Month: January 2026

We have been looking for new weapons against superbugs for years. We have designed one at 400 km altitude

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Humanity has a big problem right now that can condemn it to its disappearance: antibiotic resistance. This forces science to be in a constant search for new treatments and also for raising awareness of the responsible use of drugs. And the last place where they have found a new path of research is in space. The study. A team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison has published in PLOS Biology the results of an experiment carried out aboard the International Space Station (ISS), demonstrating that the absence of gravity not only alters cellular behavior, but also accelerates evolutionary processes that would be unlikely on Earth. Something that is undoubtedly very important, since it has been seen how phage T7a virus that has the ability to infect a bacteria to kill it, developed genetic mutations in space that would not have occurred on Earth surely. Some mutations that allowed us to attack a specific bacteria that would have been unthinkable on Earth. A changing biology. On Earth, biologists are quite clear that if a virus binds to a bacteria and infects it, it can kill it. But to understand this you have to know that on our planet the interaction of these two elements in a liquid medium is facilitated by gravity. A key factor for both beings to collide within the medium. On the International Space Station these forces disappear. The movement of the particles is almost exclusively reduced to the Brownian diffusionthat is, the random movement of particles. And here it was seen that this had a great impact on the kinetics of the infection. What happened. The first thing that could be seen is that the bacteria’s ability to divide to give new ‘children’ was reduced, causing it to increase up to four hours, making it difficult for the virus and the bacteria to meet. However, after 23 days of culture on board, the infection was successful. In this way, the viral population not only reached the bacterial population, but the selective pressure of the environment forced the virus to optimize its attack mechanisms with different mutations. Genetic engineering. By analyzing the DNA of viruses that arrived from space, the research team discovered the evolution that had taken place. In this way, it was seen how it had mutated in record time in different genes that are key, such as the one used to synthesize the ‘legs’ with which it anchors itself to a bacteria. The most relevant thing is that these mutations were not random, but a direct response to the lack of frequent contacts. Having fewer opportunities to collide with a bacteria because they replicated less, the virus evolved to be more efficient at adsorption (the process of adhering to the cell surface) once it made contact. For its part, the bacteria E.coli also responded to environmental stress. The analyzes showed mutations in the genes mlaA and hldEresponsible for maintaining the integrity of the outer membrane and the synthesis of lipopolysaccharides. This suggests that the bacteria attempted to “shield” their surface both to resist microgravity and to prevent phage entry, creating a molecular arms race different from the one on Earth. Its importance. Once this has been proven, the question is clear: why do we care? The key is that the researchers used variants of the virus that evolved in space and pitted them on Earth against strains of uropathogenic E. coli that had developed resistance to phage T7 original. And the result was spectacular: the mutated viruses killed these resistant bacteria. This suggests that microgravity makes it possible to explore an “adaptive landscape” that is inaccessible under Earth’s gravity. On Earth, evolution pushes phages down already known “low resistance” paths. In space, extreme conditions force the virus to unlock alternative genetic pathways that we did not know about until now. A new model. This discovery validates a hypothesis that has been brewing for years in astrobiology and biotechnology: space is not just a place for observation, but a unique manufacturing environment. In this way, if we can use the EES, or future commercial stationsas incubators to direct the evolution of bacteriophages, we could generate a library of therapeutic viruses that are capable of defeating the superbacteria that currently threaten global health systems. That is why it is not about artificial genetic engineering, but about using directed evolution in an environment where physical rules favor the appearance of exceptional biological traits. Images | POT CDC In Xataka | Manufacturing materials to produce chips in space is not science fiction. It is a very real plan that is already underway

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates import millions of tons of sand every year despite living on immense deserts

