Merlín e Familia

Merlín e Familia in Santiago de Compostela is a small shop selling exclusive ceramics, prints and posters by Spanish artists, plus lovely little design pieces. But its size - just forty square metres - is wildly at odds with the quality of what's on the shelves.

The founder, Patricia Pazos, borrowed the name from a novel by Galician writer Álvaro Cunqueiro, published in 1955. In it, the wizard Merlin lives deep in the Galician countryside, and strangers from all over the world come to his door - some for advice, some for help.

At Patricia's shop, strangers keep coming too: they arrive at the end of the Camino de Santiago - the pilgrimage route whose final stop is literally a three-minute walk away.

So what's Patricia's own magic? First, her curation: nothing you'll find at Merlín e Familia is sold anywhere else in Santiago de Compostela. And second, her exclusive relationships with the artists.

Take the ceramics of Paula Ojea, winner of the National Crafts Award 2019 - her work graces the tables of Galicia's top fine dining restaurants, but you won't find it for sale anywhere else. Her pieces look as fragile as paper - but that's an illusion.

Exclusive handmade ceramics - plates, bowls, mugs, jugs, plant pots - are the backbone of the shop. Hugely popular with buyers from around the world are the pieces by Eva Hernández: hand-painted tableware featuring all kinds of exotic animals. Every piece is unique - no two are ever the same.

And the delightful animal-themed ceramics by Yukiko Kitahara - a Japanese ceramicist based in Spain - can only be found here or in art museums in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville and Málaga.

In second place: illustrations by local and Spanish artists. The prints and posters section takes up an entire wall - here you'll find reproductions by Sonia Pulido, a Catalan illustrator and National Illustration Award winner whose work has appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times, alongside prints by Alba Casanova, Mariano Casas, Gala Pont, Sandra Hernández and others.

On the bookshelves: literature in Galician and Spanish, and next to them - vinyl records with local music. And for smaller gifts: jewellery, accessories, stylish stationery.

The shop carries the Artesanía de Galicia seal - the official regional quality mark confirming that everything sold here is genuinely made in Galicia using traditional craft methods. It sits on Rúa Nova, one of the old town's main shopping streets, which leads straight to the Cathedral of Saint James. And just nearby is the covered market Mercado de Abastos, where locals do their daily shopping and savvy travellers stop for a bite of fresh local food.