Reclaiming the VAT
The scheme is for residents outside the EU, and since January 2021 that includes the United Kingdom. The essentials:
- No minimum spend. Spain abolished its old per-invoice threshold, so any purchase qualifies.
- Goods only. Personal items, presents, things for the family — not for resale, and purchases must be occasional rather than habitual. Services are excluded, so there is nothing to reclaim on hotels or restaurants. Fuel and tyres for a private car are also out.
- Ask in the shop. The retailer checks the passport, confirms non-EU residence and issues an electronic refund form. These have been compulsory for all such sales since 2019; the old paper-only system is gone.
- Leave the EU with the goods within three months of the purchase, and have them to hand — not in checked baggage already gone, and not posted home, which disqualifies the claim entirely.
- Validate at a DIVA kiosk at the airport, port or border on departure. A green tick means approved automatically; a red cross means going to the customs desk, where staff decide, and a refusal is final.
- The refund comes either through an intermediary, which takes a commission, or direct from the shop, which must pay within fifteen days. There is a long window to send the validated form back to the retailer.
- The trap for connecting flights: leaving the EU from another member state — changing in Lisbon, Paris or Amsterdam — requires a printed form, stamped manually there, not a Spanish kiosk validation. Anyone not flying home direct should sort this out at the shop.
Sunday trading, which is not what older accounts say
Older accounts explain that central Madrid is a designated tourist zone where Sunday opening is allowed. The reality is both simpler and more generous: since 2012 the entire Comunidad de Madrid has been liberalised. Shops throughout the region may open on Sundays and public holidays, and there is no legal restriction on opening and closing times — each business decides.
So Sunday shopping is normal rather than exceptional, and Madrid is the most deregulated retail region in Spain. The practical exceptions are the handful of days when almost everything shuts: 25 December, 1 January and 6 January, with most shops also closed on 1 May. Small independent shops still choose their own days, so Sunday opening is usual but not universal.
On the sales — the rebajas — the fixed legal periods also went in 2012, and shops may discount whenever they like. The rhythm survives anyway: a January round starting just after Epiphany, and a summer round from late June. The large chains now begin earlier each year and online before the shops.
Where to go
Gran Vía is still the principal retail avenue and carries the city's highest rents, with large international flagships, cinemas and the musical theatres. It was remodelled in 2018: the pavements were substantially widened, the traffic lanes cut from six to four, the limit dropped to thirty, and nearly two hundred and fifty trees planted. It was not pedestrianised — road space was kept for buses, emergency vehicles and residents — so accounts describing a traffic-free avenue are wrong in the other direction.
Preciados and Carmen, running north from the Puerta del Sol, are the mainstream core: chain fashion, department stores, footwear, perfumeries. Preciados has been pedestrianised since 1973 and was among the city's first pedestrian streets.
Salamanca, north-east of the centre, is the luxury quarter. The Milla de Oro runs along Serrano and Ortega y Gasset, with Jorge Juan, Lagasca, Claudio Coello and Ayala between them: the international houses, jewellers and watchmakers, plus the Mercado de La Paz, which is a working food market rather than a tourist one.
Fuencarral, also pedestrianised, running north from Gran Vía, is now mainstream and sportswear brands. It had a reputation as the alternative fashion street; that has moved on.
Malasaña is where the alternative trade actually is — vintage and retro clothing, comics, records, tattoo studios, independent labels — with a lineage back to the movida madrileña of the 1980s, and the small Triball pocket beside it for independent designers.
Chueca, north of Gran Vía, has long been the centre of Madrid's gay scene and now draws a much wider mix. Hortaleza is its commercial spine, and Augusto Figueroa is known for past-season footwear at reduced prices.
El Corte Inglés is the department store, and it is worth knowing that it is far more than a shop: Spain's only true department-store group, with travel agencies, food halls and a good deal else under the same name. Its two central stores anchor Preciados and Callao. Older accounts render the name "El Cortes Inglés"; there is no s on Corte.
Two markets
El Rastro, the flea market, runs on Sunday and public holiday mornings until about three, from the Plaza de Cascorro — where the statue of Eloy Gonzalo stands — down Ribera de Curtidores and through the streets around it. Metro La Latina or Embajadores. There are also Rastro Saturdays on the first Saturday of most months, for antiques and collectors' items. The permanent shops on and around Ribera de Curtidores open all week and lean to antiques, books, furniture and fabric. It was closed in March 2020 and reopened that November, returning to its full size in stages over the following year. Expect a great deal of junk and the occasional real find; expect crowds at the weekend.
The Mercado de San Miguel, beside the Plaza Mayor, needs its description corrected entirely. Older accounts call it a former fish market now selling fresh fruit and vegetables. It has not sold groceries since 2009, when it reopened as Spain's first gourmet market — thirty-odd stalls serving food and wine to eat and drink on the spot — and it is now one of the busiest places in the centre. The "former fish market" claim has no support and should go: it was purpose-built as a general market between 1913 and 1916 by Alfonso Dubé y Díez, it is the only surviving iron-framed market hall in Madrid, and it was listed as a monument in 2000.
It also closed in 2023 for structural work and only reopened on 26 February 2026, with its previous traders. Further and larger works are expected, so it should not be presented as settled. It is spectacular, central, crowded, and expensive by Madrid standards.
Two corrections and an addition
- Calle Montera is not a shopping street. Older accounts recommend it alongside Preciados. The city's own definition of the Sol shopping zone treats Montera as one of its boundaries: it is a busy pedestrian thoroughfare linking Sol to Gran Vía. It had a long association with street prostitution, much reduced since the street was pedestrianised and a police station opened on it.
- Lavapiés is not "the hippie quarter". That belongs to Malasaña's past. Lavapiés is the most multicultural part of central Madrid — around a quarter of residents are foreign nationals, the largest single group Bangladeshi — with immigrant-run food shops and restaurants, street art, a dense independent theatre scene, and rising rents that are the live local argument. One warning: the Tabacalera, the old tobacco factory that housed its arts centres, has been closed for renovation since July 2023 with no announced reopening, so do not plan a visit around it.
- Galería Canalejas opened in 2022 a few steps from Sol — a luxury gallery in a restored complex, which has created a second high-end pole in the historic centre, away from Salamanca.
General practicalities for the city are on the Madrid page.