It was announced at the end of July and is now a reality. The Danish chain Normal has arrived in Spain with a series of almost simultaneous openings. The first, on 9 November, was at the La Gavia shopping centre in Madrid. Two days later, it opened at the Parque Corredor shopping centres in Torrejón de Ardoz (Madrid) and Ferial Plaza in Guadalajara.

Normal stores mainly offer health and beauty products, ranging from skin care to oral care, hair care, make-up and cleaning products, which is why many in the media have already compared them to other specialised perfumery and drugstore chains such as Druni and Primor.

Preference for shopping centres
The Danish company has made a clear commitment to shopping centres, as evidenced by the three stores that are already open and those that will open soon, as announced on its website: Nueva Condomina in Murcia on 16 November, Las Dunas in Sanlúcar de Barrameda (Cádiz) on 17 November, Mataró Parc in Mataró (Barcelona) on 24 November and, still to open, Mediterráneo in Almería, Dos Mares in San Javier (Murcia) and Los Alcores in Seville.

With a slogan that promises "normal products at abnormal prices", the company boasts that it will always offer the same low, fixed prices, without offers, with some well-known brands and others that will reach Spanish consumers for the first time and which will be found exclusively on its shelves.

Record timetable
The first Normal store opened in Silkeborg, in Denmark's Jutland region, in April 2013, and there are now more than 550 stores in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, France, Finland, Portugal and Spain, the eighth country it has reached. November has been a particularly busy month for the company, which has announced a record-breaking calendar of 35 new openings, which, according to its LinkedIn profile, range "from Sandnessjøen in Norway in the north to Sanlúcar de Barrameda in southern Spain".

In a statement picked up by several media, Normal's CEO Torben Mouritsen described the enthusiasm with which his proposal has been received in other countries, "and we hope the same will happen in Spain". At the first opening, which was accompanied by a celebration, he explained that Madrid "offers an ideal combination of dynamic business communities, a cosmopolitan atmosphere and the perfect mix of foreign tourists and local shoppers".

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