Spanish households squeezed as food basket rises 40% and benchmark indicator stays frozen

Food prices and inflation

The Organización de Consumidores y Usuarios (OCU) says the average price of its 244-item shopping basket has risen 40%, and about a quarter of the products it analysed have climbed more than 50%. The food component of the consumer price index rose 2.7%, a far smaller increase than the basket figure. The OCU's latest data show eggs up 12.3%, legumes and vegetables up 9.8%, fruit up 9.6%, beef up 7.9% and fresh or frozen fish up 4.5%.

Eggs12.3%

Legumes and vegetables9.8%

Fruit9.6%

Beef7.9%

Fresh and frozen fish4.5%

Eggs

12.3 %

Legumes and vegetables

9.8 %

Fruit

9.6 %

Beef

7.9 %

Fresh and frozen fish

4.5 %

Data from the article text

Against 2021, coffee now costs 142% more, eggs 135% more and milk chocolate 101% more. The National Statistics Institute (INE) puts Spanish inflation at 4.9% for September, the highest rate among the large eurozone economies and 1.2 percentage points above the bloc average.

Coffee142%

Eggs135%

Milk chocolate101%

Coffee

142 %

Eggs

135 %

Milk chocolate

101 %

Data from the article text

Wages that trail living costs

Average gross annual pay has risen 15.2% in five years, but El País puts the median salary at about 2,001 euros gross a month, or roughly 1,500 to 1,600 euros net. The same analysis puts cumulative inflation at 60% since 2005, with rents doubling and food prices up more than 77%. The median wage was 2.1 times the minimum wage in 2005 and is now about 1.5 times, a gap the paper links to unemployment weakening workers' bargaining power and to small firms with little added value. At Las Palmas airport, the paper reports, every member of staff at one security firm has asked for an advance on pay.

In a LaSexta report, a 51-year-old woman who has lived in Spain since 2005 and works as a home-help assistant says her net pay of 1,080 euros goes almost entirely on rent. She relies on her partner's 1,342 euros for the rest of the month, cannot afford meat or fish, and says saving is out of the question. She calls herself a working poor woman, and sociologist Alberto Riesco-Sanz argues that cases like hers show wages no longer guarantee a dignified life.

A frozen benchmark for aid

The IPREM, the Public Indicator of Multiple-Effects Income, was created in 2004 to detach aid from the minimum wage, and more than a dozen benefits still reference it. Its last increase came through the budget in 2023, leaving it at 600 euros a month, or 7,200 gross a year. That amount is 41% below the 2024 poverty threshold of 12,220 euros, according to the 2025 Living Conditions Survey, and the gap is the widest in the series. Subsidies linked to it range from 480 to 570 euros a month, while the contributory unemployment benefit tops out at 1,225 euros gross a month for a worker with no dependent children. The minimum wage has exceeded that ceiling since 2023. The coalition agreement promised progressive increases, but the government has expanded other aid without touching the IPREM.

Productivity under revision

Juan Francisco Jimeno, who chairs Spain's Productivity Council, says INE accounting revisions have cut hourly productivity growth from the roughly 1% a year previously assumed to about half that. Growth averaged 0.5% a year from 2014 to 2019, and the revised figure for 2022 to 2026 is 0.4%. The council's 17 members will have to revise their March report, and publishing after the elections will let them be more direct. Jimeno puts the consequence bluntly:

“At this pace, we will take 40 years to reach the European average income.”

He adds that First Vice President Carlos Cuerpo probably based his productivity message on earlier data, while the ministry can still argue that productivity is rising alongside employment.

Rent deduction and inheritance rules

The government expects 1.6 million tenant households to qualify for a state tax deduction of 10% of their rent, worth up to 1,163 euros a year. Ministry of Housing estimates obtained by El Periódico put 448,000 potential beneficiaries in Catalonia and 368,000 in Madrid. Taxpayers with a taxable base of up to 23,007 euros can claim it on up to 11,630 euros of rent, and the cap falls to zero at 33,007 euros. The decrees were approved by Pedro Sánchez's government on 6 October, after Congress rejected earlier housing decrees a few days before, and the new royal decree-law is in force but still awaits validation by the Diputación Permanente.

Elsewhere, the Supreme Court has upheld income tax on inheritance income from estates not yet accepted or rejected, and a court has blocked tax assessments based on cadastral values or Google Maps without an on-site visit. Lawyer Abel Marín argues that heirs should not fight over inheritances.

“Inheritances are a gift; we only deserve the fruit of our own work.”