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The story is striking in itself: Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, two countries closely associated with the desert, import tons and tons of sand every year. So striking, in fact, that the first intuition is that it is false. But, as soon as you get closer to it, you discover that not only is it true, but it is more interesting than it seems. Because yes, these countries import a lot of sand. In 2023, only the United Arab Emirates bought more than six million tons. And it is surprising, of course, because these are two countries located on enormous deserts. The explanation, however, is simple: the sand they have is not suitable for certain things. At a technical level, what is known as “eolian sand” (that which the wind accumulates in dunes) is very fine, very uniform and very rounded. That makes it a poor sand for making glass, concrete or other industrial products. It is not that it cannot be used, but it requires adjusting the mixtures, controlling the granulometry and impurities (fines), and carefully balancing the manufacturing processes. That is to say, the process ends up becoming so expensive that it is cheaper to import sand that is more suitable for standardized processes. And this, ultimately, should not surprise us. Sand is, today, the second most exploited resource in the world (only after water). The United Nations Environment Program estimates that every year 50,000 million tons of sand and gravel are used. What’s more, the lack of sand is so obvious that there are criminal networks that traffic with her internationally. However, we are not talking about just any sand. There are, as is evident, many types of sand. For what is not interesting today we can distinguish natural sand (HS 250590) and siliceous/quartz sand (HS 250510). The Gulf countries import, above all, the second. Emirates, to give an example, is spent half a million a year in the first and 87 million in the second. That is to say, although they are countries ‘rich’ in sand, they do not have the sand they need. A sand, moreover, with very specific specifications (granulometry, purity, humidity, fines, contaminants, consistency of supply) and that are basic for glass, foundry, filtration or the chemical industry. However, they also import natural sand. And this is interesting because, as they point out in the UNthis only makes clear the significance of the problem of governance and externalities. Despite having usable sand, in many cases it is preferred to buy from other countries (such as Oman) to avoid the negative externalities of draining sand from their coasts and deserts. Something that can alter livelihoods (fishing, agriculture due to salinization, coastal tourism) and increase vulnerability to storms. In the summer of 2019, the couple who became famous was arrested in Sardinia for hiding 40 kilos of sand in his trunk. That was the anecdote, the problem was another: that beyond mass tourism, the tensions on the sand are increasingly greater. It is something that has only grown and is normal. The world is not here to do without one of its most valuable resources. Image | Lars Portjanow In Xataka | We are running out of sand. And there are already traffickers who negotiate with it in India or Morocco

They are already the nationality that adds the most new members in Spain, surpassing Colombians

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Spain closed 2025 with more than 3.1 million foreign contributors to Social Securityand with a growing weight of immigration in job creation. Official data not only show that a good part of the new work generated in Spain is being filled with labor from other countries, but also that the nationality of these new affiliates is also changing. In 2025, Venezuelans have become the nationality that has grown the most in new foreign affiliations to Social Security, above Colombians. This means that they lead the increase in registrations during the last year, but they are not the largest group if we look at the total number of foreign affiliates, a place that continues to be occupied by workers from Morocco and Romania. Record number of foreign affiliates in 2025. According to December 2025 dataSocial Security registered 3,135,581 foreign affiliates after adjusting for calendar and seasonality, which represents more than 800,000 contributors than before the labor reform and almost a million more than those registered before the pandemic. This increase implies that the workers of foreign origin They contributed 40.4% of the total new affiliations to Social Security. That is, just over four out of every ten new contributors in 2025 were of foreign nationality. Its weight within the whole labor market has also strengthenedand foreigners already represent 14.12% of the total members, six tenths more than in 2024. “The 2025 balance shows that the contribution of foreign people is structural and decisive for employment growth, the sustainability of the pension system and the shared prosperity of our country,” said the Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, Elma Saiz. in a statement. Venezuelans: the nationality that is growing the most. Within this general increase, the Venezuelan community is the one that concentrates the largest increase in new foreign affiliates in 2025. workers arriving from Venezuela They formalized 40,614 new affiliations compared to those registered in 2024, adding a total of 215,735 Venezuelans. This represents an annual growth of 23.2% and places them as the group that has registered the most new registrations in Social Security in the last year. This jump places Venezuelans in 19.8% of the total new registrations of foreign people, so that almost one in every five new affiliations of immigrants was workers. from Venezuela. The figure consolidates an upward trend that has been observed for almost a decade, but marks a turning point in 2025 by becoming for the first time the nationality that has grown the most in relative terms, placing itself ahead of Colombians who also marked a historical rise. Colombians: more numerous but with less growth. Although Venezuelans have led the increase in new memberships, Colombians remain the largest community in terms of total memberships. At the end of 2025, the system registered around 250,248 Colombian workers, compared to the 212,319 registered in 2024. This represents an increase of 28,929 new members, leaving a growth of 13% compared to last year. Colombians are the largest Latin American nationality in Spain, at least in terms of employment, but they remain behind the 373,000 affiliates from Morocco and the more than 330,000 from Romaniawhich are the most numerous nationalities in terms of affiliation of foreign workers. Key support for the labor market. According to Ministry data, the weight of foreign workers is especially concentrated in sectors where the demand for labor is more intense, such as hospitality (28.8%), agriculture (26%) or construction (23.2%). In these areas, immigrants represent a very relevant part of the workforce and help sustain activity in campaigns and work peaks. At the end of 2025, foreign self-employed workers reached 496,888, marking a historical maximum and growing 6.3% year-on-year. The greatest growth of these new self-employed workers has been registered in the Information and communications sectors (25.9%) and in Energy Supply (22%). In Xataka | It is not a country for Spaniards: Madrid and Catalonia are losing national population while gaining foreign population Image | Unsplash (aboodi vesakaran, Callum Hill)

