My First Black Friday In Spain: A Simple Life Meets Shopping Season

When I first moved to Spain, I had a very clear imagination of nan life I wanted: sun-soaked days, agelong coffees that someway move into lunch, and a location that did not groan nether nan weight of things I did not really need. I wanted simplicity, menos estrés, menos cosas (less stress, less things). And for nan astir part, that is precisely what I found.

Is Black Friday moreover a point successful Spain?

Then November came, and pinch it, my very first Black Friday successful Spain.

Back successful nan UK, Black Friday was for illustration a nationalist sport. Lists, comparison charts, discount codes, marque newsletters: if location was a bargain to beryllium had, group were consenting to conflict for it (even me). I erstwhile queued astatine 6 a.m. successful nan freezing acold to bargain a group of headphones for my son, redeeming myself a fiver and gaining a bump pinch a trolley heading astatine velocity for nan discounted TVs (they did gain maine immoderate mum points though).

So I imagined that moving to Spain would mean escaping each of that. I pictured a world wherever Black Friday was a distant rumble, thing that happened elsewhere, acold distant from my recently adopted onshore of thenar trees and pared-back living.

For a while, it was precisely for illustration that. Shops were calm, nan markets carried connected arsenic usual, and nary 1 I knew was aggressively hunting down discounted gadgets. It felt blissful.

Sales interrupting my elemental life

But now I americium seeing that things are changing, moreover here. Even my section ferretería has a Black Friday poster taped to nan window. Supermarkets are sending cheerful emails announcing two-for-one deals connected everything from hairdryers to ham slicers. Even nan small boutique down nan street, which sells floaty dresses and straw baskets, advertises “¡Descuentos Black Friday!” contempt nan truth that its astir high-tech point is simply a woven formation hat.

Still, nan ambiance is different here. There is not that frantic edge, that taste unit to bargain aliases consciousness for illustration you are missing out. Spaniards look to attack Black Friday pinch nan aforesaid easygoing motion they use to astir things: “If I request something, great. If not, I will conscionable person a java instead.”

That cognition is already rubbing disconnected connected me.

I still announcement nan sales, of course. I americium not a saint. But I do not consciousness nan compulsion to capable my trolley pinch discounted nonsense. Instead, I look astir my small Spanish home, bright, airy, uncluttered, and I retrieve why I came here. I did not move for bigger closets. I moved for a bigger life.

Finding joyousness successful less

Living successful Spain is school maine that having little worldly makes room for much of everything else. More dinners pinch friends. More walks successful nan sun. More clip not spent giving worldly a home. More money goes towards experiences alternatively of objects.

Funnily enough, nan much I adopt this slower, simpler rhythm, nan much ridiculous those aged Black Friday habits seem. Do I really request different speaker, different blender, different group of “miracle” retention containers promising to organise a life I nary longer want organised to death?

Not really.

My first Black Friday strategy

So this year, connected my first Black Friday successful Spain, I will do what galore of my Spanish neighbours do. I will glimpse astatine nan sales, possibly dainty myself to thing mini if I really request it, and past get connected pinch my day, astir apt pinch a cortado successful hand.

Here, I person learned thing Black Friday ne'er taught me: nan champion things successful life are not discounted, they are simply enjoyed.