IKEA Earth

These images should look very familiar. Welcome to IKEA Murcia. Murcia is about an hour from Alicante. IKEA, as usual, is situated beside the highway among a sprawl of similar box stores and, of course, a sea of parked cars. My roommates wanted to buy some things for our apartment, but I only came for the ride. I swear!

In complete disregard of local tastes and customs, IKEA Murcia sells the exact same things as the IKEA in Toronto, or the IKEA in Hong Kong for that matter. So I thought, as I wandered through the familar departments, of the consequences of this. Shall IKEA continue to expand, as a good capitalist enterprise should (and must), we will slowly see the homogenization of the home, at least the upper middle-class western home. There will be no more homes, houses, or habitations in plural form, just the singular home: No winter landscape paintings in Canada and no more portaits of bull fighters in Spain, just sleek DVD cabinets, cacti, brightly coloured pillows and quirky coffee mugs (I admit that I bought these mugs for grandma a few months ago). Still, a multi-national corporation must sometimes submit to local custom: The cafeteria did serve typical Spanish dishes (and at the same outrageously low prices). As well--something you would never see in Canada--at the self-serve beverage bar along with the coffee machine and soda pop fountain, a tap serving ice cold draught beer, free refills! Apparently the construction workers from the new mall that is going in beside IKEA quite often come and pay for the 1euro breakfast and stay for hours, serving themselves glass after glass of Alhambra (Spanish beer).