Spain goes on the pull with a pineapple

18th September 2024

Forget dating apps, romantics in Spain are pinning their hopes on a less conventional method

Here’s a question I bet you’ve never been asked before; how long could you push a shopping trolley – containing only an upside-down pineapple – around a supermarket on a Friday evening before the shelf stackers clock you as being “on the pull”?

Answer in my case: precisely five and a half seconds.

I strolled into a supermarket in Barcelona, pulled a trolley from the rack and soon found the stack of pineapples in the fruit aisle, picked one, then wrestled it a bit to jam the crown between the trolley’s metal slits so it would stay upside-down.

I looked up: a young member of staff looked away then quickly shot a glance across to a colleague who was sorting out the squeezed orange juice. They both kind of smirked.

I grabbed the handle bar and zipped away, a feeling of cold dread uncurling in my belly: this experiment was not going to be as much “fun” as I’d hoped.

The reason for my fruity Friday night escapade was one of those moronically irresistible social media crazes. This one claimed that single folk in Spain were trying to find a date in Mercadona, one of the country’s big supermarket chains.

Apparently, the signal you were “up for it” was an upside down pineapple among your groceries. You then made for the beer and wine section and hoped the two pineapples got along.

The craze went viral after the Spanish comic actress Vivy Lin posted a video on TikTok of her pushing a trolley around a Mercadona. “The time to hook up in Mercadona is 7pm to 8pm,” she said.

Awesome. There is a big Mercadona just up the street from my place, and it had to be better than a dating app, right? The pineapple craze potentially offered a fresh avenue. I’d pictured a bacchanalian supermarket scene starring beautiful single gals and guys flirting up and down the aisles before pushing away their trolleys and heading off into the sunset.

But, nah. I was the only upside-down pineapple wielder there. The place was packed, but it was just the usual mums with furiously bored toddlers and folk trying to get their groceries in for the weekend.

The only thing to do was crack on and see what happened. So I went on the prowl with my pineapple, zipping up and down each aisle a few times and scanning every trolley hoping to spot the not-so-secret signal. It was clear, as I looked up from their stacked groceries to the fellow shopper’s face that – same as the staff – most people had also heard of this dumb pineapple dating thing. Several shoppers seemed embarrassed on my behalf, and one young woman steered such a wide berth around me she nearly knocked over a stack of biscuits.

I guess there were some people successfully pulling in supermarkets in Spain for real on a Friday night but… I very much doubt it. My guess is it’d be mostly teenage kids making a video for TikTok, where the craze began, oh and fellow journalists – the Telegraph even flew a young female reporter from London to Barcelona for the weekend to give it a bash. She too failed to pull (though she did get lucky later, the old-fashioned way, in a bar).

I forgot why I was there, after a short while, and did a bit of shopping instead. And, as I did my final spin with the pineapple now accompanied by a nice bottle of red wine, a tub of yoghurt and a bag of nachos, there actually were a few young lads messing about with the pineapples and trying to flirt with a few young lasses. I suddenly felt way past my sell-by date – a crusty old dad with a pineapple.

“Bugger this,” I thought, and took a trolley wheel-screeching left turn for the nearest exit, where I got a final knowing glance from the young lady at the checkout. I should have put the pineapple back.