I went looking for love in a Spanish supermarket with an upside-down pineapple – everyone’s doing it

Young Spaniards are fed up of dating apps and heading to the shopping aisles instead, so I hopped on a plane to see if it works for me too

Picture this: you’re in Lidl, it’s a Sunday, you’re doing your weekly shop, getting all the necessities in for the coming week. You’re taking a stroll down the wine aisle, eyeing up a treat for this evening. 
Down by the Italian wines there’s a woman standing – in faux-nonchalance – with a pineapple. When she’s not pretending to browse the wine selection, she’s looking intently at your basket.
It’s me. I’m the woman. Leering at innocent shoppers from behind a pineapple. Why? Because it’s a Spanish supermarket and, allegedly, it’s “la hora de ligar” (the hour of flirting) and I’m looking for love (not pinot grigio). 
La hora de ligar became a viral sensation when Spanish TV personality, Vivy Lin, inadvertently found herself in a branch of La Mercadona at the witching hour and posted a TikTok about it. Since when, hundreds of young Spanish people – tired of dating apps – have flocked to supermarkets to hunt for mates.
Naturally, I flew out to Spain to see what this was all about. 
I arrived on Sunday morning and – sadly – La Mercadona takes the Lord’s day more seriously than our native Tesco or Sainsbury’s. They were all closed. No matter, I’d read that Lidl had their own “hora de ligar”, from 6-7pm.
For context, it’s not just pineapples singles are using to indicate that they’re looking for more than just groceries. I did some research and curated my own personal shopping list on the basis of the signals.
Olive oil = “looking for a rich man”. Tick.
Lentils = “looking for something long term” (owing to their impressive shelf-life).
Confectionery = “sweet summer fling”. Tick.
Two cucumbers = “dtf, basically” (if you need me to translate, this is not for you).
I’m a tourist. I’m not looking for anything long-term, realistically.
So I entered the Lidl, just before 6pm, to hunt down my objects. It was strange, entering a supermarket with no intention of doing an actual shop. My hotel room didn’t even have a kitchen. I had no practical need to be there.
I wandered over to the pineapples, picked the biggest, ripest, juiciest one I could find and placed it in my basket. Emboldened by the size of my pineapple, I threw two cucumbers in there too. And some extra virgin olive oil.
Happy with my basket, I spent some time milling around the booze aisle, awaiting Mr Right. I found myself reading into every trolley that scooted past me. A dozen eggs? Does he want to put all those eggs in my basket? Two bunches of bananas? What could that possibly mean?
Not a pineapple in sight. I began to have doubts. Looking at the contents of my basket – a pineapple, two cucumbers, extra virgin olive oil and a bar of chocolate – I wondered what a rich man would be doing in a Lidl anyway.
The worst part of all was returning my produce to their shelves. Surely there’s no sadder sight than a woman, at the end of la hora de ligar, returning her pineapple. Alone.
Whatever, maybe Lidl wasn’t the place for it. It’s La Mercadona that has been going viral on TikTok. So I got up on Monday and made it my mission to get some intel. At around lunchtime, I found a Mercadona – maybe some potential matches would be swiping the aisles during their lunch break?
No such luck.
I put my Spanish A-level to good use by asking the security guard (who was handsome, but very much on duty) if he’d seen la hora de ligar during his shifts in the Mercadona. 
Helpfully, he informed me that they only seem to happen on Thursdays and Fridays – as people wind down for the weekend. Trying it on a Monday, then, was like going to Infernos on a Wednesday; kind of dead.
Still, I persisted. I marched down to El Corte Inglés – Barcelona’s equivalent to Selfridges – where, allegedly, they have their own hora de ligar from 2-3pm, in their perfume section. Unsure on how to proceed, I made a point of picking up bottles called things like “magnetic”, “lust” and “enchanted”. Again, the only people around me were window-shoppers, hunting down scents, not romance.
Staff kept approaching me to ask if I needed help with anything. I said yes, but not with perfume. I asked, at several counters, whether they’d seen anyone attempting to spark romance in their perfume section. I explained “la hora de ligar” – at first they looked at me like I was insane. “Tengo que escribir sobre la hora de ligar. Soy de Londres.” Almost everyone I spoke to had heard of it – and the ones who hadn’t heard of it were amused both by the concept and the fact that I’d flown from London to investigate.
Those who were familiar said “Ah, La Mercadona!”, so clearly they knew it was a thing. But when it comes to El Corte Inglés (bear in mind I was in the central Barcelona shop), no one had anything to report.
No matter. If anything this instilled me with faith that La Mercadona, 7-8pm, would be my best bet. I returned to my hotel room and changed into something a little more salacious. A white mini skirt, a low-cut blue sparkly top with eyeshadow to match, and knee-high heeled boots. I was ready to bump carts with a pineapple-wielding stranger.
This time around I did actually witness some hora de ligar action. A group of prepubescent boys gathered excitedly round a trolley, delicately placing a pineapple upside down. They were laughing a lot and clearly knew what they were doing. Sadly, none of them were even remotely age-appropriate. I avoided them, not wanting to give any wrong ideas with my own pineapple.
I filled my trolley with the same ingredients as my time in Lidl (minus the cucumber – it just felt too gauche, even by my standards). Still no one. Margaret, the Telegraph’s photographer, made it her mission to hunt me down a man.
“How do you like them? Tall, dark and handsome?” she quipped. I waited, again, putting on an unconvincing show of nonchalance. She found one, at last – it’s just a shame that he was there with his boyfriend. 
Once we were finished in the booze aisle, I went to return my pineapple (lord knows how many pineapples I picked up and put down within my 48 hours in Spain). They’d taken the entire crate away, confiscating la hora de ligar from me and my fellow shoppers. I think, potentially, the fact that children have caught wind of the trend and are trying to participate creates a bit of a safeguarding issue. This is fair.
As I left the Mercadona the same security guard I met earlier said, “No piña?”. “No piña,” I confirmed, sadly.
Exhausted from running between supermarkets and underwhelmed by my experience, I went in search of tapas.
“Ey, guapa!” a group of handsome Italian men offered up a seat at their table. “Quieres cerveza?” I acquiesced. They seemed nice. I explained what I was doing in Barcelona – about la hora de ligar and my lack of success. They were sympathetic to my cause (naturally). Between them they decided it must be a marketing ploy, a way for La Mercadona to attract clientele – something that seems to have worked a little too well.
One of them laughed and said he’d photographed his shopping basket the other day, putting a bunch of bananas on his Instagram story (for unclear reasons). He hadn’t heard of the Mercadona phenomenon at this point and dozens of people reacted and replied, “Do you not realise that says you’re gay?”. Dios mio. You can’t even buy bananas anymore without people casting aspersions about your sexuality or relationship status.
Camera-shy Alessandro, the one who called me over, offered to take me out for tapas. He said he’d help me work on my Spanish. I’d been sitting with them for long enough to suss out that they were a group of nice-enough young Italian men. And I needed an adventure.
Now, if you’re my parents and you’ve made it this far, STOP reading. Shut your eyes. You won’t like what’s coming.
I hopped on the back of my stranger’s moped and he drove us to his apartment, where he showered before we went to eat. Charli XCX’s song Everything is Romantic played in my head as we zoomed past La Sagrada Familia, my arms wrapped around his body. He took me for tapas, to a rooftop bar, and my Spanish didn’t get any better.
Okay, I didn’t find the love of my life in La Mercadona. But I did find a date, and an adventure, in la plaza. I’ll take that.
That said, if you see me (or anyone) carting a pineapple around the Old Kent Road Big Tesco, take it as an invitation to say hello. Maybe we’ll match. Who knows?