Canada has opened the door to Chinese electric cars. The US warns: “they are going to regret it”

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Canada has reopened the doors of electric vehicles from China, giving a radical turn to its trade policy. Last Friday, Prime Minister Mark Carney reduced tariffs by 100% to 6.1%, which could take the Canadian automobile market to a new horizon. Below these lines we tell you what this may imply. Change. The move comes a year after Canada impose massive tariffs to Chinese electric vehicles, following in the footsteps of the United States under the Biden administration. The argument, as describe from the BBC, was that they considered China to be carrying out ‘a policy of deliberate overproduction’. Now, with relations between Canada and the United States on somewhat delicate ground under the Trump administration, the Canadian government has chosen to diversify its trade alliances. “We take the world as it is, not as we would like it to be,” counted Carney. Quantities. The initial agreement allows the entry of up to 49,000 electric vehicles annually from China with the reduced tariff of 6.1%. This figure represents approximately 3% of the total Canadian market, which is around two million vehicles per year, according to account the Driving medium. According to the prime minister, the quota could increase to 70,000 vehicles within five years. Furthermore, the agreement stipulates that, in that period, more than 50% of these vehicles must be affordable models with an import price of less than 35,000 Canadian dollars (about 21,569 euros at the exchange rate). Date. Although there is no exact confirmed date, several media predict its arrival in the coming weeks. Addisu Lashitew, associate professor at the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University, counted to the CBC that Chinese manufacturers have the capacity to accelerate production and ship quickly. BYD, the largest Chinese manufacturer of electric vehicles, even operates its own cargo ships, which could shorten shipping times even further. Brands that will arrive first. Curiously, the first brands to benefit from this opening will not necessarily be the purely Chinese ones. Tesla is in a prime position to take advantage of the deal immediately, according to they count from Reuters. Elon Musk’s company had already equipped its Shanghai plant in 2023 to manufacture a specific version of the Model Y destined for Canada, exporting more than 44,000 vehicles that year before the 100% tariffs came into effect. Other brands with a previous presence include Volvo and Polestar, both owned by the Chinese group Geely. For purely Chinese brands like BYD or Nio, the process will be somewhat slower, as they will have to establish dealer networks, service chains and spare parts markets from scratch. Disparate political reaction. The Premier of Saskatchewan (province of Canada), Scott Moe, celebrated the agreement as “very good news,” especially since China has committed to reducing tariffs on Canadian agricultural products such as rapeseed. However, Ontario Premier Doug Ford critical harshly criticized the move, calling Chinese electric vehicles “subsidized spy cars” and warning that the deal would “damage our economy and lead to job losses.” To put it in context, Ontario is the province where the Canadian automobile industry is concentrated. The US response. United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer qualified the agreement “problematic” and warned that Canada might regret it. However, President Trump declared that it was “a good thing” and that “if you can get a deal with China, you should do it.” The reflection of Japan. In 1981, Canada reached a similar agreement with Japan, allocating unit quotas instead of prices. The result was that Japanese manufacturers simply moved up the range: Civics became Accords, Corollas became Camrys. In two or three years, the average price of an imported Japanese car went from $8,000 to $14,000, as remember Greig Mordue, director of the Master of Engineering and Public Policy program at McMaster University, told Driving. However, that agreement also led to Honda and Toyota establishing production plants in Canada, today becoming the two largest vehicle manufacturers in the country. In fact, according to revealed A senior Canadian official told the CBC, the government wants to explore the idea of ​​​​creating joint ventures and investments with Chinese companies in the next three years to build a Canadian electric vehicle with Chinese know-how. More competition. Lashitew emphasize that the entry of cheaper Chinese vehicles will force other manufacturers to lower their prices, which would make electric vehicles more accessible to consumers and help Canada move toward its emissions reduction goals. “With electric vehicles still 30% to 50% more expensive than comparable gasoline cars, reducing trade barriers would significantly ease the affordability constraint,” he noted. Cover image | aboodi vesakaran and Xataka In Xataka | Cars are so absurdly expensive that FIAT already has a plan to solve it: limit them to 117km/h

