Month: January 2026

when you can cancel, how much you get back and how to do it

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Let’s tell you How can you cancel your Renfe, Iryo or ticket? Ouigoso that if you want to cancel your trip you can know how to do it. You will not always be able to cancel your ticket, so we are also going to tell you in which cases you can do so, and then how to proceed. In this article what we are talking about is voluntary cancellations, not when They cancel a trip. And you are going to find bad news, because it will generally depend on the fare or whether you have paid an extra when purchasing a ticket. Cancel your Renfe ticket Being able to cancel tickets for an AVE train, AVE International between Spain and France, Alvia, Euromed and Intercity, depends on the type of ticket you have purchased. Basic tickets do not allow cancellationsso bad luck if you didn’t pay an extra. If you paid for a Choose and Choose Comfort if you will be able to cancel the ticket with a 70% refund, unless you paid the supplement Full refundwith which you are given 100%. Premium tickets will give you a full refund, because they include this supplement. On Avant, Media Distancia, Cercanías and Rodalies trains, you can cancel without problem, although with a cost which can be 15% of the price as cancellation fees. Avant and Media Distancia Round Trip fares have a cost of 40% of the ticket. Cercanías and Rodalíes tickets can only be canceled within two hours of their purchase. To cancel Renfe tickets you will have to go to the website https://venta.renfe.com/vol/searchTickets.do?c=_18QX or its mobile application, as well as in person. You will need the locator and ticket information to proceed to cancel it. Cancel your Iryo ticket Being able to cancel an Iryo ticket It depends on the rate you paid with. your ticket If you have purchased a single ticket with the INITIAL fare, then you will not be able to cancel them. With the other rates you can cancel a trip up to 30 minutes before its departure, but there is always a commission. With INITIAL Superior and INFINITE fare tickets you are refunded 85% if you cancel more than 7 days in advance, or 75% if not. With the INFINITA Bistro you will receive a 95% or 90% refund depending on whether you cancel before or after 7 days of the trip. To cancel your ticket you will have to go to iryo.eu and click on Manage your reservation. Then, after locating your trip you will have the option to cancel it. Cancel your Ouigo ticket With Ouigo, being able to cancel your ticket It also depends on the rate with which you hired him. If you have OUIGO ESSENTIAL or OUIGO Plus, to be able to cancel your ticket you have to have paid the extra for REFUNDABLE TICKET. Users who paid for OUIGO FULL will be able to cancel their trip 30 minutes before it takes place. If you accept a non-refundable purchase voucher For trips with the company, then you get a 100% refund. If you want a refund, then they only give you 80%. To cancel your ticket with Ouigo, you have to go to the website ouigo.comand enter the section My Tickets. Then, you will have to select the one you want from those you have purchased, and there will be the option to cancel it. In Xataka Basics | What can you do if your train has been cancelled?

AEMET has set an expiration date on Borrasca Harry. But what’s coming from Greenland is about to begin

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On January 17 and 18, AEMET issued a series of special warnings due to a Mediterranean storm that has been causing problems in the Balearic Sea for days. But, in those notices, there was something else: a problem. And no, it’s not just that we are going to the most unstable week of what we have had in winter. And then? In those noticesAEMET describes a blocking pattern that was elongating a trough and favoring a retrograde DANA. That was Harry, a high-impact storm forming in the Mediterranean (and already is leaving snow near the coast). According to AEMET estimatesthe accumulations can be on the order of 200 liters in 48 hours in the Girona area and more than 20 centimeters of new snow in southeastern Iberian. But Harry ends tomorrow and that’s where the problems begin. The jet returns. Because, in parallel, the anticyclonic blockade between Greenland and the Scandinavian peninsula will interrupt the zonal flow and force the polar jet to lower latitude. In fact, it will descend so much that it will focus directly on Spain, guiding fronts and cold masses from the north. Or, rather, we are talking about cold advection with synoptic trajectories. These models still lack consistency, of course: but the models and outputs are converging in this scenario. What should we expect? Right now, the point of greatest risk It is the Mediterranean coast. Although Harry already has an expiration date, it is a storm that can be very intense locally and can cause problems in short basins (with rapid floods). Not to mention the difficulties at the coastal level and the gusts of wind. Then, if we are a little lucky, it will be reactivated.Atlantic storm machine and a train of storms will begin to enter from the west. If we are unlucky, the cold will return. But, well, at the gates of February it is still within what is expected. Image | ECMWF In Xataka | After the cold comes something much more problematic: the explosive cyclogenesis that AEMET predicts for the Mediterranean

