Montero: Fish vs. Musk's €280,000 per minute

Montero's Fish and Musk's Minute: '€280,000'

One tweet and one figure. MEP Irene Montero wrote that "it's not normal for people to be unable to afford fish while Elon Musk earns €280,000 in one minute," concluding: "Clearly the system isn't working for the majority." The message was published on a platform owned by Musk himself. And that's where it all began. The subsequent discussion wasn't about fish; it was about who can lecture on inequality and with what credentials.

What the message says and doesn't say

The text doesn't propose any measures. It doesn't talk about taxes, rates, or salaries. It simply contrasts two figures: the price of fish and what, according to her own tweet, Musk earns in sixty seconds. That contrast is what's being discussed, not the solution.

The most common response points to a causality problem: the price of fish isn't set by Elon Musk. Those who argue this point out that VAT, income tax, and social security contributions aren't Musk's responsibility but depend on the government that legislates them. The argument has merit: if fish has become more expensive, the reasonable question is what has risen in the supply chain—fuel, refrigeration, margins—and not how much Musk earns.

Why the MEP's salary always comes up in the response

Here, the debate splits in two. The figure repeated in the thread is €135,063.12 annually, attributed to her public salary. And based on that figure, the classic objection is constructed: someone denouncing others' wealth from a European seat isn't exactly at the back of the supermarket queue.

It's worth separating two things that get mixed up. One is the Galapagar mansion and its supposed domestic staff—driver, security, cook, gardener—which is talked about a lot but documented little; no one has provided a list of contracts. The other is the fact that the material highlights: her career path, from supermarket cashier to MEP. Whether that's a virtue or a contradiction depends on your perspective.

'Norwegian prices with Moldovan salaries'

Beneath the noise lies a complaint that doesn't discriminate by ideology, as summarized by one participant: in Spain, everything is expensive, not just fish. A formulation that captures the thread's sentiment is that of a country with Norway's prices and Moldova's salaries. Here, the diagnosis aligns with Montero's, even if the culprit changes.

The rest is political choreography. There are those who see pure demagoguery, those who see envy, those who argue that Musk got rich by inventing things we use daily, and those who recall that Montero herself has been in government for seven years and that the system she complains about was also approved by her. That's the crux: nobody disputes the picture. Only who is in it.

Two final points. One: the message was published on Musk's network. Two: the €280,000 figure is what the tweet's author uses, not a fact verified by the thread. Therein lies the mismatch, not in the fish.