Price of gasoline today, September 7: the 95 rises to 1.823 euros and diesel falls to 1.804

The daily (or even intraday) update of gasoline and diesel prices in Spain is not subject to a “cap” or a fixed schedule, but it is subject to a set of legal obligations of communication to the Administration, clear advertising to the consumer, and supervision by competition and consumer protection authorities. These obligations allow prices to change freely, provided they are reported truthfully and in a timely manner.

1. Price communication to the Ministry (basis of the Geoportal)

The key piece is Order ITC/2308/2007, dated July 25, regarding the submission of information to the then Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade in the activities of supplying petroleum products (BOE). This order remains the technical basis for the information that feeds the current Hydrocarbons Geoportal of the Ministry for Ecological Transition.

For stations supplying vehicles and land installations, it establishes that:

• They are obliged to submit information on prices, quantities, discounts, and basic installation data (art. 5 and annex I.1).
• This information must be sent:
  • Every Monday or the next business day, with the current prices.
  • Whenever a price change occurs, with a maximum advance notice of three days and, at minimum, one hour before its effective application (art. 6.1).
• The submission is done electronically to the Ministry's electronic registry; the system generates a receipt with date and time of submission (arts. 3 and 6).

Specialized press and the newspaper Demócrata explain that the Hydrocarbons Geoportal “collects the prices that the service stations themselves are obliged to communicate” and that the platform updates automatically every five minutes with data sent by the obligated parties, although this does not imply that the gas station changes its prices that frequently, but that the communicated information is reflected almost in real time (Demócrata).

2. Price advertising on roads and at the station itself

Regarding information visible to the driver, two main regulations apply:

• Royal Decree 248/2001, of March 9, develops the obligation to place informative signs at accesses to highways and state roads, where the type, price, and brand of fuels of the indicated stations must appear, as well as distances. It establishes that the highway concessionaire or the station owner is responsible for the installation, maintenance, and updating of the information, and must receive from gas stations “truthful and precise information on price variations that occur.”
• Royal Decree 706/2017, which approves ITC MI‑IP 04 “Installations for vehicle supply” (BOE), regulates technical aspects of stations: pumps, safety, unattended operation, etc. It requires, among other things, that a sign with the type of fuel supplied and usage instructions be placed in a visible location; and refers, regarding infractions and sanctions related to fuel sales to the public, to Title VI of Law 34/1998, on the hydrocarbon sector.

Added to this are the general obligations of truthful price information to consumers derived from the Consolidated Text of the General Law for the Defense of Consumers and Users (RDL 1/2007), applicable to any service: advertised prices must correspond to what is actually charged and must not mislead.

3. Supervision by the CNMC and recent obligations

In addition to price communication to the Ministry, in 2026 transparency obligations towards the CNMC have been strengthened:

• Royal Decree-law 7/2026 obliges wholesale operators with refining in Spain to report weekly to the CNMC their acquisition costs and sale prices to service stations, to supervise margins and competition (MITECO note, 06/16/2026).
• The CNMC has created a weekly update tool and publishes open data on prices by gas station, operator, and fuel, aiming to increase transparency (CNMC blog).
• A reform of the same RDL, promoted by Consumer Affairs, foresees a public list of gas stations with “abnormal behaviors” that use public aid to inflate their margins (Ministry of Social Rights and Consumer Affairs).

4. Sanctioning regime

Non-compliance with these obligations can be sanctioned through different channels:

• Hydrocarbon sector: Title VI of Law 34/1998, on the hydrocarbon sector, typifies as infractions the breach of information, transparency, or market operation obligations (mentioned in MI‑IP 04 and CNMC resolutions).
• Consumer protection: RDL 1/2007 allows sanctioning the lack of clear price information or misleading practices towards consumers.
• Competition: the CNMC can open sanctioning proceedings if it detects price manipulation or anti-competitive conduct, based on competition defense regulations and Law 34/1998 (as illustrated by the fine to Enet Energy in the gas market).