consumes more light than the city of San Francisco during rush hour

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Being late to the AI ​​race means being left behind. We have the case of Apple that has just knelt and will use Google models to improve Siri. However, there is another opposite case with xAI, a company that was born in 2023when ChatGPT was already more than grown, and today it has made a place for itself among the largest, even overtaking them. what has happened. xAI has just inaugurated Colossus 2, its new data center located in Memphis, Tennessee. For an AI company to open a data center is not surprising, given the pace at which they are being built, but in this case we are talking about the first AI training cluster of 1 gigawatt of power. To put it in context, it is more electricity than peak hour demand in the city of San Francisco. Elon Musk has boasted in X and has assured that by April they want to expand to 1.5 gigawatts. Colossus 2, in figures. Colossus 1 has 230,000 GPUs and the new cluster has upped the ante with more than half a million GPUs and it is also one of the most expensive ever built. According to the report of EpochAIthe investment has reached 44,000 million dollars. The Microsoft Fairwater center is expected to surpass it in both investment and power, but is still in the construction phase. Infrastructure yes, thank you. xAI may not have the best chatbot, but they want to have it and that means creating infrastructure faster than their rivals. With Colossus 1the company completed its construction in just 122 days, a milestone. Colossus 2 took a little longer (the project started in March 2025), but In just six months it already had 200MW of cooling capacity installedwhich according to Semianalysis is much faster than other megaprojects from Oracle and OpenAI. Stepping on the accelerator. As we said, xAI was born in 2023, a time when there were already established companies in the sector. In the Semianalysis graph, you can see perfectly the acceleration they have given in training capacity. At the beginning of 2024 they were last in capacity and by September 2025 they had placed second behind OpenAI. Apart from the Grok controversies (that there have not been few) it has become clear that betting on infrastructure has been key for xAI catches up of his rivals. Controversies. Feeding these mastodons is not an easy task and for this Musk’s company deployed up to 35 gas turbines with a capacity of more than 400 megawatts. The problem is that they pollute a lot and Memphis already has terrible air quality, so much so that it’s known as the “asthma capital.” Plus, he didn’t have permission to have that many turbines, so Musk had an idea: Colossus is next to the border with Mississippi, another state where emissions laws are more lax, so moved part of the turbines there. Image | xAI In Xataka | Elon Musk wants to turn xAI into an ultra-valuable company and he knows how to do it: using the SpaceX vault

Renfe already has an alternative plan

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The tragic railway accident that occurred on Sunday, January 19 in Adamuz (Córdoba), which left at least 40 dead and 41 hospitalized, has completely cut off the high-speed line between Madrid and Andalusia. According to the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, the connection will not be fully operational again until February 2 or 3which represents an interruption of approximately two weeks in one of the most important railway corridors in the country. Emergency solution. Renfe has activated since this Tuesday, January 20 an Alternative Transportation Plan which combines train and bus journeys. The operator has made it clear that this device “is designed to guarantee the mobility of travelers who must travel for strictly necessary reasons,” according to its official statement. The critical point of the plan is the section between Córdoba and Villanueva de Córdoba, which will be done by road, which will increase the total travel time. The services available. The plan contemplates seven daily frequencies from Madrid to Andalusia: four to Seville (departures at 7:00, 11:00, 15:00 and 19:00) and three to Malaga (at 9:00, 13:00 and 17:00). In the opposite direction, there will be four departures from Seville and three from Malaga distributed throughout the day. The trains will make intermediate stops in Ciudad Real and Puertollano when traveling between Madrid and Villanueva de Córdoba, while services to Málaga will stop in Antequera. Conventional route. In addition to the combined train-bus services, Renfe has enabled three special services by conventional route from Madrid Chamartín: one towards Seville (7:00 a.m.), another towards Cádiz (3:00 p.m.) and a third to Granada and Almería (4:25 p.m.). These trains, some in double composition to increase capacity, use the conventional network instead of high speed. The company has also reinforced the Madrid-Extremadura-Seville Media Distancia line with 736 additional seats. Price. The complete Madrid-Seville or Madrid-Málaga ticket for the alternative plan has a fixed price of 40 euros in tourist class. Renfe also shares that affected passengers may request a full refund of their original ticket and purchase a new one for this alternative service, or request a ticket change with a refund of the difference. Impact. On Monday, January 20 alone, more than 200 trains were affected by the suspension, according to they count from the EFE agency, including AVE, Alvia, Avlo, Ouigo and Iryo. Thousands of travelers have faced cancellations and have denounced on social media the lack of immediate alternatives and the high prices of available flights. Although airlines such as Iberia and Air Europa they have added frequencies and with some prices capped at 150 euros, many users have preferred to take the bus or use car-sharing platforms such as Blablacar, which registered a 25% increase in trips published in Andalusia. We still don’t know anything. The investigation of the accident focuses on a break detected in the road, although Minister Puente has insisted in which it is still unknown whether it is the cause or a consequence of the derailment. “There is a first breaking point in the track from which it is considered that the derailment has occurred, but it is one more indication, we must determine if it is the cause or the consequence,” he explained on Cadena Ser. Work in the area continues to clear the track and first restore one of the two affected lines before recovering full service. In Xataka | Those affected by the railway cut in the Adamuz accident can breathe a sigh of relief: up to four days of leave

