Mos Espa marketplace

"The outlanders weren't hard to find, thanks to the frog man. You could tell he was a magnet for trouble. I found him on the market. He was lucky I did, because a Dug named Sebulba was about to squash him."

―Anakin Skywalker^[1]

The Mos Espa marketplace was a vast shopping area located in the city of Mos Espa, a spaceport on the sun-scorched planet Tatooine.^[2] In the final decades of the Galactic Republic, the marketplace was big and busy,^[3] with many shops and market stalls where various types of fruits, meat and beverages could be bought.^[4]

The market was divided into several specialized quarters, some of which served the quotidian needs of the local inhabitants, while others housed engines mechanics, droid repairers or even illegal weapons dealers. Many vendors of the Mos Espa market placed cooling units near their products as a way of drawing potential customers from the hot, suffocating steets.^[5] Among the food shops found on the marketplace were Gragra's gorgmonger booth,^[6] Akim's Munch outdoor café^[7] and Jira's fruits stall.^[8]

In the year 32 BBY, the Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn walked across the Mos Espa market, along with the Queen Padmé Amidala (in disguise) and a Gungan named Jar Jar Binks.^[2] Binks suddenly got hungry, and a market booth covered with gorgs for sale caught his eye. Sebulba, an angry Dug who was eating at a table nearby, started to bully the Gungan as revenge for the latter inadvertently ruining his soup by spitting the gorg out into the bowl.^[3] Only the timely intervention of the Human Anakin Skywalker saved Binks from being severely beaten or even killed.^[2]