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Flirting craze at Mercadona supermarkets takes over Spain

Mercadona's flirting craze appears to have gone a bit far in Spain as police have been called in to deal with crowds, stag dos have been held at supermarket branches and staff have been forced to remove pineapples during 'flirting hour'.

Published: 4 September 2024 10:25 CEST
Flirting craze at Mercadona supermarkets takes over Spain
Pineapples have had to be removed from Mercadona supermarkets during 'flirting hour'. Photo: LiangKai Huang/Unsplash

If you’ve popped into Mercadona to do some shopping recently, you might’ve received some funny looks… or smiles or prolonged eye contact, a wink, or even someone crashing their shopping trolley into yours.

That’s probably because you accidentally went during ‘flirting hour’.

What are we talking about? Well, for those not in the know, it all started with a TikTok video that’s gone viral and now everybody in Spain’s talking about it. 

The idea is that if you turn up at a Mercadona branch between 7pm and 8pm, that’s la hora de ligar (the time to flirt), and there’s a secret love language to follow as well.

Putting a pineapple upside down in your shopping trolley means that you’re ‘available’ and ‘interested’. 

There are different supermarket aisles where you have to go to ‘hang’ based on your age group (you can read in more detail about the rules of Spanish supermarket flirting here).

But what started as a bit of fun seems to have gone a bit too far and is getting a little out of control. 

Once the trend went viral, scores of people began going to Mercadona between 7-8pm in stores across the country.

In one Mercadona branch in the Basque city of Bilbao, the sheer number of people descending on the supermarket for la hora de ligar meant that the security were overwhelmed and had to call the local Ertzaintza police. The numbers, Basque media reported, “far exceeded the usual capacity of a normal day.”

Even Spain’s pensioners are heading to their Mercadona to flip pineapples and find a potential suitor. 

Staff in some Mercadona stores have also tried to pre-empt the flirting hour and started removing pineapples in anticipation of the rush of singletons looking for love. A video posted on social media shows a worker removing a trolley full of pineapples to prevent the pineapples from being misused in an attempt to find love.

In another viral video, a group of young men staged a stag party in the store in which they dressed the groom up as a giant pineapple and wheeled him around in a supermarket trolley.

There are also articles in Spain’s main newspapers telling readers the latest fashion trends that can be worn to ‘get lucky’ at their local Mercadona branch.

It’s safe to say this social media trend has snowballed. Perhaps this writer is overly cynical, but one has to wonder how much of this was cooked up by Mercadona’s marketing team in the first place.

This trend and the viral videos that have come from it do all seem very convenient for Mercadona, Spain’s largest supermarket chain that had a turnover over €32 billion in 2023 alone.

Its owner, Juan Roig has openly admitted that the company has taken advantage of inflation and raised its prices in recent years.

And for the romantics among our readership who think this is all a bit of fun, the fact that rival supermarkets Lidl and Carrefour have also got involved in the scheme and launched rival flirting hours suggests it’s working… whether intentional or not.

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EXPLAINED: How Spain’s new Social Security app works

Whether you're self-employed, an artist, a student or a domestic worker, Spain's new social security app aims to simplify and streamline bureaucratic processes you might need to do when it comes to managing your working life and pension.

Published: 17 September 2024 11:04 CEST
EXPLAINED: How Spain's new Social Security app works

Spain’s Social Security Ministry has launched a new free mobile app aimed at simplifying and synchronising tax, pension and working life procedures, allowing you to better access records and update information.

The app is specifically aimed at easing the bureaucratic burden on the self-employed, domestic workers, artists and young people studying or doing work experience.

Spain’s Minister for Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, Elma Saiz, presented the app this week, stating that it represents “a great step forward for citizens to have a closer and more fluid relationship with Social Security.

Through this application, personal data can be updated and verified; detailed information on contribution bases can be accessed and your Work Life report can be easily downloaded, among many other services.”

In Spain, your ‘Working Life report’ is known as el informe de vida laboral. According to the Social Security website, it is “a document that contains information on all the periods contributed by the worker to the Spanish Social Security system.” In other words, all the information on your entire employment history in Spain.

READ ALSO: How to check how long you have left to get a pension in Spain

The app essentially moves over the various processes usually done on the Social Security portal or in Spain’s social security offices so users can receive a more personalised service including tailored alerts and the ability to download documents to their mobile phones in offline mode.

It also allows users to easily check the details of their working life including for who and for how long they’ve worked somewhere, the type of contract they have, the working day or the relevant collective bargaining agreement, as well as information on contribution bases and how much they are owed in the event of sick leave and for calculating your pension.

How do I access and use the app?

First you’ll need to download the app from the Google Play or Apple App store. Once you’ve downloaded it to your phone, there are three ways to log-in in and register:

  • Permanent Cl@ve
  • Digital certificate (Android only)
  • SMS

READ ALSO:

Once registered and logged in, push notifications can be turned on as well as a biometric access — either fingerprint or facial recognition.

Once this has been done, you can access your personal information, whether it be working or pension matters, and all the normal procedures you’d previously do via the portal can be carried out and all this information can be downloaded in files.

What can you do with the app?

As mentioned earlier, the new app basically aims to streamline the processes you’d normally do via the Social Security Ministry portal or in person.

This includes checking your social security number or requesting one, consulting your tax contribution bases and employment history, updating your personal details, or managing tasks for the self-employed, domestic workers artists or young people doing work experience, such as registering or deregistering as economically active and downloading supporting documents.

READ ALSO: How to de-register as self-employed in Spain

Focus on young people, freelancers, artists and domestic employment

The application offers four different profiles to use the app: self-employed, domestic employment (for both employees and employers), artists and trainees.

The autónomo profile allows you to access all the information and procedures available if you are registered or are about to start self-employment, including registration and de-registration, modifying your contribution base, consulting tax receipts, and estimating your contributions according to your income, among other things.

In the domestic employment section, whether you yourself work domestically or are going to hire someone to work at home, you can consult all the necessary information such as calculating the contributions to be paid, registering and de-registering, updating the salary information and the working hours of the employee, or consulting payslips issued.

READ ALSO: The rules for hiring a domestic worker in Spain

For artists, you can manage your inactivity, request a refund of income from contribution bases or deregister from the working artists’ register.

For students doing internships or work experience (alumnos en prácticas in Spanish) the app is useful for both those about to start their internships and for those who’ve already started them, with access to their personal profile, a guide to resolve doubts, information to find out about the benefits of pensions contributions and they can carry out procedures such as requesting the social security number, downloading the Work Life Report and consulting contribution bases.

READ ALSO: How self-employed workers in Spain can get a better pension

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