Digging into the roulette wheel of the thousands of products damaged in consumers' pockets by the AIEM tariff barrier is always a new surprise. They say it's barely more than a hundred products, when the honest thing to say is more than a hundred tariff references. Before September 30, 2025, the blacklist of products that will suffer an increase must be submitted to defend the maquila from Mexico-style processing in the U.S.
And, among those references, the misery. In the Canary Islands, bureaucracy is a carnival without a troupe. Here, it doesn't matter whether you bring Iranian caviar in your suitcase or a bag of sugared almonds for your nephew's communion. Customs law, that bible of stamps and windows, puts everyone in the same bag: a five percent penalty, both for the luxury of millionaires and for the cheap sugar that calms a child's tantrum.
A nonsense worthy of Valle-Inclán: the regional Treasury disguised as a harlequin, whipping the rich man who uncorks champagne on his yacht and the mother who buys piñata candy at the local Lidl with the same stick.
Caviar, that black gold that flows across linen tablecloths, pays the same as sugared almonds, candies, and caramels that melt in a child's trouser pocket. And to top it all off, even the humble fresh cheese from a worker's refrigerator falls into the tariff trap if it meets the impossible moisture and fat equations drawn up by some bored technocrat in his office at the European Commission or in Madrid.
The result is grotesque: in the Canary Islands, the State protects no one and punishes everyone. There's no caviar factory in Telde or candy factory in Fuerteventura, but there are families who see their birthday party cost more because someone decided that candy was unfair competition for a phantom industry. The island is a theater, and the norm is a practical joke. They pay the same price for sturgeon roe as for gummy bears. And so, while the child stuffs himself with sugar, the rich man spreads blinis with black spoonfuls. Different tables, different lives... but the same tariff.
The nonsense is served. In the Canary Islands, children's sweets and the luxury of magnates share the same tax and punishment. A blind tax system, yes, but one of those blindnesses that smells more like mockery than a balanced scale.