They are the feces of their soldiers

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The United States Navy is experiencing a contradiction that very few could anticipate: while maintains a superiority global in tonnage, scope and technology, carries a series of daily maintenance and sustainment problems that erode its image and, in the long run, its real availability. The clearest example is most advanced nuclear aircraft carrier and an enemy that cannot be mute for five years: feces. The great paradox. As we will see, it is not just a matter of ugly photos or internal anecdotes, it is rather the sum of small breakdowns and material degradation that has ended up becoming an operational burden. And the most striking thing is that these failures appear on both veteran ships and cutting-edge platforms. War, but against feces. The most advanced and expensive nuclear aircraft carrier on the planet, the USS Gerald R. Fordhas been encountering for more than five years an adversary that has no flag or missiles: its own sanitation system. The V.C.H.T.a vacuum system to collect, store and transfer waste, has repeatedly jammed and caused breakdowns since the ship entered service, to the point that during its deployment in 2023 the problems They became almost daily. The irony is brutal: a colossus conceived to project power for weeks without touching port is conditioned by an internal circuit that collapses due to something as basic as evacuating human waste. A lesson not learned. The most serious thing is that Ford’s problem is not new, but rather the second chapter of an error that had already given very clear signs. The last Nimitz, the USS George H.W. Bushwas the first large ship of the US Navy to incorporate a vacuum system of this type, and in 2011 it had all 423 toilet bowls out of service simultaneously on two occasions. That degraded life on board to absurd levels, with sailors urinating in showers or sinks industrial, using bottles and, in the case of many women, enduring so much that they ended up with health problems. The pattern was already written, and yet it was repeated on the ship called to be the symbol of modernization naval. Limited resistance. The VCHT is similar to systems used on cruise ships due to its efficiency in water, but on an aircraft carrier complexity becomes its worst enemy. The network moves waste by suction through hundreds of km of pipes to treatment tanks, and the design has a structural fragility: If one section loses pressure due to a blockage, all bathrooms can be unusable. This is not a minor failure, because it causes a habitability crisis and forces staff time to be spent on continuous repairs, just the opposite of what the ship promised. In an environment where the ship is literally a floating city, sanitation is not a detail, It is critical infrastructure. Toilets on the USS Ford The price of “throwing”. The partial solution that has been identified is as revealing as it is depressing: acid washed periodically to clean the system, something not planned as a routine throughout the life of the vessel. Each operation can cost more than $400,000and it also cannot be done on the high seas because it requires maintenance facilities and adds technical and environmental complications, which chains the problem to shipyard windows. The result: not only are pipes clogged, the ideal of total logistical autonomy that justifies a nuclear superaircraft carrier is also clogged. And in the midst of an era of budget pressure, this turns a key piece of naval power into a platform that requires very expensive “rituals” to function as something as basic as a bathroom. Bathrooms on the USS Enterprise Human factor and design. The Navy has attributed part of the problem to throw inappropriate objectsfrom clothing to utensils to hygiene products, which sounds plausible on a ship with thousands of people living in stressful conditions. But the truly revealing fact is that a GAO report pointed out that the system was undersized for a ship with more than 4,000 crew members, which shifts the blame from individual behavior to industrial design. If an infrastructure does not tolerate realistic use of its population objective, it does not point to a failure of discipline, but to a failure applied engineering. At that point, the aircraft carrier stops being a “technological miracle” and becomes an overly optimistic experiment. Gerald R. Ford during construction in Newport News, along with his construction crew, 2013 Even the bathroom is political. In the Ford, in addition, a concept was introduced that in theory increased the flexibility of accommodation: bathrooms neutral without urinals. That triggered other frictions, because each toilet occupies more space than a urinal and the majority of the crew is still male, which multiplies uses and stress on the system during peak hours. Here, more than a cultural debate, everything points to a debate of physical efficiency within a hull where every meter counts, and where the habitability design has a direct impact on the load on the pipes. In the end, what seemed like a “modern” improvement may have added complexity and stress to an infrastructure that I was already going to the limit. Rust on American warship Rust on deck. If the Ford case is embarrassing, the rust on ships surface is grotesque because it is public, because it is the first thing anyone sees when a destroyer enters port. The Navy recognize that for years has “ignored” the corrosion problem because there was always another emergency. The trigger to prioritize it: Trump got it an image of the USS Dewey with “rust dripping” and that made it a top-notch affair. The technical manager summed it up with a devastating phrase: “We know what to do, but we choose not to do it.” Simple solutions. They were on TWZ The ironic part is that many anti-rust measures sound almost insultingly simple, like using better resistant paintsimprove drains to divert water, or incorporate materials less prone to corrode. It also seeks to reduce the workload and the margin … Read more

