Thus, prices for each product have increased over the past year

A year ago, in March 2021, you spent € 1,000 to cover all your needs: pay rent, bills, go out to dinner for a day or two, go to the supermarket and buy clothes. According to the National Institute of Statistics (INE), if you buy the same products this year, go to the same restaurants and buy the same items, you will pay 1098 euros. This difference (9.8% more) is what changed the average price level of consumer goods and services in Spain last year, according to the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

What does this mean? That beer, electricity or avocados went up by 10%? No, this is an overall average of how much the cost of living has increased during this period. This means that there are services or products that may be much more expensive, others that are slightly more expensive or some products are cheaper now than last year.

For example, the chart below shows how much the (average) major consumer groups grew during the price crisis last year, by their weight in our monthly shopping cart.

As you can see, most of the electricity and gas prices went up during last year’s price crisis. Energy bills today are 80% more expensive than in March 2021. It should be noted that in the case of electricity bills, the highest increase, according to INE, this body includes only households that have a regulated electricity market tariff (PVPC), which accounts for 40% of low voltage supply (households as well as some small and medium businesses ).

However, the inflation crisis is also beginning to affect some of the most basic commodities and products such as oil, milk, bread or cereals. To test which products and services became more expensive and cheaper during the crisis, elDiario.es analyzed monthly CPI data for more than 200 different products from January 2019 to March 2022.

The chart below shows how the price levels of the major spending groups (approximately 100 different) have evolved over the last three years.

We know that electricity bills, deposit replenishment or heating activation have increased tremendously in the last one year. But how much has the breakfast we eat every morning increased? Going out to dinner at a restaurant, did you go out more than a year ago? Is it the same to drink a drink down the bar today?

To create our own index, we calculate how the prices of daily products and services increased last year. The calculation is to approximate the price increase using the CPI variability to the average prices of the various products that make up each prescription or average cost of each service, according to the latest available data. See for yourself the following schedule:

The rise in household spending on dozens of products has been observed due to the effect of energy tax cuts and the war in Ukraine. For example, essential products such as olive oil, flour and pasta have grown by more than 12% in one year. A similar percentage is found in many foods such as milk, rice, meat or eggs.

In addition to food, clothes and shoes are also more expensive than a year ago. On the other hand, those who notice the least increase in prices are the rest, education or even the price of rent.

INE distributes price increases for the more than 200 products and services that make up our shopping cart. The following graph shows the evolution of prices in each of them. Click the button to see more products.

INE data show that up to 22 products in the shopping cart have risen in price by more than 10% in the last 12 months. In addition to electricity and fuel, with the sharp rise in prices due to the consequences of the war in Ukraine, olive oil increased by 33%, overnight stay at the hotel by 32% and bank fees by 11%.

This is not the only thing that has grown during the crisis. Also a simple gesture when buying newspapers at a newsstand or subscribing to a digital newspaper is on average 6% higher than a year ago. On the opposite side we have several services and products that have barely become more expensive and even more expensive in the last 12 months: buying a plane ticket, glasses or your mobile company data course.

The following table groups the price increases (or decreases) of each of the 200 product subclasses that INE analyzes to calculate the price level of our shopping cart.