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With the price of just about everything going nowhere but up, most of us are looking for ways to make our money go further, and the weekly supermarket shop is one of the easiest places to start. Rising costs are being felt across the board, from electricity prices heading back towards €300/MWh at night to the cost of filling the trolley.

 

According to the Spanish consumers’ organisation, the OCU, shopping at discount supermarkets can save an average of €1,310 a year, and it has put together a list of the cheapest chains, many of which are regional names that aren’t well known outside their home areas.

 

Two of them have stores in the Region of Murcia. Family Cash, a hypermarket and supermarket company from Valencia, is ranked by the OCU as the second cheapest chain in the country and has a large presence in the Valencian Community, Andalucía, Castilla-La Mancha, the Region of Murcia, Madrid, Galicia, Cataluña, Extremadura and Aragón.

 

Consum, a Valencian cooperative, is strongest in the Valencian Community, Cataluña, the Region of Murcia, Castilla-La Mancha, Aragón and Andalucía.

 

Andalucía supplies plenty of the other names. Dani, based in Granada, has been named the cheapest in Spain by the OCU several times and operates mainly in the provinces of Granada, Jaén, Almería and Málaga, and it was recently bought by Supermercados El Jamón. El Jamón began in Lepe in Huelva in 1966, describes itself as “a totally Andalucían company” and now has nearly 300 stores across Huelva, Sevilla, Cádiz, Málaga, Córdoba and Granada.

 

Cash Fresh, part of Grupo MAS, opened in Sevilla in May 2013 and has more than 110 stores in Andalucía and Extremadura, while Deza is a much-loved family-run chain that sticks to Córdoba, where it has ten shops.

 

Further north, Gadis is one of the biggest food retailers in the northwest, run by the Galician group Gadisa, with more than 210 stores mainly in Galicia and Castilla y León. Alimerka, from Lugo de Llanera in Asturias, has over 170 establishments, mostly in Asturias, Castilla y León and Galicia.

 

Tifer is a hard discount chain from the Cantabrian group Semark AC Group, which also owns Lupa supermarkets and Top Cash wholesale stores, and its shops are mainly in Castilla y León.

 

Rounding off the list is Supeco, the discount arm of the Carrefour Group, which has over 70 stores across Spain and is strongest in Andalucía, Madrid, the Valencian Community and Cataluña.

 

Image: Magnific