Bringing fiber to rural Spain does not come cheap. This interactive map tells you exactly how much it cost

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Those of us who live in urban areas take it for granted that we have fiber coverage, but there are many rural areas from Spain where fiber has taken a long time to arrive and even some where they are still waiting for it. To ensure coverage of the entire territory, the government launched subsidies for operators to deploy their network. Now we have a map to know the status of all deployments, interactive and non-profit. The map. It has been developed by Fernando García Álvarez, a software engineer who has contacted us to publicize his creation. It is an independent and non-profit initiative. Its objective was to gather all the information on fiber deployment plans, both the previous PEBA and the current UNICO plans in a single place, something that until now had to be consulted through various sources. His name is Fiber Programs and when we open it we find a heat map of the entire peninsula, with the red areas representing the areas with the greatest coverage and the yellow areas representing the least coverage. Detailed information. To obtain all the information on the different programs you have to zoom in and click on one of them. Here we can see which operator is carrying out the deployment, which plan it belongs to and other more in-depth data such as the total amount of the subsidy and the completion deadline. This is especially useful for those projects that are still underway because it allows you to know when a specific zone will be connected. Subsidies. That in 2026 there will be those who do not have a fiber connection is shocking, but there is a reason why there are still areas without this infrastructure: it is not profitable for operators to bring their infrastructure to an area where there are very few inhabitants. From this need was born the Broadband Extension Program or PEBA. The plan was active from 2013 to 2020 and subsidized almost 800 projects from more than 100 operators. In 2024, the UNICO Broadband plan took over the baton, with more than 18 million euros and with Avatel and Adamo as the main recipients of the aid. Spain and fiber. Although there are some areas left to cover, they are the least. The reality is that 95% of the Spanish territory has access to fiber optics, which places us well ahead of the European average, which is 64%. Our colleagues from Xataka Móvil made a devastating comparison: a town in Soria has better internet than Berlin. Image | Fiber Programs In Xataka | In 2023 Spain tried to create its own “Starlink” to connect the rural world: it has failed miserably

