The €2.90 croissant pushing up Spain's breakfast inflation

From €1.65 to €3.20: the croissant's steep climb

The neighbourhood breakfast is no longer an automatic habit. A sobrasada croissant at a bakery in Sants (Barcelona) now costs €3.20; a year ago it sold for €1.65. The pogre, recounted by a customer at the counter, sums up better than any index what is happening to the shopping basket: the product that once sustained the mornings of working-class neighbourhoods has become a small luxury item.

From counter to table: the figure that hurts

Prices did not jump overnight. The customer's account describes a staircase: €1.65 a year ago, then €2.50 since summer, then €2.90 — accompanied by an expletive that startled the baker — and finally €3.20. Between the summer of 2024 and that of 2026, according to the comparison used in the conversation, the croissant has doubled. The rise is not even the exception: the anger is aimed at a general drift in Spain's hospitality sector, where coffee and a pastry have stopped being the cheap refuge of those who work.

Artisan or frozen? The underlying problem

The most striking thing about the episode is not the price itself, but what you get in return. Several voices familiar with the neighbourhood point out that many bakeries in Sants and La Bordeta have given up baking in-house: the croissant arrives frozen and is finished in an industrial air fryer. If a customer pays €2.90 for a product that used to cost €1.65 and is not even artisan-made, the complaint is not about inflation: it is a tolerated rip-off. The counter-argument holds that shop rents and wages are also rising, and that a large share of the final price goes to the landlord, not the bakery.

Eating out for breakfast joins the list of sacrifices

The practical consequence is already being felt. Quite a few people admit they have stopped going to the bar or café: they have breakfast at home or turn to apps like Too Good To Go to rescue what others cannot sell. Some compare the croissant with a €3.50 chain-restaurant set menu: for that price, at least, you get a full plate. If the climb continues, breakfast out will be reserved for those who never look at the receipt. The most sensible forecast is that demand will fall as fast as the price boards went up; the question is whether the correction will eventually bring the product back to a reasonable price, or whether customers will simply learn to live without it.