Every year. Every single year. Welcome to The Great British Spanish Christmas Panic Shop, where Expats stock up like crazy.
You’d think the supermarkets were closing for a fortnight and the country was bracing for a mild apocalypse.
It’s the 22nd of December, Spain is shutting down for one whole day, and suddenly otherwise sensible adults are panic-buying like the fridge might never open again.
The car parks are rammed. The trolleys are already gone. And there’s a bloke at the entrance clutching a basket with the haunted look of someone who’s made a terrible mistake.
Inside, it’s chaos.
The seafood counter resembles a rugby scrum. Prawns are flying, elbows are out, and that polite “sorry” you’ve practised since childhood is abandoned entirely. This is not about manners — this is about langostinos.
Jamón and cheese disappear at a rate normally reserved for pub buffets. No one is even pretending they’ll eat vegetables. Lettuce just sits there, untouched, judging everyone silently.
Then there’s the turrón aisle. People “just checking flavours” while quietly loading six boxes into the trolley. Polvorones are sampled “for quality control”, and somehow a whole packet goes missing. Calories don’t exist between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day — it’s EU law.
And don’t even get me started on the Roscón de Reyes. Grown adults lurking like seagulls, waiting for a fresh tray to appear, ready to pounce. Family loyalty means nothing when there’s marzipan involved.
The queues? Biblical. You start questioning life choices. You consider abandoning the trolley and living off crisps and Rioja instead. The cashier looks dead behind the eyes, scanning jamón with the thousand-yard stare of someone who’s seen things.
All because Spain dares to close the shops for one day.
One.
Day.
By the time you escape, trolley groaning under the weight of cured meats and poor decisions, you realise the fridge is now fuller than it’s been all year — and you’ll still end up popping to the local Chinese bazaar on Christmas morning “just in case”.
Tomorrow will be just the same as today.
Tradition is tradition.
