Déjà vu, or a little touch of globalisation

Déjà vu is, of course, a present experience. It isn’t generally a true memory of something that has previously happened, but a false memory of familiarity from the past of something one has, in all likelihood, never seen before.

Unless, of course, it’s a perfectly genuine sense of realising that a scene encountered apparently for the first time, genuinely corresponds to a true memory.

That’s what I experienced recently. Danielle and I went into a supermarket on the outskirts of Valencia, a city that is already beginning to feel truly like home but which we’d abandoned for a fortnight, to avoid the sleeplessness that accompanies the glory of the annual ‘Fallas’ festival.

I’d never been in that particular supermarket before. And yet as soon as I entered it I recognised the place. The entry was near the rightmost end of the huge roomful of shelves. All that was further to the right was the electronics section, with a limited range of computing and games accessories as well as music players. The wine was where I expected it, about two-thirds along the shop to the left of the entrance, up against the back wall; bottled water in front of it and a little further along; at the far left-hand end was the fresh produce, meat and fish.

The tills, too, were up at that end of the shop, and most of them, as usual, unmanned. The whole effect was of a place somehow flyblown. Slightly unappealing. It seemed to have everything one might want without quite creating an attractive atmosphere in which to find it.

I knew this place. Though I’d never been there before.

But, of course, there was nothing supernatural or even mildly spooky about the experience. The phenomenon, far from being otherworldly, was quite the reverse. It was merely one of the minor effects of globalisation.

The pronunciation of the name of the French supermarket chain Auchan really isn’t ‘Ocean’, as preferred by many British expatriates. The way it’s pronounced, it sounds like the words meaning ‘in the field’, ‘au champ’. Translated into Spanish, that would be ‘al campo’. Those words could also mean ‘in the countryside’, which has attractive associations, of leisure and pleasure and the open air.

So when Auchan opened its Spanish subsidiary, it called it ‘Alcampo’. A clever international play on words.

Auchan. Not to be confused with Alcampo

Well, not that clever I suppose. But hey, this is the world of commerce, not the theatre of Oscar Wilde.

And the Al Campo on the outskirts of Valencia was laid out in exactly the same way as the Auchan on the outskirts of Strasbourg. We did a lot of shopping there when we were living in that fine city, because if the interior appearance was a tad short of especially inviting, the produce was always good. Just like the Alcampo where we did our shopping in Valencia.

So the experience wasn’t so much déjà vu as plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Or, as we might say in English, another supermarket may be just one more drop in the Auchan.

In Russia too. And, boy, they look exactly the same there