Tesla resurrects the Dojo project with a radically different philosophy

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Elon Musk is one of the most important agents in the era of artificial intelligence. Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft with OpenAI and Oracle are prominent names when we talk about gigantic data centersbut if there is someone who cuts the mustard, it is Musk with his xAI company. His Colossus Memphis with 100,000 H100 from NVIDIA to train Grok surprised even Jensen HuangCEO of NVIDIA, but Musk’s goal is not to depend on others. NVIDIA leads the way in chips to train AI (so much so that even Chinese companies want to buy its H200, even if they don’t let them do it). But Musk, like China, wants independence and technological sovereignty, and That’s why he invested in Dojo. It was an ambitious plan to build a customized supercomputer to train the neural networks of the controversial autonomous driving (the FSD). After more than five years in development, 1,000 million dollars invested and key engineers who took the lead drainMusk hill the tap in August of last year. The future was in the AI5 and AI6 chips which were less specific, but could still be used to train the FSD system. However, there is a new twist to this tortilla chip and Musk has decided to relaunch the project. tesla reactive the development of Dojo 3, and it does so by burning bridges with the previous philosophy of this supercomputer. Dojo 3, the heart of Tesla’s autonomous driving Although Tesla has stopped more doubts than anything else these last few years regarding autonomous driving concerned, this continues to be one of the pillars in the company’s short-term strategy. Because they not only have the FSD in their cars, but also in the controversial ‘robotaxis’. Supposedly, it will be this 2026 when Cybercaps will begin to be manufacturedcars that, unlike the taxis that we already see in some cities, will arrive without pedals or a steering wheel. But he doesn’t just want to fuel his cars. Musk wants to make money with softwarebut to have that software, you need to train the system and make it more secure than now. That’s where Dojo came into play. This hardware depended on a very specialized and complex architecture. The D1 chip was the heart of it all, but to achieve high computing power a complex network of thousands of D1 chips mounted in physically separate cases and interconnected by Ethernet cables was needed. It was a very specialized system, but complex to scale without skyrocketing costs. When Tesla turned off the Dojo tap, it commented that its companies would continue investing in the creation of less specialized chips such as the AI5, AI6, AI7 and subsequent ones. More conventional and easier to scale chips. And, precisely, the advances in this architecture are the decisive factor for Musk to revive Dojo. Instead of requiring complex interconnected equipment, Dojo 3 will adopt a modular architecture in which several AI chips can be installed on a single board. Not only is wiring complexity reduced, but heat dissipation is facilitated and the space required for installation is reduced. And, the easier it is and the less space it requires, the more chips can be mounted and the greater computing power. It is not the only advantage. Grouping chips on a single board reduces latency within the chips and improves the power efficiency of the device. To give an example, although they are a headache for expansion, it is the same philosophy that laptops with SSD or RAM memory soldered to the board: Everything communicates faster, more fluidly and requiring less energy to operate. Furthermore, being less specific than D1, xAI’s AIs fulfill both training and inference functions (the Dojo only served for training), which represents cost savings for the company. Now, Dojo 3 will not be a reality immediately. In recent days, Musk has shared via Twitter X the roadmap for its semiconductors. The AI5 developed together with TSMC is “almost finished” and they are already in the early stages of AI6. Meanwhile, he hopes that there will be a new version every nine months, with the AI7 and subsequent ones in the company’s plans for 2027. And a big question is who will make these chips. We can immediately think of TSMC, a leading company in these fields that even is expanding in the United States and that already has clients like herself NVIDIA for its new AI training chips. But no: it will be Samsung. At least, of course, for an AI6 with which Tesla signed a $16.5 billion deal that was seen as a victory for the South Korean giant’s function. We will see how the plans evolve, since if something appears that they consider better, they have shown us that their hand does not tremble when it comes to swerving, but This strategy on less specialized chips is interesting taking into account the needs in autonomous driving, AI training and robotics that the company faces. Images | xAI, Steve Juvetson In Xataka | Elon Musk wants to turn xAI into an ultra-valuable company and he knows how to do it: using the SpaceX vault

bring 30,000 drivers from Türkiye

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The road transport sector in Spain faces a serious generational change problem which puts the movement of goods at risk. Logistics companies are looking for creative ways to keep everything moving. A recent initiative promises change this trend and import talent from another country with many more professionals available: Türkiye. Spain runs out of drivers. Spain has more than 30,000 jobs for truck drivers that it cannot meet, a demand that represents almost 10% of the sector’s total workforce, made up of some 390,000 professionals. These vacancies complicate the daily operations of companies, which struggle to find enough hands to maintain their supply routes. Far from being a “temporary blip”, the sector is experiencing a progressive aging of its staff, and the majority of current drivers are between 45 and 55 years old. A third of them will retire in the next 10 years and there is no generational replacement to take their place. Only 5% of Spanish truck drivers are under 25 years old, which shows the lack of generational change in this demanding profession. The agreement with Türkiye. In this context, the Andalusian transport association Usintra and the Córdoba Campus Foundation they have reached an agreement collaboration with the Ministry of Labor and Social Security of Türkiye with the aim of recruiting drivers in that country who are willing to come to work in Spain. ​In Türkiye there are more than 300,000 truck drivers looking for work, a figure that contrasts with the shortage of drivers that Spain suffers and opens the door to a practical solution. The objective is for the General Directorate of the Turkish Employment Agency to select these professionals in Turkey, and bring the candidates to Spain to fill the vacancies in Spanish logistics companies. Homologation of permits. Drivers recruited in Türkiye will receive additional training at the Córdoba FP Campus in order to approve the necessary permits to transport goods in Spain and they will learn Spanish. During all this training time, the entities involved will offer them accommodation and food. Afterwards, their documents will be legalized so that they can start working in logistics companies in Spain. Search for talent in Spain. In addition to looking outside, the government has launched the Reconduce Planin which 500,000 euros will be allocated for subsidies of up to 3,000 euros per person to finance and encourage courses and exams to obtain the necessary permits to be a truck driver and transport goods. A measure that from the sector is considered insufficient to alleviate the personnel deficit and the serious problem of generational change that the sector is suffering, greatly affected by the low salary and long hours away from home. The Community of Madrid offers free training for the Certificate of Professional Aptitude (CAP) with 6.48 million euros between 2026 and 2027, aimed at those over 21 years of age with a B card, to train about 1,200 applicants. In Xataka | That Japan has 100,000 people over 100 years old explains a problem: they are literally running out of drivers. Image | Unsplash (Gabriel Santos)

