People here are suffering from a carefully constructed psychosis... however I'm unable to definitely say it's deliberate or simply followed the natural development of customer society.

I recall we mostly went shopping in San Juan de Alicante, there used to be a couple of the big hipermercados there as Benidorm really was a seasonal sort of poblacion where scarcely anybody lived winters, back in the day.

The only bad thing I can say about Spain is that it has become more "European" over the last decades ;)