In summary, gas stations can change their prices as often as they decide, but they must communicate those changes precisely and in advance to the Ministry, faithfully reflect them on their panels and signs on roads and stations, and are under enhanced supervision by the CNMC, consumer protection, and competition authorities supported by these information obligations.

The competence over the collection and publication of fuel prices was formally born in the then Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade, but today it is, in practice, transferred to the Ministry for Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge (MITECO) and strongly shared with the National Commission on Markets and Competition (CNMC). The current Ministry of Industry and Tourism mainly retains a historical position in hydrocarbon regulations but is no longer the “energy” ministry managing the price system.

1. Original legal framework (when Energy was under Industry)

The key piece is Order ITC/2308/2007, of July 25, which determines the form of submitting information to the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade about petroleum product supply activities (BOE). This order is issued under Law 34/1998, on the hydrocarbon sector, and develops obligations already foreseen in Royal Decree-law 6/2000 on intensifying competition.

From this order, the competencies of the then Ministry of Industry (now assumed by the ministry handling Energy, currently MITECO) regarding prices clearly emerge:

• Define the content of the information that supplying companies must send: prices, discounts, quantities sold, and basic installation data (arts. 1 and 5).
• Determine the obligated parties to send information: wholesale operators, owners of retail distribution installations, and companies making direct sales to final consumers (arts. 3 and following).
• Set the frequency and deadlines for submission of data, including: weekly price information, monthly sales information, and aggregated annual data for all supply modalities (arts. 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18).
• Manage the electronic registry where information is received and through which submission and receipts for companies are automated (art. 3.2).
• Publicly disseminate relevant information for consumers: article 20 empowers the Ministry to “disseminate public information it considers relevant or of interest to the consumer, with express indication of its identifying data and product prices, by any technical, computer, or telematic means,” maintaining the information updated with the latest available data.
• Share information with other bodies: the order obliges the Ministry to provide access to the Strategic Reserves Corporation, the then National Energy Commission (now CNMC), and other State Administration and autonomous community bodies to the data necessary for exercising their competencies (art. 20.3).
• Coordinate with autonomous communities, which must send the Ministry registrations, deregistrations, and modifications of installations within their territorial scope (second additional provision).

Additionally, Law 34/1998, on the hydrocarbon sector, configures the registry of retail distribution installations and associated information obligations; Order ITC/2308/2007 is the instrumental development specifying how price data are collected and exploited.

2. Evolution: transfer of functions and current role

Subsequent government restructurings have removed energy and hydrocarbon policy from Industry's scope. Today, the State Secretariat for Energy and the Directorate General for Energy Policy and Mines are integrated into MITECO, not the Ministry of Industry and Tourism, as reflected in recent resolutions from the Ministry for Ecological Transition itself and the BOE.

In practice, the function of collecting and publishing fuel prices at service stations is articulated through the MITECO Hydrocarbons Geoportal, which the press and consumer guides systematically refer to when explaining how to find the cheapest gas station.

3. CNMC: supervision and additional transparency

Added to this scheme is a reinforced block of competencies of the CNMC, especially after Royal Decree-law 7/2026 on the Middle East crisis. CNMC's own documents show that:

• The CNMC collects information on costs and sale prices to service stations from operators with refining capacity and, subsequently, from all wholesale operators (May 2026 bulletin).
• It publishes monthly bulletins and weekly update tools with prices by station, product type, and operator (monitoring tool).
• It evaluates in its bulletins the degree of compliance with the obligation to submit prices to the Ministry for Ecological Transition and has increased retail market transparency with open data and specific statistics (July 2026 bulletin, margin report).

4. Specific conclusion about Industry and Tourism

Strictly speaking, the original normative competencies on collecting and possible publication of fuel prices were attributed to the Ministry of Industry (then “Industry, Tourism and Trade”) through Order ITC/2308/2007, which:

• Obliges operators and gas stations to submit prices and sales volumes.
• Empowers it to exploit those data, publicly disseminate prices, and share information with other bodies.

