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Where to buy decent greeting cards in Spain

If you've lived in Spain for some time you may be very familiar with the lack of witty, good-quality English-language birthday, Christmas and other greeting cards. Worry not, we've broken down the best options for you.

Where to buy decent greeting cards in Spain
Where to find good greetings cards in Spain. Photo: Pexels

In places such as the UK and the US, greeting cards are a big business. They’re given for birthdays, engagements, weddings, new babies, for people moving home, as thank you messages, as condolences for those who are grieving and those in hospital.

A big favourite are cards with tongue-in-cheek humorous messages, poking fun at the recipient, but all in good faith to make them laugh.

Spaniards on the other hand don’t really do greeting cards, and the few that are available in your average papelería or stationery shop typically are usually quite plain, tacky and old-fashioned.  

For this reason, it’s very hard to find decent cards in Spain if you are accustomed to giving them and family back home expect to receive them from you.

You can always make your own, but this requires a lot of time and a reasonable artistic ability.

Luckily, there are several physical and online stores in Spain where you can find a decent selection.

Etsy

Etsy is great for handmade gifts of any kind, including cards and the website even has its own Spanish version. As well as highly artistic cards, you’ll find ones that can be customised or even cards you can buy in bulk, such as a box of Christmas cards.

As these cards are usually handmade, however, they can be more expensive than your average greeting card. To help keep the costs down, make sure you have the ‘Spain’ filter clicked when searching so that you’re not paying extra for cards to be sent from other countries.

El Corte Inglés

Spain’s famed department store El Corte Inglés is usually a go option when you can’t find what you’re looking for anywhere else. You’ll find a selection of simple cards here, but what they do best are elaborate pop-up cards, particularly good for kids’ birthdays.

Carrefour

The home and clothes wear department of Carrefour has a decent card selection for various occasions including birthdays, weddings, and new babies. There may not be a huge variety in every category or many humorous options, but what they do have is decent-quality images.

Be aware, if you’re thinking of these cards for friends and family back home, they generally only have ones in Spanish, or Catalan, if you live in Catalonia.

There are a number of places to buy cards in Spain. You can even order them online. Photo: Annie Spratt / Unsplash
 
 

Funky Pigeon

Well-known UK online greeting card company Funky Pigeon has the option of shipping cards to Spain, but be aware they can take between 7 to 10 days to arrive. Also, depending on the price of the cards you order, you may end up paying a little extra in tax when they arrive.

Alternatively, if you’re sending your cards directly to recipients in the UK, you can order them straight to addresses in the UK.

Funky Pigeon has a huge array of options for every type of occasion you can think of and all can be personalised. They are particularly good for funny and jokey cards, but have a good range of sweet and sophisticated choices too.

Flying Tiger

Danish variety chain store Flying Tiger is great for cards depicting various holidays, such as Christmas. You’ll also find cards a lot cheaper here than anywhere else, starting from just €1. If you want to get a bit creative, but don’t want to make your own cards from scratch, then they also have DIY cards that you can decorate with stickers – great for getting the kids involved too.

Flying Tiger has 58 branches across Spain, located in most of the major cities and more than one in big cities like Barcelona and Madrid.

Lovely Story 

Lovely Story is a good Spain-based online option for cards. It’s ideal if you’re looking for Spanish friends and family as cards tell stories about family members and friends you buy for. There are also congratulatory cards wishing Felicidades (Congratulations) to various members of the family, which you could customise for various occasions. 

Amazon

And yes, of course, there’s always Amazon. Amazon Spain is actually a great option if you want to buy packs of cards to keep at home for whenever you need them. There are cards for all holidays including Easter and Christmas or just to say thank you, as well as nice cards without writing that you can send for any occasion you wish. They also have specialised big pop-up cards.

Casa del Libro

Book store Casa del Libro has the best range of picture cards available if you don’t want writing on them. This could be good if you don’t want Spanish phrases for friends or family back home and so that you can send them for whichever occasion you feel is the most appropriate. There are 47 bookshops located across the country.

