles of Coke and a five-litre container of water.

It's unfair to damn all tourist supermarkets, as there are those which, in addition to convenience, do some things well - better ranges of alcohol than mainstream supermarkets, the occasional deli, their own cafés, bakeries, home deliveries, plus friendly and attentive service. I can name a few, if you wish, and so it is unfair to tarnish them all. But there are those whose practices can be questionable, if not illegal.

Before the pound dived, there was one which used to advertise booze - in huge front-of-store displays - at prices quoted in pounds that appeared to be significantly lower than the real price in euros which was shown in small print. In others, newspapers can attract price stickers, above their proper prices. Paracetamol is sold at an inflated price when it shouldn't even be sold at all. Names can be misleading. How about an Aldi which most certainly isn't?

One of the problems for Spar is that, although its Euro shops may be perfectly ok, its name has entered the vocabulary in the same way as Hoover has to mean a vacuum-cleaner. The name is synonymous with the tourist supermarket. Whether Spar or not, whether any good or not, the supermarket is Spar-ed. But does it still sell corned beef?


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.