Colourful Tour Madrid; El Rastro Flea Market

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• published: 02 Jul 2013
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Visit http://www.yourmadridhotels.com for more. Walking tour guide to the famous and fantastic El Rastro market in central Madrid, Spain; Barbies, Tapas, Watches, Paintings, Leather and more.. Transcription: So we're here in the Rastro on a Sunday morning And the Rastro gets its name, well it literally means in English, trail, which actually refers to something slightly disgusting, the trail of blood that used to happen when the animals were carried from the slaughterhouse down to the river. This market actually originated around the slaughterhouse. So you have people outside tanning, using the skin of the animals to make leather and then they turn it into products like shoes and clothes. And from that, more people came to sell their products. This long street is called Ribera de Cortidodas, which means leather tanners bank. The bank of the river which is at the bottom of this street. It would have been a very lively street. Even today, it's the most popular area of the market. So this is one of the stalls that sells leather products and it smells amazing. It really smells like leather. And it reminds me of a quote that someone ones said about El Rastro, it's like the frontier between Europe and Africa with all these Moroccan-inspired products. And you actually really feel that way when you see all the different nationalities coming here. It has a great atmosphere. This square is not like the last one. Its not as touristy as the others. This one has a bit of everything. Like we just passed some juggling accessories. We can also find a lot of antiques. Like, we were just looking at old bottles, old cameras. Old keys and books. And records in this square. It seems like haggling is a lot more popular in this square and you can see people from Madrid here so its more authentic. This is the less official area of the Rastro. Back there, they all have their permits. Everything's, you know, above board. Here, they just put out a piece of cloth and they just sell whatever they have. Porcelain cats, china, plates, silverware, super ding ball, old-fashioned dollies, Audrey Hepburn pictures. We have a bit of a Barbie cemetery here. We seem to have keys and locks of every kind. And there's even a nutcracker. This is probably the most famous place to get food in El Rastro. Usually there's a really big queue but today we're lucky because there's no queue. Pretty much anything you can get on bread, you can get here and it seems really popular. I love the way he says las tostas no se cortan. I think it refers to you're not allowed to, we're not going to cut it for you to share. Just eat a whole one. Be a man. Get a whole toast. So we can either get smoked salmon, there's prawns there, there's Spanish omelette, there's octopus, ham which we won't be getting because I'm vegetarian, sometimes. Hello, we just got goats cheese toast from probably the most popular restaurant in the Rastro. Looks good. It might seem really chaotic but actually the Rastro is divided into streets. And this one happens to specialise in art. Paintings, illustrations, tools for art making. And the Rastro in general, apart from not really being a practical market because of all the bazaars and shopping centres opening up in the twentieth century, it became more of a place for curiosities, antiques and specialist products. That also attracted a lot of artists, writers, creative people. We can see how this is reflected in this street with all the artistic works. This square, Puerta de Toledo, you see a lot of magazines, comics and they say its where kids exchange stickers though we still haven't gotten a hold of any. So we found the children. It's a really funny sight. Because you have all these kids buying these cards, completing their Pokemon card collection. From these men that have these really immaculate folders full of them. Some kids, some kids at heart.