The Prado has become a saturated tourist attraction. So you have made a decision: no more blockbusters

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The Prado Museum has decided to stop. After reaching its third consecutive visitor record in 2025 with 3.5 million people (a figure that many institutions would celebrate with champagne), its director Miguel Falomir has broken decades of obsession with numbers: “The museum does not need a single more visitor.” The Madrid art gallery announces a radical change for 2026: it eliminates the blockbuster exhibitions. What are blockbuster exhibitions? The large monographic exhibitions designed to attract masses, especially tourists, which now disappear from the Prado’s priorities. In their place, more specialized thematic proposals. The objective is no longer to grow, but to ensure that Going to the museum “isn’t like taking the subway during rush hour”in the words of Falomir during the presentation of the annual program. The measure makes the Prado a pioneer of a debate on cultural sustainability that has swept through Europe since the pandemic, when institutions like the Louvre had to impose capacity limits to prevent artistic contemplation from becoming survival from the tidal waves of tourists. The case of the Louvre. The French museum model leads the way in what not to do: with its nine million annual visitors it has become the best example of how success devours the cultural experience. The Prado’s 3.5 million seem modest in comparison, but Falomir remembers one detail: the Madrid museum is between eight and nine times smaller. That is, more visitor density per square meter. Since the pandemic. These changes have been brewing since 2022, when the museums reopened and were able to put into practice the capacity limits that they had been considering for years. Since then, the Louvre has maintained a limit of 30,000 daily visitors and a time slot system with mandatory advance reservation for certain rooms. But it is not the only one: the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence have adopted similar strategies. The Host Plan. The response of the Madrid museum It’s called Host Plana project that addresses the quality of the visit from several fronts. They will begin by optimizing the current more than 70,000 square meters, which in 2028 will grow with the Salón de Reinos: an additional 2,500 square meters. Among the concrete measures is the prohibition of photographs in the rooms, which has already been proven effective in improving flow. Added to this are adjustments in access management and limits on group size. But Falomir insists: “We have to think about what to do so that the public is not only interested in iconic works.” The director recognizes that the concentration on star pieces creates bottlenecks while other rooms remain empty. The visitor profile is revealing: 75.85% are foreigners. Falomir insists that “we are the museum that most nationals visit,” but they want more Spaniards. Other museums, such as the Louvre, have opted for more aggressive policies: raising the price of tickets for visitors from outside the EU. The programming strategy. Faced with a 2025 full of large monographic exhibitions (Veronese, Anton Raphael Mengs, Juan Muñoz) designed to attract masses, 2026 is committed to the complex and specialized. Proposals such as “In the manner of Italy. Spain and the Mediterranean Gothic (1320-1420)”, which Falomir readily acknowledges will not have the commercial appeal of its predecessors. It’s not a new idea. The New York Metropolitan has been alternating for years big names with risky academic exhibitions. The Tate Modern does the same. But the Prado goes one step further, and recognizes that this strategy responds to a goal of decongestion, not just curatorial criteria. The 2026 program includes “El Prado in feminine”, with three collector queens: Isabel de Farnese, Cristina of Sweden (400th anniversary) and, above all, Mariana of Austria, whose December exhibition will reconstruct the evolution of her image and power. Also arriving are “Rilke and Spanish art”, “Hans Baldung Grien” and “Prado. Siglo XXI”, an exhibition that looks at the museum itself and its transformation in this century. Everything fits with the emerging trend of the “slow museum”, a movement that proposes recovering slow contemplation in the face of accelerated consumption of art as if it were a tourist attraction. The programming strategy. Faced with a 2025 full of large monographic exhibitions dedicated to Veronese, Anton Raphael Mengs or Juan Muñoz, designed to attract large audiences, 2026 is committed to more complex and specialized thematic proposals. They are proposals such as “In the manner of Italy. Spain and the Mediterranean Gothic (1320-1420)”, which Falomir recognizes will not have the commercial appeal of its predecessors. There are models in this policy, such as the Metropolitan Museum in New York, which has practiced for years a mixed model that balances big names with riskier academic exhibitions. The Tate Modern in London operates in a similar way. Museum exhaustion. In recent years a term has emerged: “museum fatigue“Visiting a museum has become an obstacle course where contemplating Las Meninas or La Gioconda means making your way through a forest of arms with mobile phones. Falomir sums it up like this: “The big problem with large museums is that the visitor is sovereign.” No one controls whether someone will stay eight hours or five minutes, or which rooms they will visit. The result: impossible concentrations in certain areas while others remain empty. In Xataka | This museum has a guide who makes fun of visitors. The result: sold out tickets

