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Date Published: 27/10/2026

Spanish supermarket prices have risen 54% more than wages since 2021

Only three other EU countries have seen a bigger fall than Spain in food buying power

Food prices in Spain have climbed 31.8% since December 2021, while pay has gone up by just 20.7%, which means groceries have risen 54% more than wages over the period.

The gap helps explain why the weekly shop still hurts, even though food went up by only 2.7% in September compared with a year earlier, well below the overall inflation rate of 4.9%. Five years of increases have stacked up, leaving food well ahead of the general cost of living, which has risen by 18%.

The wage figure comes from the European Central Bank (ECB), which measures gross pay per employee, and it puts food prices 11.1 percentage points ahead.

Some products have climbed far faster than the average. Juices are up 56.1%, sugar, sweets and desserts 46.2%, coffee 40.6%, dairy 37.8%, fruit 35.7% and vegetables 33.7%.

An ECB blog post looked at the same question across Europe, and Spain comes out fourth in the EU for wages losing buying power against groceries, behind only Denmark, Italy and Estonia. The ECB added a note of caution about the comparison, as there’s no detailed data for countries such as Germany and France.

The bank also pointed out that food prices weigh heavily on how people feel about inflation. Food and drink account for around 16% of the average household budget, a little more for lower-income families, and shoppers see the prices every week because they change so often. With food rising faster than everything else, it’s easy to assume the cost of living has gone up by more than it really has.

Many families have cut back as a result. According to the National Statistics Institute’s Household Budget Survey, spending on food last year was still 11.5% below its 2021 level once inflation is taken into account. Fish has taken the biggest hit, with spending down 20% since 2021, followed by coffee at 19%, vegetables at 15.6%, fruit at 12.5% and meat at 10.5%.

Image: Magnific

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