I was added to a WhatsApp group called “Verdura Sábado” and honestly, I thought it was porn at first.
Green icon, carrot emoji, 63 members. No hello, no intro. Just a message that said:
“8:30am. Bring change. No plastic.”
So of course I ignored it. Until I saw Carmen’s name. Buried in there between someone called Pepa and a man who only ever types in CAPITALS.
She hadn’t told me about it. Just… aubergine emoji, two days earlier. I thought she was being a bit saucy. (She wasn’t. It meant “veg pickup.” Apparently.)
So Saturday morning I turn up at the square, clutching a canvas bag I bought off Amazon at midnight the night before. Still had the tag on.
I was ten minutes late.
Which in village terms might as well be next week.
The place was chaos. A swarm of elbows and linen and people hissing “¡Rápido!” like it was a hostage negotiation. I saw someone literally slap a courgette out of someone’s hand.
Not aggressively. Just… firmly. Like it was a game.
There were no signs. No instructions. Just crates and bags and a faint sense that I’d walked into someone else’s dream.
Then someone—I think her name is Montse, she might also be the mayor?—hands me a paper bag and says,
“Carmen says you’re doing the intercambio.”
I nodded. Stupidly. Like I knew what that meant.
Turns out I’d just agreed to run the swap table. It’s a barter thing. Courgettes for garlic. Eggs for wild oregano. Some bloke tried to trade a bottle of kombucha for a hug.
There was a spreadsheet. On paper. Handwritten.
In pencil.
I was behind that table for two hours.
Highlights include:
- mediating a standoff over three onions and a beetroot that “wasn’t fresh, look at the colour”
- a woman called Dolores accusing another Dolores of always taking the chard
- and an old guy with a ukulele offering me “three figs and a story”
Reader, I took the figs.
Carmen never showed.
I texted her later:
“Was that a setup?”
She replied:
“You needed greens.”
No emoji. Just that.
I don’t know what that means.
I don’t know if she knows what that means.
But the worst part? I think I liked it.
The weird rules. The shouted gossip. The woman in Crocs giving me a peach and a wink like I’d passed some test.
And the WhatsApp group?
Muted it.
Didn’t leave.
That’s how they get you.