Eating at Mercadona in Asturias: the tourist who spends nothing

Eating at Mercadona in Villaviciosa: when the Madrid tourist closes their wallet

Asturian hospitality doesn't have a tourism problem; it has a pricing problem. This season, supermarkets with food areas have become the real alternative for thousands of visitors who come north intending to spend, but find menus that seem designed to scare customers away.

In the town of Villaviciosa, the small table area at Mercadona has been packed, with entire families in swimsuits and flip-flops eating precooked dishes while nearby cider houses recorded modest occupancy. For many locals, the image is offensive: the tourist who should be leaving money in local businesses walks down the supermarket aisle, heats up a rice dish in the microwave, and sits at a shared table. The scene, however, is not a whim: it is a rational response to a pricing context that many consider abusive.

Restaurant prices that drive customers away

Some data from the season illustrate this: a meal for four with a portion of squid, scorpionfish pie, croquettes, and small bottles easily exceeds 80 euros. A fabada in Oviedo cost as much as 30 euros with dessert and tasted like the canned version. Coffee, which twenty years ago cost 1.50 euros, now ranges from 1.60 to 1.90. These are isolated examples, but they outline a trend: Asturian restaurants have applied a pricing policy that fails to convince an increasingly value-conscious tourism market.

Ready-made meals as an uncomfortable competitor

The most uncomfortable argument for the sector is not price, but authenticity. Various accounts claim that several Asturian establishments serve the same farmed sea bass sold at Mercadona, bought dozens of kilometers away, and then marked up on the menu to around 25 euros. The ready-made meal offering—precooked dishes that the supermarket itself heats up—matches what many restaurants use, reducing the differential value of traditional cooking. If the dish is the same, customers wonder why they should pay ten times more.

The underlying political fight: transfers and grievances

Behind the uproar over eating at the supermarket loom old territorial resentments. The Madrid visitor becomes the scapegoat for a deeper malaise: the feeling in Asturias that the region contributes less than it receives, or the conviction in Madrid that the north lives off transfers. These are two opposing narratives that feed each other and turn any consumption decision into a political gesture. The reality is more prosaic: people eat where it's worth their money, and available data show that the Mercadona crowd is not anti-tourist, but disappointed customers.

Regulation or free market?

Faced with the avalanche, intervention ideas have been floated: if the supermarket offers restaurant service, it should trinc the same regulations as a bar, requiring a license, hours, and probably payment for use of space. The reference to the Airbnb model hangs in the air. The proposal, defended by some as protection of local commerce, clashes with the stance of those who believe the market has already delivered its verdict: if a hotelier loses customers to a supermarket, they're doing something wrong. That the supermarket has turned its food area into a beach bar shows adaptability; that traditional hospitality can't find it is the real problem.

In the short term, everything suggests the phenomenon will keep growing, especially with van tourism that has replaced the Mediterranean with the Cantabrian. If prices don't adjust and service doesn't improve, the Mercadona scene will be the image of Asturian summers for years. Although it's also possible that, with so much visibility, restaurants will eventually react. The ball is in their court.