Oil and other staples—olive oil, sunflower oil, and various types of milk—will be watched daily through a consumer-advocacy website set up by Facua. The tool is designed to show historic price fluctuations for each product, allow consumers to compare prices across supermarkets, and reveal which items have risen the most today, this week, and the past month. This is the core purpose explained by Rubén Sánchez, the general secretary of Facua.
It is not a shopping aid but a monitoring tool. It focuses on the price evolution of olive oil and other essentials across six major supermarket groups: Alcampo, Carrefour, Dia, Eroski, Hipercor, and Mercadona. This was highlighted by Sánchez during the web launch, which can be accessed at the address super.facua.org.
The online platform will be updated daily by Facua members as supermarket price changes occur. In the coming months, new product categories are planned to be added. The goal is to empower consumers by giving everyone the means to become market watchdogs and to know who, how much, and when price increases hit food items. Sánchez also criticized the recurring failure of the Minister of Agriculture to monitor prices, a duty tied to the food chain law, arguing that the ministry has often sided with supermarket chains by allowing margins to widen rather than tighten them.
The intention is for the site, together with citizen participation, to help detect potential price-fixing or fraud among supermarket chains, which can act like an oligopoly. When such patterns are identified, complaints can be filed and fines pursued, as claimed by Sánchez, who argues that current administration action is lacking.