The last Monday left some striking images in Spain of 2025, such as people gathered on the street around the transistor of a neighbor or crowded next to a car with the radio on at full volume. Diego, a young Madrid, says that despite having lasted a few hours, the lack of supply caused him more uncertainty than confinement because of the Covid pandemic. “On that occasion we were locked up, but at least we could communicate; instead, on Monday almost no one could understand what was happening,” he explains. And it does not seem to be the only one with a similar sensation: and the radio teams experienced a demand increase of 205% and 180%, respectively, during the hours after the incidence, as reported on Tuesday the Idealo online price comparator portal.
These products – including the survival kit that – also heads on Wednesday the first positions of the “products of the moment” of the electronics section on the Amazon portal, which measures searches. And they have also climbed, next to the batteries, at the top of the best selling. In that list they appear from simple radios around 10 euros, to the most sophisticated with flashlight included, solar load or crank, with a price around 50 euros.
The uncertainty of citizens who depended on the electricity supply to cook their food has also driven themselves with gas hornillos and portable kitchen plates. The search for these products shot 547% and 82%, respectively, according to Idealo. Interest in home generators has yet grown more (639%); and near the portable energy stations (375%) and the photovoltaic plates (400%).
Interest growth impacts the prices of the most required products. This is what happens, for example, with two of the products that Idealo has identified as supervants: a portable radio model that climbed from 15.8 euros this Tuesday to 19 euros this Wednesday; and a gas hornillo model that went from 34 to 37.5 euros. More notable is the rise of an electric gasoline generator that rebounded from 141 euros to 170 in one day.
Consumer protection
The employee of a small trade in Alcalá Street in Madrid reports that the afternoon of the blackout her boss decided due to the high influx of customers. “People wanted to prepare, and not only were looking for food, many wore candles and batteries or asked for small radios,” he recalls. Given the growing interest of the population in these products, the Secretary General of Facua-Consumers in Action, Rubén Sánchez, says that businesses could try to justify price increases by “supply and demand law.” But he points out that “taking advantage of a situation like this could be absolutely reprehensible at the ethical level and it should be studied if he has legal lace in terms of regulations.” For this reason, it encourages affected citizens to have some proof of an indiscriminate price increase to denounce it before the Autonomous Consumer Authorities or the Ministry of Consumer.
In the organization of consumers and users (OCU), they emphasize that buyers “have little reference” of the usual amounts “because they are products that are not customary to acquire.” Therefore, they recommend consulting in two or three different stores before buying one of these products, or “take advantage of the ease of online trade to compare prices.”