the AVE at 160 km/h in sections of the Madrid-Barcelona route

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Months of notices from the train drivers, who They were traveling below the maximum speed allowed on the road, and with the images of the Adamuz train accident (Córdoba) very present, Adif has reduced the maximum speed at which you can travel on the Madrid-Barcelona high speed train to 160 km/h. This is all that has happened. What has happened? Adif reduces the speed to 160 km/h in a section of 150 kilometers of the 667 kilometers that correspond to the Madrid-Barcelona route. The measure is temporary and, they announced this morning in Chain Being Before it became official, it was done after hearing the drivers complain that there were potholes in it that reduced driving comfort. after the accident. The exceptional measure comes at a delicate moment. last sunday an Iryo train derailed on a straight line near the town of Adamuz. 20 seconds later, an Alvia train traveling in the opposite direction collided with the last carriages of the Italian train and derailed. When we write these lines, 41 deaths have been reported. Since then, the videos have multiplied in which reference is made to the excessive vibrations of the high-speed trains that circulate through our country. However, the causes of the accident are unknown and It is very likely that it will take us months to know all the details. of what happened. There has been speculation about a defective switch, a stress-fractured track and train vibrations, but nothing has been confirmed by any official source. What is happening in Madrid-Barcelona? For months now, train drivers have been reporting problems traveling at the maximum speed on the track, which in The now cut section was 300 km/h. The complaint about excessive vibrations has been reported by passengers but also by workers. “The crew members complain, the interveners complain and we write complaints, because there are areas where we are hitting boats,” a Renfe driver complains to Xataka who prefers to remain anonymous. From SEMAF (Spanish Union of Railway Machinists) have confirmed to us that the machinists have been reporting considerable deterioration on the tracks for months, to the point of traveling at a speed below that expected. The height of the controversy came when last summer some S-106 trains known as the Talgo Avril cracked. Since then, Talgo and Adif blame each other for what happened. How serious is it? From SEMAF they assure us that vibrations directly impact the running comfort and the useful life of the train components but they rule out that there is a risk of derailment for this reason. From the General Council of Industrial Engineers share this vision: “the usual vibrations are foreseen in the design of both the train and the infrastructure. High-speed railway systems work with very wide safety margins,” they assure Xataka also pointing out that the perception of small irregularities on the road or in the rolling stock are amplified when driving at high speeds. And the driver who has offered us his testimony thinks the same. “If we understand that there is a danger to traffic, we call the command posts and they take measures by putting limitations, although for months we have also been taking them by slowing down. We are the first interested parties, we want to return home,” he emphasizes. First consequence. Adif’s decision is the first significant measure taken after the accident in Adamuz (Córdoba) in which 41 people have died and in which rescue work continues. It remains to be seen if more measures of this magnitude are taken but it must be remembered that the specific reason that led to the accident remains unknown. Photo | André Marques on Wikimedia In Xataka | Spain thought that Spain could manufacture the perfect trains for Spain. The reality: Spain is already looking for trains in Germany

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