Pop The Boot

Torre Del Mar

14/2/25 – On a short weekend trip to the Costa Del Sol, I always dedicate a morning (past 10am for the Spanish) to visit a handful of charity shops in the small village of Torre Del Mar. The four I visit are: Cudeca, Axarquía animal rescue, MJM Spain and Articulos de 2nd Mano where Cudeca is a large foundation in Spain for cancer care and hospice and MJM and Axarquía focus on animal rescue. I am always amazed by the low prices with tops and jumpers at 1-3 euros, which of course I rummage through to find hidden gems and it never fails to amaze me:

The Burberry top was hidden behind a rail in the corner for 2 euros… what dreams are made of! As you would expect most volunteers of the charity shops are Spanish speaking locals, apart from Axarquía animal rescue, which is run by a group of English women who live in the area, and have done for many years. I got talking to them whilst buying the carefully selected sunglasses, bracelet and lotus flower charm, to see what the second hand scene is like in Spain, and to my surprise it was extremely different to the British culture we know of charity shops and car boot sales.

From talking to them I learnt that charity shops had only existed for the last 10-15 years in Spain and took a while for the concept to sink into the Spanish culture. The reason for this was that locals didn’t understand the concept of donating clothes and the money going elsewhere, to a charity, they would haggle to get prices low: even for free. This came as a shock as to me in a British culture its obvious that you pay the price tag as its cheap enough and going to a good cause, but Spanish locals treated them like we do with car boot sales. Clearly there is a huge culture difference, maybe to do with how polite the English are, but mainly to do with how British charity shops have been around 60+ years longer than in Spain! The volunteers also said how the Spanish are the main contributors in the sense of buying the most, but English and Dutch donate the majority of clothes

For their turn around of clothes, often they have to reduce everything down to 1 euro to make space, but even then it seems locals will come in with intention to buy something practical, rarely to find a new top or jumper. With left over stock they will donate to shelters or to larger stores.

I always come out of charity shops thanking the second hand gods looking down on me, knowing i’ve got some bargains in my bag: so Thankyou to stylish locals donating their summer wardrobes to mine – the only downside is fitting it all into my backpack on my Ryanair flight home…