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Madrid is a world design center. You'll have no trouble finding traditional crafts, such as ceramics, woven baskets, guitars, and leather goods, as well as a wealth of contemporary art and fashion pieces. Small, family-run shops and boutiques generally close during lunch hours, on Saturday afternoon, and on Sunday.
Madrid has three main shopping areas. The first stretches from Callao to Puerta del Sol (Calle Preciados, Gran Vía on both sides of Callao, and the streets around the Puerta del Sol) and includes the major department stores (El Corte Inglés and the French music, book, and electronics chain FNAC) and popular brands such as H&M and Zara.
The second area, far more elegant and expensive, is in the eastern Salamanca district, bounded roughly by Serrano, Juan Bravo, Jorge Juan (and its mews), and Velázquez; the shops on Goya extend as far as Alcalá. The streets just off the Plaza de Colón, particularly Calle Serrano and Calle Ortega y Gasset, have the widest selection of designer goods—think Prada, Loewe, Armani, and Louis Vuitton—as well as other mainstream and popular local designers (Purificación García, Pedro del Hierro, Adolfo Domínguez, Roberto Verino). Calle Jorge Juan, Calle Lagasca, and Calle Claudio Coello hold the widest selection of smart boutiques from renowned Spanish designers such as Sybilla, DelPozo, and Dolores Promesas.
Finally, for hipper clothes, Chueca, Malasaña, and the streets around the Conde Duque cultural center are your best bets. Calle Fuencarral, between Gran Vía and Tribunal, has the most shops in this area with outposts from Diesel, Adidas, and Footlocker, but also local brands such as El Ganso, Adolfo Domínguez U (selling the Galician designer's younger collection), and Custo as well as some cosmetics stores (Madame B and M.A.C). Less mainstream and sometimes more exciting is the selection you can find on nearby Calles Hortaleza, Almirante, and Piamonte and around the Conde Duque cultural center.
This sleek cheese shop with on-site "caves" for aging is a cheese lover's paradise. Seek out rare treasures like Torrejón, a raw ashed-rind sheep’s cheese from Castile, and snap up a bottle of organic Spanish wine while you're at it. There's a second location in La Latina on Carrera de San Francisco 14.
For cooks on the hunt for hard-to-find Spanish ingredients, Casa Ruiz is an obligatory stop. The bulk purveyor specializes in dry ingredients, from beans to pulses to spices to chocolate, and they carry only the best. Seek out Manchegan saffron, judiones de La Granja (extra-large white runner beans), and Asturian fabes to make real-deal fabada (bean stew) in your home kitchen.
You'll find organic local cheeses, gourmet tinned food, charcuterie, and natural wine at this pocket-size shop.
Generously stuffed empanadas—double-crusted Galician pies stuffed with any range of meats and seafood—make terrific picnic fare, and Zabala (est. 1967) makes consistently sublime ones. Take a few slabs to go and savor them under the cherry trees in the nearby Parque de la Cuña Verde de Latina.
Featuring exclusively Spanish cheeses from small producers, Qava doesn't just source and sell killer cheeses that make great gifts—it also ages each wheel to perfection in on-site "caves." Sample them in an eight-table tasting area alongside carefully selected wines. The 11 pm closing time means you can work Qava into a tapas crawl or—if you're feeling European—make it a final dessert stop.
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