Denia's red prawn costs €4, but the fisherman gets just 50 cents

The Denia red prawn costs 4 euros and the fisherman gets 50 cents

How much does a Denia red prawn really cost? According to the breakdown circulating these days, exactly 4 euros. The problem is what happens inside that bill: of each prawn, 50 cents go to the fisherman, 1 euro to the political party, another 1 to the restaurateur, 50 cents to the town council, 20 to the provincial council, 20 to the restaurateur's ex-vvife and 10 cents to the waiter. Add it up: it comes to 4. Not a single cent lost in the sum, which is already more than can be said of many public budgets.

The most uncomfortable part of the split is not the restaurateur's margin. It's that the fisherman, the only one who takes a risk, earns half of what the party gets and the same as a municipal tax. The waiter, for serving it, takes home ten times less than the owner's ex-vvife. The prawn chain doesn't need speculation: it has structure. Seen this way, the 20-euro dish some people put on the table stops looking like a whim; it looks like a fee for passing through seven hands before reaching the plate.

Some argue the product deserves that price: red prawn, raw, from Denia, not something you find every day. The counterargument is that the gap between what the customer pays and what the fisherman earns is an abuse of intermediation. Both positions coexist, and neither appears on the menu.

Next time someone orders a prawn and asks why it costs so much, there's already an answer: because it's 4 euros and everyone gets a cut. Everyone except the one who pays.