Here you can read our insider guide on the shops, stores, shopping malls, markets, souvenirs and the best districts and streets for shopping in Costa Blanca. Travellers may find variety of the world’s leading firms, jewelers, antique dealers, large superstores and small shops and buy local handicrafts and all types of souvenirs in Costa Blanca.
What to Buy? – Best Places to Shop
Crafted goods, ceramics, jewellery, classical guitars, designer clothes, fine wines and furniture are the most popular items to buy and make shopping in Costa Blanca.
Alicante’s thriving industrial sector has in no way acted as a brake on its deep-rooted handicrafts tradition, which continues to produce goods with great tourist appeal. The oldest artisan activity is that of pottery and ceramics, with production centred on the towns of Biar, Onil, Agost and Orba.
Best Places to Shop in Costa Blanca
A popular custom, the local flea market or “mercadillo” is a great and fun way to buy items at affordable prices.
While a visit to these parts is interesting in itself, the local handmade products can be acquired in many of the province’s resorts.
The catalogue of items produced includes everything from traditional two-spouted water jars (botijos) to large amphora-like earthenware wine vats (tinajas), not forgetting to mention pitchers (cántaros), mortars (morteros) and water ewers (aguamaniles). The same applies to basketry items made of esparto grass, osier, rush and palmetto.
Gata de Gorgos is the main manufacturing and sales centre in Costa Blanca. The wickerwork furniture, straw hats and baskets can be purchased all along the coast.
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Elx is home to the symbolic palm decorations for Palm Sunday, while Callosa de Segura and Cox make the typical esparto-grass and canvas alpargatas (Spanish version of the French espadrille).
Costa Blanca also has an attractive range of handicrafts. Shopping for embroidery and needlework is typical in San Juan, whilst the towns of Monóvar, Algueña, Novelda, Pinoso and La Romana sell handmade lacework (encaje de bolillo).
In Guadalest and the surrounding area, knitted garments made of brightly coloured wool are the main mementos on sale. Wrought ironwork tends to be localised in the Denia, Agres, Villena, Torrevieja and El Campello areas. Using traditional techniques, Alcoy continues to manufacture blunderbuses (trabucos) for use in fiestas.
Santa Pola and Torrevieja is popular with the objects made of seashells, and in the latter case, in tiny boats overlaid with salt crystal taken from the neighbouring salt-pans.
The old Pinoso and Monóvar wineries produce wines which, thanks to the quality of the barrels, bouquet and taste, are the most famous of those sold under the Alicante Seal of Origin (Denominación de Origen, equivalent to the French Appellation d’Origine Contrôleé).
Other items to be bought on the Costa Blanca include dolls from Ibi and Onil, rugs and carpets from Crevillente, turrón and ice-cream from Jijona, and footwear from Elche, Elda and Villena.
