Let them eat olive oil

Just imagine the nationwide panic as prices for milk, eggs and flour rise as no time in recent memory. Everyone here who patrons a fruit stand or supermarket is pretty much on a pension one way or another (government pensions for the elderly typically run about 600 Euro a month while the median take-home pay for all but the toniest of workers, as discussed in a previous post, hovers around 1,000 Euro monthly), and so even the most modest increase in the price of daily staples can quickly send a household budget into the red.

Inflation for October here came in at a disconcerting 3.6% annualized rate, although officials say they don't expect that to continue into 2008.

Just when the year on year increase in the price of onions (+22%), chicken (+18%) and sardines (+15%) were making headlines, it turns out that October is turning out to be the worst month of all, with the price of just about every household staple jumping 3.5% in just 30 days' time. Everything, that is, except for that liquid gold of the so-called Mediterranean diet, olive oil, whose price has actually fallen, September '06 to September '07, by a surprising 18.8%

Coffee too, rumored to have been joining the price run, seems to be staying relatively stable, with an increase year over year of a mere 0.3%. And while the official stats from the Ministerio de Industria, Comercio y Turismo report that the prices of oranges have climbed 3.5%, I have found that a 3 kilo bag of juice oranges cost significantly less than it did just a couple of weeks ago. Apparently it is now high season.