when to know when there are going to be more chances of them happening

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Let’s tell you How can you know if there are going to be northern lights in Spain?. So, in case you hear that there may be some in the next night or if there have been some the night before and you want to know if they will be repeated, you will have a reliable source to know. We are going to tell you three resources that you can use, and that predict the amplitude and areas where there will be Auroras in the next few hours. A good reference to browse. How to see if there will be northern lights To see if there are going to be northern lights in Spain, the best resource is the website of space time by AEMETwhose page is spaceweather.aemet.es. In it, within the section Auroraswith predictions for the next few hours. There are two maps, one for the northern hemisphere and one for the southern hemisphere. This map shows predictions using the OVATION model, based on observations of the solar wind. With this model, you can see in red the areas where there will be auroraswith colors grading to green depending on the possibilities. In short, if any of the colors approach Spain, then you will know that there are chances of seeing the northern lights. Additionally, if you click on the map you will go to the original source of the information, the Space Weather Prediction Center website. In it you will be able to see in video format what this evolution of the auroras will be like during the next few hours. You can get even more information Another interesting resource is the website spaceweatherlive.comwhere there is a section of Auroral activity. Here, you will have all the technical data with which to understand if there will be auroras, from the possibilities to the movement of magnetic fields. It’s normal to get lost in all this. Here, look at the right side of the website, where the places with the most possibilities are indicated. Then, in oval auroraclick on More informationand you will go to a page where below you can click on a tab Europe and Asiato see which countries or regions in Europe and Asia are most likely to have auroras. Easier with Aurora Forecast Finally there is a page with mobile applications called Aurora Forecast, with a page where you can see the probability of auroras in major cities Spanish. You just have to enter auroraforecast.me/country/spainand below you will see a list of cities along with the odds in each one. You will even be able to use the search engine to find the big city closest to you, and enter a tab where you will be told all the possibilities you have of there being one in the next 6 hours. In the mobile application you will have information for the next 27 days. Look for information from reliable pages In addition to this, it is also recommended search for information on weather websites. The general media usually covers this information well, talking about when it can happen, but sometimes current affairs may bury this other information and it may not always be reported. Therefore, it is good to consult social networks and media pages such as AEMET and ElTiempo.es. In Xataka Basics | Personal weather forecast in Gemini: how to use it to ask the weather today and how to schedule forecasts to appear for you

