Spain Money Saving Tips and Offers

A friend of mine recently told me about a Spanish insurance comparison website called acierto.com.  It comapres most of the main insurers in Spain and offers price comparisons for car and motorbike insurance, house insurance, health insurance and life assurance. 

The website is very user friendly with a very nice and intuitive interface, which is unusual for a Spanish website.  Most Spanish websites are useless.

I had a look at the site earlier on and checked how much I could save on my car insurance.  For my last renewal I paid just under €400 with Liberty Seguros.  The best quote I got on acierto.com was €292, with Linea Directa.  So a saving of around €100, for a couple of minutes effort.

Unfortunately, the website is in Spanish as it is aimed primarily at the Spanish market, but with a reasonable knowledge of Spanish, you should be able to find your way around the site.

The annual summer sales in Spain will shortly be coming to an end.  They run until the end of August, so only a week or so to go.  A lot of shops now have up to 70% off.  As with most sales though, the good stuff tends to go early and what's left is usually the rubbish. 

I went in the second week of July and managed to pick up some decent bargains. 

- a pair of desert boots from Cortefiel for €20 (reduced from €80)

-2 pairs of trousers from Mango for €38 (reduced from €80)

-2 Pedro del Hierro shirts for €95 (usually €70 each)

So overall I was quite pleased with the sales this summer.

On Saturday 20th August, Lidl will be selling 6 bottles of rioja for a bargain price of €8.99.  You actually get an extra bottle free (6 for the price of 5).  The usual price for 6 bottles is €12.30, which is still very cheap.  So it works out at only €1.50 per bottle.

It's not the greatest Rioja in the world, but for that price, you can't complain!

I was recently in Estepona port and noticed a bar doing a caña + tapa for only 1 euro.  I've seen a lot of places in Malaga and Valencia offering a beer and tapa for 2 euros, but this deal is incredibly cheap.  I can't believe a bar doing this sort of offer right in the middle of the summer season and right in the middle of Estepona port. 

That night, I noticed the restaurants and bars were very quiet - with most of them around half full at most.  In previous years, you would have struggled to get a table.  I guess this is more evidence that Spain has had a poor tourist season this summer, as I recently wrote about here.

Last night I went to my favourite tapas bar over in Estepona and had another extremely cheap night there.  We normally go there about once per month and  we always come away absolutely stuffed and never manage to spend more than 15 euros per head.  Last night was no exception.  The bill for 2 people came to 30 euros:

Between the 2 of us we had the following:

• 4 pinchos de pollo (chicken skewers)
  
• 1 pincho de gambas (prawn skewers)
  
• 4 montaditos serranito (pork, jamon and green pepper roll)
  
• 2 platos de carrillada en salsa (pig's cheek in sauce)
  
• 6 cervezas (beers)

Total bill:  30 euros

It's worth giving your local Spanish bars a go and tapas is definitely the cheapest way to eat in Spain.

At this time of year in Spain, water melons are in season, which means they are very cheap.  I was in Lidl earlier today and they were doing them for 19 cents/kilo which is a fantastic price.  I was one woman with a trolley containing 8 giant water melons, and nothing else!!

They're really refreshing, especially on days like this when it is 35c!!