FNAC

If you’re stuck and can’t find cards anywhere else or don’t have time to buy them online then FNAC has some good, but limited choices. Most of these are created by the MR. Wonderful brand and are all in the same style. They’re good for sweet cards for Mother’s and Father’s Day for example, but don’t have options for many different occasions.

Buy in bulk when you visit your home country

If all else fails, then Granada-based blogger Molly Piccavey writes on her blog: “My tip is to buy all the year’s greetings cards when you travel to the UK. Spend an hour in the card shop and choose all the birthday cards and anniversary cards that you need for the year ahead”.

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CULTURE

Almodovar’s love affair with Madrid explored in new exhibition

Oscar-winning director Pedro Almodovar's decades-long love affair with Madrid is the focus of a new exhibition in the Spanish capital which has appeared in all of his feature films to varying degrees.

Almodovar's love affair with Madrid explored in new exhibition

“Madrid, Almodovar Girl”, which runs until October 20 at the Conde Duque cultural centre, features 200 photos from his 23 movies, as well as notebooks, movie props and the first camera Almodovar bought, a hand-held Super-8.

This year marks the 50th anniversary since Almodovar began his film career in Madrid in 1974 with the release of his first short film.

“The story of Pedro Almodovar and Madrid is a story of requited love, Pedro Almodovar is Pedro Almodovar thanks to Madrid,” Pedro Sánchez, the commissioner of the exhibition and author of a book on the director’s links to the city, told AFP.

“Almodovar has paid back to Madrid in spades what the city has given him by being his muse,” he said, adding that many foreigners’ first contact with Spanish culture and Madrid is through Almodovar’s works.

A huge chart at the exhibition shows what percentage of the action in each of Almodovar’s films takes place in Madrid.

It ranges from just six percent in 2011 drama “The Skin I Live In”, about an amoral plastic surgeon who seeks revenge on the young man who raped his daughter, to 100 percent in seven films.

These include his international breakthrough, the 1988 romantic black comedy “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown”.

Cemeteries and bars

Almodovar moved to Madrid from a small village in Castilla-La Mancha, an arid and rural region in central Spain, in 1967 during the final years of the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco when he was just 17.

“I have never felt like a stranger here,” he has said.

After Franco’s death in 1975, Almodovar became a key part of the cultural movement in Madrid dubbed “la movida” which saw artists break the Roman Catholic dictatorship’s many taboos.

Sánchez said that like Madrid, Almodovar has a “transgressive, multifaceted, critical, open, fun, cosmopolitan and friendly personality”.

The exhibition features a map of Madrid marked with the 272 locations that have appeared in his films.

Spain’s most famous director tends to avoid famous landmarks, preferring working-class areas like Vallecas and places such as hospitals, taxis, bars and cemeteries where people go about their daily lives.

One of his most iconic scenes was shot outside the facade of the building housing the exhibition – the moment in the 1987 film “Law of Desire” where a city street cleaner hoses down Carmen Maura’s character on a hot Madrid summer night at her request.

Adoptive son

Almodovar is known for using vivid colours, which he has said is “a way of taking revenge” on the grey years of the Franco dictatorship, Sánchez said.

He reproduced his Madrid flat for the 2019 film “Pain and Glory” about an ageing film director, even using some of his armchairs.

When he visited the exhibition before it opened to the public on June 12, Almodovar reportedly said “this is my life”.

The 74-year-old won the Oscar for screenwriting for his 2002 movie “Talk to Her”, about two men who form an unlikely bond when both their girlfriends are in comas.

He also picked up the best foreign language Oscar for the 1999 movie “All About My Mother” about a woman struggling with the sudden death of her teenage son.

The exhibition ends with a video of part of the speech he gave when Madrid city hall in 2018 declared him to be an “adoptive son” of the city.

“I came mainly to get away from the village, to urbanise a bit and then to go and live in Paris or London, but without realising it, I stayed,” he said.

“Now I can say that both me and my characters will continue to live here.”

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