the underground works of the A-5 in Madrid

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Yesterday, January 19, 2026, a little before 8 in the morning, I was already in front of the computer preparing for the work day. I had been carrying out a task for a few minutes when suddenly, surprise: the websites I was trying to load in the browser did not load. The Wi-Fi connection had been cut offso I tried the network connection. Nothing. My wife, who was also online at the time, confirmed it to me. We didn’t have internet at home. Taking a look at the HGU router we use (we are O2 customers) I found two red lights flashing. I turned it off and on again, but the problem persisted. This looks bad, I thought. I immediately called O2 customer service, at 1551, and found the second surprise: they don’t answer until nine in the morning unless the phone is lost or stolen. Fortunately, the mobile data connection was still working, so I went to it: I shared that connection from my mobile to my work computer through tethering and I got to work without too many problems: the bandwidth of 5G connections is already more than enough for this type of scenario, so essentially I didn’t notice the problem too much. Shortly after nine in the morning I called O2 again, and a person answered the call to whom I told the problem. As soon as I did it, he told me that there was a service interruption in my area —”Oh, is it in my area, isn’t it something just mine?” I asked—and that they were working on solving it. “In the meantime,” he said, “We are going to offer you an unlimited data bonus both to your line and to all those associated with your contract. The person who assisted me also told me that the company would notify me by message when the incident was resolved. Some time later I received that confirmation message, and I continued working with the mobile data thinking that the problem would be resolved in a few hours. It’s been more than 24 hours and I’m still the same. The works on the A-5, recurring culprits Throughout yesterday I checked from time to time to see if the lights on the router changed, and just in case I restarted it to regain normal connectivity as soon as possible. There was no way. Source: Diario de Madrid. When several hours had passed and we still had no solution to the problem, I looked for some more information about the cause and quickly found an article in ADSLZone commenting on it: the underground works of the A-5who had left without internet an unknown number of Movistar and O2 clients. Those affected belong to the southwest area of ​​Madrid —Aluche, Campamento, Colonia Jardín, Pozuelo—, and I was one of them. This latest incident is not the first of its kind, and in fact there have already been cuts, for example in july, in August and in November. In all of them the reason was the underground works on the A-5, although at no time has the specific reason why these cuts occurred been clarified. This work is producing other side effects such as the saturation of Metro line 10, the dust and the deteriorated air quality for the residents of the surrounding areas, or traffic jams on the roads enabled in an extraordinary way throughout the underground. However, it is evident that the project is moving forward, and a few days ago the two sections of tunnel were connected executed to date. The tunnel is expected to be completed in Aprilalthough the vehicles They will not be able to circulate through it until the end of the year. Let’s hope that from now on there will be no more outages and the rest of the problems will also be mitigated. In Xataka | There is an extensive system to avoid being cut off in the 48 km underground of the M-30. It’s time to renew it

The US invaded Venezuela with perfidy. A letter suggests that there is something simpler and more primitive with Greenland: vendetta

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The greenland crisis has ceased to be a diplomatic scuffle and has become an open pulse between Washington and its allies, and that means an accelerated deterioration of trust within NATO. While Denmark has sent more troops to the islanda letter points to an idea that was not in the pools: that the germ of everything comes from a question of revenge. The Atlantic Rift. The positions at the moment are clear: Trump insists that the United States must “acquire” a strategic island rich in minerals, while Denmark and Greenland repeat that not for sale and they warn of a climate in which the threat of force is no longer taboo. For its part, Europe is beginning to speak not only of political indignation but of economic responses and security, because what seemed like a campaign eccentricity is becoming a structural crisis regarding sovereignty, alliances and credibility. Meanwhile, Russia observe with popcorn and from the sidelines how the Western bloc is fracturing from the inside. From perfidy to vendetta. The most disturbing element is not only the objective, but the real motive that Trump has hinted at: if in other recent scenarios Washington was able to resort to perfidy (the engineering of deception, the calculated movement, the operation that is disguised as something else) here something simpler, cruel and primitive appears, the vendetta. We don’t say it, Trump himself has linked his determination not to have received the Nobel Peace Prize in a letter to the Norwegian minister, as if a symbolic humiliation was enough to break the mental brakes and justify him no longer feeling obliged to “think purely about peace.” That emotional turn turns everything in unpredictable: It would no longer be a cold dispute over the Arctic, but a personal reckoning elevated to doctrine, an explosive mix of wounded narcissism and state power that degrades any rational alibi and leaves its allies without stable ground on which to negotiate. The economic threat and the language of blackmail. The escalation takes shape in a pressure scheme that sounds more like an ultimatum than diplomacy between partners: as we counted yesterdayTrump threatens 10% tariffs on Denmark and several European countries, with the promise to raise them to 25% if there is no agreement. Not only that. In parallel, he reserves the “no comment” when asked about the use of forcea silence that functions as a threat in itself, because it allows each gesture to be interpreted as preparatory. Europe, for its part, is beginning to speak of countermeasures and activate pressure instruments commercial, making it clear that he understands the movement as political extortion. In other words, sovereignty becomes a currency, and the economy becomes the mechanism to bend the will of an ally. Nuuk The gesture that turned everything on. counted the financial times A revealing story this morning. Apparently, the spark that lit everything is almost ridiculous because of the size of figures: the dispatch of a British soldier, two Finns and small Danish, French and German detachments arriving for an exercise conceived as a sign of commitment to Arctic security and solidarity with Copenhagen. The European message intended to be reassuringas if to say that the region is not neglected and that the allies take the northern flank seriously, but Trump interpreted as a challenge responding with commercial retaliationas if this symbolic presence were an anti-American provocation. There appeared a central problem of the crisis: what for some is a defensive gesture, for the White House becomes an affront that would confirm its story that Europe stands up to it. The island is militarized. Faced with this aggressive reading, Denmark has upped the ante on the ground with a more visible and politically charged reinforcement. sending more soldiers of combat and the head of the Army himself to Greenland. They add to the approximately 200 troops already deployed between Nuuk and Kangerlussuaq in the framework by Arctic Endurancewhich is also accelerated and intensified precisely by the Trump’s verbal escalationas if the exercise went from routine to warning. In parallel, the images of soldiers patrolling the center of Nuuk and the presence of a Danish warship patrolling the coast They project the feeling that the island has entered a new phase, where normality is militarized without the need for shots. NORAD moves pieces. The TWZ analysts They also emphasized another movement that occurs at the same time. NORAD advertisement sending troops and aircraft to Greenland to support “long-planned” and “routine” activities, stressing that they are not linked to the current crisis. The timing may be real, but the political effect is inseparable from context: In the midst of escalation, any American movement on the island seems like a message, and any explanation sounds like a textbook formula. The “security argument.” As the weeks passed, in addition, the Trump’s strategic pretext It is beginning to sound increasingly hollow, because Europe is trying to cover the same need (reinforcing the Arctic) and yet American pressure does not relax. In fact, for many observersthe European shipment uncovers the real reason, because if the problem was that Greenland was exposed to Russia or China, then a greater allied presence should be the solution, not the trigger. Chagos as ammunition. The Guardian had a few hours ago another way: Trump has reinforced his vision of the world using the case of the Chagos Islands as a moral example in reverse, calling of “great stupidity” for the United Kingdom to cede sovereignty to Mauritius even if it maintains the island of Diego García leased 99 years for the joint base. In his story, that act shows weaknessand that weakness is what China and Russia “only understand” as opportunity, so Greenland “must” be acquired for national security reasons. The logic is simplistic: neither law nor history rules, but force, and what is given by agreement is interpreted as a kind of shameful concession, even if it is an arrangement to sustain a military installation. Meanwhile, in Greenland. dSince the beginning of the crisis, … Read more

