Shoppers in Spain are typically still paying more than €4 for a litre of olive oil, even though the price at the source has sunk to its lowest in five years. Farmers say many are now selling at a loss and want the government to step in.

The price at source is sliding towards €3 a kilo

Extra virgin olive oil is changing hands at around €3.10 a kilo at source, the lowest in five years and well down on the €4.50 it started the harvest year on last October. Prices across all categories, including lampante (the lowest grade, which needs refining before it can be sold), have dropped 8.7 per cent in a month.

However, that’s the bulk price mills and packers pay, so it doesn’t mean €3 bottles on the shelf for regular shoppers. A litre of oil weighs a little less than a kilo, which makes €3.10 a kilo roughly €2.85 a litre.

Supermarket bottles have barely moved

Price checks published this week put Mercadona’s own-brand extra virgin at €4.35 a litre, with Carrefour’s at €4.34. That leaves a gap of around €1.50 a litre for bottling, transport, tax and shop margins.

Some chains have started passing savings on, though only in cents. Carrefour and Dia had trimmed their own-label litres by 24 and 15 cents respectively by early September.

So when does your bottle get cheaper? The honest answer is gradually, as packers use up their existing stock and decide how much of the fall to pass on.

Farmers say they’re selling below cost

Farmers aren’t celebrating. Cooperatives and the farming unions ASAJA, COAG and UPA said on Thursday October 8 that extra virgin, then averaging about €3.30 a kilo, was already below what most olive farms spend to produce it. 

Production costs have risen 57 per cent since 2021, according to the association of olive-growing towns (AEMO), while the harvest is forecast at 1.6 million tonnes, around 23 per cent more than last year. Rain-fed groves, which cost more to run and yield less, are the most exposed.

The fix would keep some oil off the market 

What they’re asking for is a marketing norm (a rule from the Ministry of Agriculture) that would force olive mills to store a set share of their oil instead of selling it, easing the pressure on prices. The cooperatives’ sector head, Rafael Sánchez de Puerta, told a technical conference in Ciudad Real he doesn’t understand the delay.

Agriculture Minister Luis Planas has called the measure extraordinary, as it has never been used, and wants to see the final harvest figures first. A decision is expected in the first half of November.

The catch for shoppers is that anything designed to stop prices falling further could also limit how much cheaper your oil gets. Nothing has been confirmed though, and it’s not yet clear how big the stored share would be.

Until the decision lands, the surest saving is to check the price per litre on the label, because Mercadona’s 3-litre garrafa works out about 30 cents a litre cheaper than its single bottle.

Two households in near-identical flats can get rubbish bills more than six times apart just by living in different Spanish cities. A new nationwide comparison puts the charge at about €47 a year in Soria and €292 in Valencia, all because each town hall sets its own rules.

Valencia households pay more than six times what Soria does

A couple in a 75 square metre flat in Valencia are charged €292.48 a year for rubbish collection (the tasa de basuras), while the same couple in Soria would pay just €47.31. That’s a gap of about €245 for the same service, according to a Fundació ENT report covering 134 towns and cities.

Here’s the picture at a glance:

• Most expensive provincial capital: València, €292.48
• Cheapest provincial capital: Soria, €47.31
• Average household bill: about €120 a year
• Average hotel bill: €1,589 a year, with restaurants on €789
• Share of costs covered: councils are recovering about 69 per cent of what the service costs them

The 10 most expensive cities for rubbish

Valencia is a long way clear, but five cities all top €200 a year, and Palma is one of them. 

Palma’s €209.72 is almost three times what a household pays in Zaragoza. Madrid just scrapes into the top 10, though its bill is still almost €60 higher than Sevilla’s.

The 10 cheapest cities all sit inland

Every city on that list is inland, in Castilla y León, Extremadura, Aragón or Castilla-La Mancha. A household in Soria pays less over a whole year than a Valencia household pays in two months.

Most Costa and island hotspots pay above the average

The average household bill is about €120 a year. Here’s how some of the places Brits and other foreign residents know best compare: 

*Las Palmas de Gran Canaria appears in the report, although its charge is now being refunded after a court ruled it unlawful.

Hotels and restaurants pay far more than homes

Businesses face a much heavier bill, and it grows with the size of the town. These are simple averages for a set of standard businesses in the places studied:

• The highest restaurant bill in the whole sample is €9,232, and it’s in Valencia.
• The highest hotel bill among the largest cities is €10,707, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
• A restaurant in a village of fewer than 1,000 people averages €402, about a third of the big-city figure.

Why the same rubbish costs so much more in some cities

There’s no national formula for working out the charge, as each council passes its own ordinance and picks its own way of calculating the bill. Councils were told to bring in a dedicated rubbish charge by April 2025 to cover what the service costs, and they’ve budgeted €5.7bn for it this year while expecting to raise €3.9bn through the charge. Here’s what the bills are based on:

• Based on a flat fee for every home: 32.8 per cent of towns
• Where the home is: 23.9 per cent
• Property value: 12.7 per cent, using the cadastral value (the official valuation used for property tax)
• How many people live there: 11.2 per cent
• How big the home is: 10.4 per cent
• How much rubbish a household throws away or sorts: just 3 per cent, which is four of the 134 towns

How to check, and maybe cut, your own bill

Some councils knock money off for recycling, so it’s worth knowing what yours offers. Among the towns in the report:

• Composting: 19.4 per cent of towns give a discount, including Almería, Málaga, Burgos, Segovia and Valladolid
• Sorting rubbish properly: 18.7 per cent, with San Sebastián giving discounts to card holders who make a minimum number of food waste deposits each month
• Using the punto limpio (the local recycling centre): 18.7 per cent, including Sevilla, València, Girona and Bilbao

For Brits used to bin collection being folded into council tax, a separate bill can come as a shock. However, not every town is heading upwards, with Torremolinos voting to cut its bin tax by 12.5 per cent from January 2027.

Remember that all these figures are for a standard two-person flat with no discounts, so your own bill could land higher or lower. So before the next one arrives, you can find your town hall’s rubbish ordinance on its website, check how the charge is worked out, and ask whether any of these discounts apply to you.