Rastro News

The Internet’s first attempt at drawing together information concerning the ever-changing Rastro Scene in Valencia and Alicante Provinces

Rastros are peculiar things - the publicity surrounding them is almost non-existent. They can (and have) changed location with no prior notice and a purely local saint's day can close one for just a week. On Wednesday, I had an object lesson in how the very concept of the rastro (and their locations) can remain unknown to ex-pat home owners who would definitely benefit from the opportunity of a good rummage around one of these venues …a couple I met (recently) were certainly oblivious.

 

The information on my web site is about to enter a new phase. I have done as many words, about various locations, as any one webmaster could possibly be expected to do.

A NEW WAY TO NOSE AROUND LOCAL RASTROS!

Both Dénia and Vergel Rastros have grown in size. Vergel’s Saturday Rastro too has become a victim of its own success - now occupying so much space in the safari park car park that customers are struggling for somewhere to park. Both Vergel Rastros  have many more stalls selling fruit, vegetables, herbs and plants.

 

It seems that the reason that the Sunday rastro at Vergel had to up sticks and move to an adjacent farm field was because the bloke organising it had not only refused to clean up after he had used the Safari Park venue …but also mounted a pathetic attempt at blaming it on the organisers of the Saturday event. Apparently, the same guy had been turned off the Pedreguer site by the local council and for the same reasons. When not all of the stallholders at Pedreguer would follow him to his new location then he tried to force the issue by vandalising selected stalls. So, what we have here is a low-life, scum of the earth who will stop at nothing and this has included contacting the press and telling them that the Saturday venue is closing down and so everybody ought to forget about going there …in favour of his latest site (an industrial site or "polygon") just down the road from the safari park. This shark has also tried to poach stallholders from the Saturday market by offering stallholders a free Saturday pitch if they sign up with him for Sunday. So, let's just round up the character assassination here. This guy is a fly-tipping, lying, saboteur who poaches other people's customers. We decided to visit the polygon site, once we had left the safari park and found a motley assortment of largely uninteresting stalls, sparsely distributed around some waste ground (heaped up with fly-tipped rubble and soil). In contrast to the safari park site, there were very few customers.

I suppose one might count this maverick rastro owner's current location as 'safely out of the way' and merely good riddance (the nearest Spanish equivalent is "un viento frio" …literally 'a cold wind')., it’s on YouTube and you can watch it from here (see below)

 

I was concerned that Sunday’s Vergel rastro would be a complete duplicate of Saturday – but I was to be refreshingly surprised. I found out what happened to the vibrant heart of Pedreguer. There is, obviously, SOME stall duplication from Saturday but if the rastro has a problem then it’s that it is now so big that customer car parking is very limited and the move to the field down the road has made matters worse. . My suggestion would be to go either early or late (coincidentally, these two times are also the best for a bargain – an early visit means you get first crack and a late arrival brings the chance of that end-of rastro price drop).

VERGEL

A Rastro of

two halves