Inflation in Catalonia remains below the national average while it skyrockets in Madrid

Catalonia was the second autonomous community with the lowest inflation in December and, for the tenth consecutive month, maintained a cost of living increase below the national average, where Madrid led the rise in the cost of living, according to data from the Consumer Price Index (CPI, the indicator that measures the cost of living) published this Thursday by the National Statistics Institute (INE). Thus, last month prices in Catalonia increased by 2.5% compared to December 2014. As for the country as a whole, the INE has finally confirmed that the cost of living rose by 2.9%, as previously reported. It already made provisional progress two weeks agoFinally, the CPI in Spain rose by 2.7% last year. Between November and December, however, the increase was 0.3% in both Catalonia and Spain. Core inflation—which excludes volatile items such as energy and food—closed December with an annual increase of 2.6% in Spain. These figures are therefore below the levels of 2021 and 2022, when prices rose sharply due to the reactivation of the global economy after the pandemic, which caused shortages of raw materials and bottlenecks in the supply chains of many countries. Subsequently, the Russian invasion of Ukraine triggered a surge in energy prices in Europe. The peak of inflation in Catalonia was recorded in the summer of 2022, when the CPI exceeded annual increases of 10%. However, despite having returned to more normal levels, inflation figures throughout 2025 have remained almost without exception above 2%. This 2% is the medium- and long-term target set by the European Central Bank. Among all the autonomous communities, only Murcia registered lower year-on-year inflation than Catalonia last month, a situation that has been repeated for the tenth consecutive month and breaks with the usual trend of Catalan inflation being higher than the national average, since Catalonia has a more dynamic economy, which causes prices to rise. The remaining autonomous communities closed December with higher year-on-year increases, with the Community of Madrid leading the way with a notable 3.7% rise in the cost of living, followed by Ceuta and the Valencian Community, with 3.5% and 3.2%, respectively. Food, electricity, and leisure and tourism products saw the largest price increases in December, as is typical for a month marked by the Christmas holidays. At the other end of the spectrum, fuel prices pushed the CPI down, according to the INE (National Statistics Institute). Meat and egg prices skyrocketed.

December data shows that the rising cost of meat, especially beef, and eggs persists; these are two of the items in the shopping basket that saw the biggest price increases in 2025. Specifically, in December, beef in Spain was 17.2% more expensive than a year earlier, while the cost of eggs had increased by 3%. The rise in the price of beef, as well as lamb (in this case, the annual increase in December was 7.4%), began several years ago as part of the general increase in the cost of living four years ago. However, by mid-2024, the price of beef and lamb in Spain... It continued to grow at a steady rate. Although inflation had been ongoing for months, it was already much more moderate, and this continued throughout 2025. One of the reasons is the liberalization of European meat imports by Arab countries, especially Morocco, which has led to a significant portion of Spanish production being sent to these countries. This liberalization has affected lamb and beef, the two most consumed meats in countries with a Muslim tradition, where, for religious and cultural reasons, the majority of the population does not eat pork. As for eggs, avian flu has driven up the cost of this staple food, which in December was 31.3% higher than the price in the same month of 2024. However, while eggs and meat continue to become more expensive, December showed a different trend. The adverse weather conditions and drought of recent years decimated olive groves in Catalonia and Andalusia, both regions with the highest olive production in Spain. The scarcity drove up prices, but with the return of rain, the latest harvests returned to normal levels, and by December, prices had fallen by 31.6% compared to the previous year.