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Street markets here in Spain, called mercadillos, are a daily thing. The one in my town, Benimaclet, is held on Fridays, which is an interesting prospect for the store owners already on the streets where the market is held. Saturday, though, some friends and I went to the Saturday street marketin Benicalap, another small area that used to have its own identity, but has since been swallowed up by Valencia city. Although the stalls were selling the same kinds of things (and sometimes the vendors were the same, too), there was much, much more to find.

Like a bunch of wolves on a fallen sheep!DSCN2513-small

The people attending this market were not the calmer Friday morning folks in Benimaclet. No, here, you had to stake your claim for that used jacket or those socks or the pair of jeans in hanging on inflatable legs and swinging in the breeze. Both the patrons and the stall owners were more aggressive, and you would often find a group of people sorting through a massive pile of used clothes trying to find that golden fleece before the next person.

Since I wasn’t going home after the market, I took my backpack with me to carry anything I bought. Thankfully, they were very small items, including a teeny tiny Christmas tree for my apartment.

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