The proposed supermarkets would also have a community and educational role. Photo credit: Alfonso Soler/Shutterstock
What if your local supermarket was more than somewhere to buy the weekly shop? What if the same place could also help supply meals to schools, nurseries and care homes, support local farmers and even have a community kitchen where people could learn to cook?
That is the idea now being put forward in Spain, where more than 50 organisations are backing a campaign for a national network of public supermarkets. And this time, the proposal goes far beyond putting groceries on supermarket shelves.
The community kitchen at the heart of the proposal
The community kitchens are one of the most striking parts of the plan. According to the manifesto published by Justicia Alimentaria, proposed public supermarkets could incorporate kitchens linked to public food purchasing, preparing healthy meals for schools, nurseries, care homes and social dining facilities. That would connect the supermarket directly with public services that already need to buy and prepare large quantities of food.
The organisation says the kitchens could also create employment and help keep more food-related economic activity within local communities. So rather than simply creating another place to buy a bag of potatoes or a bottle of olive oil, the proposal envisages a system in which food is bought, prepared and distributed through connected public facilities.
It would be a whole food network
The supermarket would only be one part of the proposed system. Justicia Alimentaria says the network could also include food collection centres, purchasing centres, public-community bakeries and workshops, central kitchens and logistics hubs. These food hubs could operate at neighbourhood or district level, connecting local producers with supermarkets and public institutions such as schools, social care facilities and community dining services.
That could also change the role of municipal markets. Justicia Alimentaria has already campaigned for existing markets to be transformed into local food centres rather than remaining places focused solely on retail. Its proposals include community kitchens, cooperative workshops, shared logistics and spaces for food education. The latest supermarket proposal therefore builds on an idea the organisation has been developing for some time: using existing public food infrastructure as part of a more connected local system.
What would happen inside?
The proposed supermarkets would also have a community and educational role. The manifesto suggests using them for cooking lessons, food-label education, activities for children and opportunities to learn more about food and cooking. That makes the vision quite different from a conventional supermarket where customers arrive, fill a trolley and leave.
Justicia Alimentaria describes the proposed model as something closer to a combination of a municipal market, community centre and public food service. It also suggests a public-community management model, with rules covering issues such as local purchasing, employment conditions, fresh produce, ecological criteria and access for people who need support.
Local farmers would be part of it too
The proposal is also designed to change where the food comes from. The manifesto calls for public supermarkets to prioritise local and proximity production, while supporting farmers, livestock producers and fishers. It also proposes reducing unnecessary intermediaries and increasing transparency around how food prices are formed.
For the community kitchens, that could mean local produce being channelled directly into meals served through public facilities rather than simply being sold to individual shoppers. The organisation has previously proposed connecting municipal markets with public purchasing networks supplying schools, social and healthcare facilities, while creating local logistics hubs to support those services.
Could an old market become a new food hub?
One of the more unusual aspects of the proposal is that Spain would not necessarily need to start from scratch. Justicia Alimentaria points to the country’s existing network of municipal markets and other public infrastructure that could potentially be adapted.
Its separate campaign calls for municipal markets to become centres of local food activity, incorporating community kitchens, cooperative workshops, shared logistics and food education. The proposed network could therefore involve transforming some existing spaces rather than simply building new supermarkets from the ground up.
This is still a proposal
There is no national network of these supermarkets currently being created. Justicia Alimentaria is calling for a state law establishing the network and says more than 50 organisations have already joined its manifesto, including Greenpeace and Ecologistas en Acción. The organisation says it intends to gather further signatures and endorsements before taking the proposal to Parliament. The manifesto also says public supermarkets would not be intended to replace private shops. Instead, the proposed network would establish what Justicia Alimentaria calls a minimum guarantee of access to healthy, fresh and affordable food, particularly in places where access is limited.
That leaves some very practical questions still to be answered, including how the kitchens would be funded and managed, which existing buildings could be used and how the proposed network would operate alongside Spain’s existing food businesses and public services. But the community kitchens show that this latest proposal is about considerably more than opening a few government-run supermarkets. The ambition is to create an entire public food network, from the farmer producing the ingredients to the kitchen preparing the meal, and eventually to the child eating lunch at school or the resident sitting down to dinner in a care home.
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