Grocery stores

The word tells you: "Colmado" (fully stocked). Replete. Full of provisions. But as a child, when they told me: "go to the colmado," I didn't realize that the word meant that, just as I didn't realize that "ultramarinos" (groceries) means that the products are from overseas.

We are starting the strangest December of our lives and, perhaps because of that, the windows of the colmados are more full of light than ever. So that we can recover, a little, the everyday illusion of shopping. I see the same colmado every day, when I get off the train at Provenza station. I would take the entire display window home. Jars of preserved peaches that I would never open, cans of tuna and all kinds of pickles. Hams wrapped in gift paper, salchichones with red bows, cans of potato chips, bottles of wine. Any of these products outside the display window would not be very charming. It is the display window that makes them special.

And then there's the ritual. Waiting your turn, because in a colmado you don't pick up things; you ask for them and they "put" them for you. In fact, the shopkeeper always asks: "What can I put for you?" You have to ask, and those waiting (now on the street, because of the pandemic) hear everything you ask for. I really like to hear what others buy and the explanations they give. "Catalana? Is that good?" "No, no, thinner, it's for my grandson." You always have to say who the purchased product is for. For the husband, for the grandson, for the cat...

Sometimes, if I'm very lucky, I see something being done that I know won't be long before it disappears forever. There are adorable ladies who, when they ask for a certain piece of meat, touch their equivalent body part. If they say "put me liver" they touch their liver. If they say "put me thigh," they touch their thigh. And to ask for a chicken to be cut into quarters, they pretend to cut themselves, making scissors with their fingers. They don't realize it. But they do it. Just as, mysteriously, when they ask for "thin, breakable" sweet ham, they rub one hand with the other, as if they were the ones who had to cut it. As if they were still playing store.

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