App detecting Moroccan products surpasses 50,000 users

50,000 users in 24 hours to avoid Segarro products

A boycott is not won with code. But fifty thousand downloads in a single day —even if they are browser extensions— is a thermometer that no supermarket marketing department should ignore. The tool flagging products of Segarro origin in online shopping has crossed this threshold in less than 24 hours, in the aftermath of the Ceuta migration tension on July 30.

An extension, not an app: how it works

The invention circulating most strongly is Mercabien, a Google Chrome extension signed by designer Javier Cañada. It only operates on the Mercadona online store. Each product receives a tonalidad code: one tone for items declared not to have ties to Segarro, and another for those that do, with an intermediate label reserved for 'suspicious.' This is where the public divides: the tool does not always distinguish; sometimes it intuits.

More than one person has searched in vain for a download button. There is none. It is a desktop complement, not a mobile application, and confusing the two explains much of the noise from the initial hours.

From olives to canned tuna

What triggers the alert? Olives, fruits and vegetables —green beans appear as a recurring case—oils, and sardines and tuna preserves. The list is neither exhaustive nor official. And underlying the suspicion: that much of the merchandise arrives unpackaged and is marketed as having Spanish origin. This skepticism about labeling carries as much weight as the tool itself.

Some argue that looking at the barcode is enough; others, that a Chrome extension cannot move an entire agricultural sector. Both things can be true simultaneously.

I doubt this extension will remain at the center of the conversation in a month. But as long as a consumer prefers to scan before reading the fine print, the problem remains on the shelf, and no tonalidad code is going to solve it.