We are on Monday, April 28, 2025. Spain suffers the effects of a Mass blackout which has a good part of the country’s industry and commerce. All? No! A Valencian chain of irreducible supermarkets remains open and even speaks of “normality” in the middle of the chaos. His name: Mercadona. Under his label, the lack of supply that yesterday stopped the activity of other chains in the sector resulted in something different: Customer queues, Full carts and razed baldas.
His They were not the only premises that followed at the foot of the canyon (Carrefour, Alcampo or El Corte Inglés had operational establishments), but it did stand out on a key front: neighborhood stores, closer to the citizen, which gave it considerable visibility. The big question is … How did he do it?
Of blackouts and urgent purchases. If something demonstrated the pandemic, just five years ago, it is that the Spaniards do not like to play it. In exceptional situations, such as the announcement of an alarm or A mass blackout that leaves much of the peninsula without electricity for hours, we leave home, we go to the supermarket and We buy what is necessary To fill our fridge. Even in days like yesterday in which the fridge served rather.
X is a barbarian mirror of that answer. A quick search shows tens of videos of saturated stores, long lines, empty shelves And people with loaded carts of water carafes. The funny thing is that all these videos are recorded in the same place: Mercadona. That the images have left some of their 1,600 establishments It is not surprising. Roig’s premises were operational and with supply while those of other firms in the sector They remained closed.
“The bunkers would be landowned”. The situation was so curious and in a way he remembered the first days of the pandemic, that there were those who threw a sneer in networks. “Spain collapsed and Mercadona today running even with datáphones”, He joked in x Álvaro Wasabi. “If Fallout’s apocalypse was fulfilled, zero doubts that bunkers would be landowned.”
“Mercadona when something extraordinary occurs and people believe they should buy toilet paper for 50 years,” Comments Nebreda Italohispano Next to an image of a pool crowded with people. “As with each catastrophe, the only one who has won with the #Cortedeluz is Mercadona,” Add in another tweet Eduardo Bernal.
A unique case? No. Mercadona is perhaps the chain that has generated more expectation and comments in networks, but It is not the only that yesterday managed to keep operational at least part of his network of stores. The English Court was also able to open department stores thanks to the use of structure, as well as Alcampo or Carrefour, who served in hypermarkets and part of his supermarkets.
Other chains did not run the same fate with wide implementation in Spain, such as Lidl, Eroski or Day, than They were forced To lower the blind at least its smallest stores. Precisely if something has made the networks look at Mercadona is that it managed to maintain local neighborhood operations, not only large hypermarkets located in polygons or the outskirts of the cities.
But and that … why? In Xataka we have contacted Mercadona to know which equipment they have exactly in their stores and how they could keep them active in the mass blackout. Waiting for these clarifications, the company’s environment has already sliding Some clues.
The key is in its generators, which at least in a good number of stores allowed to maintain the uploaded blinds, operational boxes and even make charges with dataphone, an impossible option in other businesses and that made yesterday The cash was imposed (very briefly) to payment with cards or mobile.
“Today we open”. In the last hours the company assured to Expansion that all their places were “open” and functioning with “normality.” Moreover, while other stores were forced to close the doors waiting for the supply to be reactivated, the abnormality in the Mercadona premises was marked by a different reality: a customer “boom”. This morning the company A tweet uploaded With photos of his shelves answered and a message: “Today we open.”
Adapting to the stage. One of the keys to Mercadona’s response, says one of his employees to Xataka, is his flexibility when adapting. The stores could work thanks to the existence of their own generators, but that does not mean that (at least in some cases) the operation was the “normal”: automatic tapes were dispensed with in the boxes and part of the merchandise took the cameras to avoid spoiling and saving energy consumption.
“Under minimums tried to leave essential things,” he explains. “Everything works. What happens is that the consumption is minimized to serve the customer (…). The lights were more faint than usual to save also.”
Refrigerators. “The refrigerators have been emptying them throughout the day to get into the refrigeration chamber or in the frozen and be able to turn them off and that only large cameras work, which is where more merchandise can be maintained in good condition,” details the same employee. “As that merchandise is removed, the refrigerators are turned off to save electricity.”
At least in its store, he recounts, the company has consulted employees if they could enter a little earlier than usual to recover normality.
Bathroom tails and prepared dishes. That Mercadona remained operational while other businesses were forced to close the door turned their premises, in a way, more than supermarkets. After visiting one of the stores in the center of Barcelona, a reporter of The country He spoke yesterday In the afternoon of queues in the bathrooms and people eating dishes prepared in tables with stools.
Images | Xataka
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