1 kilo of tomatoes, 200 grams of bread (preferably loaf), 150 milliliters of extra virgin olive oil, 1 clove of garlic, salt to taste and chopped boiled egg to accompany. Nothing else is needed to prepare a homemade salmorejothe star dish of the summer that solves lunches and dinners this season, yes: not for a small price.
If we compare it with July 2019, in that last summer that we lived unconsciously without knowing that a pandemic would devastate the planet a few months later, unleashing a wave of inflation, among other side effects, we see that making a salmorejo at home comes out 41.1% more expensiveaccording to data from the National Statistics Institute (INE), updated yesterday with the final labels for July.
All its ingredients have gone up in price but olive oil takes the cake, with an increase of 85.9%; They are followed by tomatoes -which are among the fresh fruits- and have become 44.5% more expensive; eggs, which have risen 42% in the last four years; salt, which has become 28.5% more expensive; garlic -which is grouped with other fresh vegetables- and is today 22.6% more expensive; and bread, which has risen 21.5%. If you add some Iberian ham shavingsthe final price would rise even more, since dried, salted or smoked meat -in which the INE includes sausages- has risen 9.8% in the last year and 23% since 2019.
The unprecedented rise in foods -they are 30.8% more expensive than in 2019 and this July they cost 10.8% more than in the same month last year- it is due to a perverse combination of factors: the rise in the price of energy, which constitutes a production input for many of them; that of the fuel, necessary for its transport; the supply shock of some raw materials caused by the war in Ukraine; the drop in supply caused by inclement weather -long periods of drought followed by uncontrolled floods, for example- and the maintenance (if not the increase) of demand.
It turns out that the families in trouble and they have to face the rise in prices with an adjusted level of income, they can tighten their belts and do without certain superfluous expenses. They can stop going for a drink on a terrace, not go on vacation, stop going to the movies or going out to dinner… but no one, absolutely no one, can stop shopping at the supermarket.