La Violeta

Opened in 1915 by Mariano Gil and Pilar Temiño, this family business has been selling its traditional violets ever since. The wooden façade recalls an old-fashioned sweetshop and time seems to have stopped in this traditional shop, which sells small packets and transparent boxes of violets tied delicately with a ribbon.

This violet-flavoured confectionery became very famous years ago, as King Alfonso XIII himself would buy them for his wife, Queen Victoria Eugenia. It is also said that the former king of Spain, Juan Carlos I, often received them as a child when he lived in Estoril. The shop was also frequented by the likes of Jacinto Benavente, who “was said to have a very sweet tooth,” José Millán-Astray, who was very fond of the long confectionary bars sold here, and Carlos Valle Inclán, the son of Ramón Valle Inclán, along with members of Spanish parliament on political debate days, and actors from nearby theatres.