However, after the transfer of energy to MITECO, these functions are today, de facto, exercised by the ministry holding hydrocarbon competence (MITECO) and in coordination with the CNMC, which performs economic monitoring and systematic publication of price series. The current Ministry of Industry and Tourism is no longer the managing center of this “fuel price information system,” although its name still appears in the original regulations as the historical reference ministry.

Based on data from the Weekly Oil Bulletin of the European Commission collected in the Demócrata report “European map of gasoline and diesel in Europe: how their price has risen country by country”, it is possible to clearly identify which European Union countries today present a gasoline/diesel gap similar to Spain's.

Reference: the current difference in Spain

To set the comparison, the average prices included in that analysis for Spain (cut-off July 20, 2026) are:

• Gasoline 95: €1.582/l
• Diesel A: €1.622/l

That is, in Spain diesel is approximately 4 cents per liter more expensive than gasoline (about +€0.040/l). This is the “gap” taken as a pattern to look for countries with a similar difference.

Countries with gaps very similar to Spain's

Reviewing the country-by-country table published by Demócrata (entirely based on the Commission's bulletin), three member states appear whose gasoline and diesel differentials are very close to those 4 cents/liter. Taking a margin of ±€0.01/l relative to Spain (i.e., between €0.03 and €0.05/l), the most comparable cases are:

• Finland
  According to the collected data:
  • Gasoline: €2.163/l
  • Diesel: €2.196/l
  The difference is €0.033/l in favor of gasoline, i.e., diesel is about 3.3 cents more expensive per liter. It is a slightly smaller gap than Spain's but very close in order of magnitude.
• Hungary
  The table indicates:
  • Gasoline: €1.642/l
  • Diesel: €1.687/l
  The differential is €0.045/l, placing diesel about 4.5 cents above gasoline. It is the case that most closely matches the Spanish pattern (4 cents) both in sign and magnitude.
• Poland
  The average values collected are:
  • Gasoline: €1.682/l
  • Diesel: €1.725/l
  Here the gap is €0.043/l, meaning diesel costs about 4.3 cents more than gasoline. Again, practically identical to the Spanish case.

In these three countries — Finland, Hungary, and Poland — the pattern is the same as in Spain: diesel is clearly above gasoline, with a difference around 3–5 cents per liter.

Other countries where diesel is also more expensive, but with larger gaps

The Demócrata analysis shows that the phenomenon of diesel being more expensive than gasoline is not exclusive to Spain. However, in most countries the gap is significantly larger. Some illustrative examples:

• Belgium: gasoline €1.856/l, diesel €2.060/l → difference of +€0.204/l.
• Lithuania: gasoline €1.769/l, diesel €1.927/l → +€0.158/l.
• Romania: gasoline €1.721/l, diesel €1.888/l → +€0.167/l.
• Sweden: gasoline €1.439/l, diesel €1.707/l → +€0.268/l.

In these cases, the structure is the same (diesel above gasoline), but the difference far exceeds the 4 cents in Spain, placing them in a different group.

Countries with the opposite pattern: diesel cheaper than gasoline

There is also a significant group of member states where the traditional scheme of diesel cheaper than gasoline is maintained. The report mentions, for example:

• Denmark: gasoline €2.459/l, diesel €2.183/l (diesel is about €0.276/l cheaper).
• Germany: gasoline €2.192/l, diesel €2.158/l (difference of −€0.034/l).
• Greece: gasoline €1.977/l, diesel €1.950/l (−€0.027/l).
• Netherlands: gasoline €2.341/l, diesel €2.310/l (−€0.031/l).
• Portugal: gasoline €1.972/l, diesel €1.960/l (−€0.012/l).

These cases help understand that the Spanish situation (and that of Finland, Hungary, or Poland) is not simply a mechanical consequence of crude oil price increases, but of the specific balance between taxation, refining costs, and demand for each fuel type in each country.

In summary, if looking for EU countries with a difference very similar to the current Spanish one between gasoline 95 and diesel, the most comparable by magnitude are Hungary, Poland, and Finland, all with diesel somewhat more expensive than gasoline and gaps around 3–5 cents per liter.