Shops
We don't have a shop in Culebrón. Not a one. Pinoso has a reasonable range though. Small businesses predominate. The sort of place where the goods are kept in the back, where you have to ask for things, where screws are counted out and where they punch the extra holes into the belt. Window displays are generally utilitarian rather than artistic. Larger Spanish towns generally have modern, corporate retailing with big out of town shopping centres and recognisable names. But in amongst the town centre chain stores with their modern window dressing, background music, careful lighting and English language slogans there will be any number of small, anachronistic businesses. Maggie summed it up neatly when I mentioned the news story I'd read. "Ah, the corset shops." There they are. Shops that smell of leather or paper. Shops with a hotch potch of stationery yellowing at the edges and maps showing the Soviet Union. Shops with boxes of ribbons, knicker elastic, needles ...