We have top prices on mobile phones, laptops and more

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It is often said that the first months of the year are quite calm as far as offers are concerned, but there are always promos that break with this. The last one to arrive is brought to us by MediaMarktwhich has once again started its campaign with which we can benefit from a direct discount of 15% if we buy through their mobile app. Buy from this app, which is available on both Google Play Store as in the Apple App Storeit is as simple as doing it from the web. with her, we can benefit from very good prices right nowlike all these that we leave you below: Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra by 976.65 eurosone of the best Android phones of 2025. Asus TUF Gaming Laptop by 1,274.15 eurosa device with 32 GB of RAM ideal for playing at 1080p. DualSense V2 by 62.04 eurosthe PlayStation 5 controller that is also compatible with PC. Dyson V15 Detect upright vacuum cleaner by 509.15 euroshistorical minimum price for this Dyson model. Google Pixel 10 by 636.65 eurosa great mobile phone if we are looking for a compact device. Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra We start with the Galaxy S25 Ultrawinner of the Xataka award for best super high-end mobile of 2025. It is a device that stands out for offering a 6.9-inch screen with QHD+ resolution that also has one of the best anti-reflective treatments there is. Its performance is outstanding thanks to the Snapdragon 8 Elite, it has a very complete camera system and has seven years of guaranteed updates. Right now it is discounted to 1,149 eurosalthough if we make the purchase from the app, its price remains at 976.65 euros. Mobile – Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, Titanium Black, 256 GB, 12 GB RAM, 6.9″ WQHD+, Snapdragon 8, 5000 mAh, Android 15 The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Asus TUF Gaming Laptop These types of promos are very interesting for renewing a laptop, especially if we are looking for a gaming option. This one from Asus, model TUF Gaming FX608JMR-RV003, is a very balanced device. Its graphics card is an RTX 5060, ideal for playing any current title at 1080p and compatible with the new DLSS 4.5. In addition, it has an Intel Core i7-14650HX, 32 GB of RAM and 1 TB of SSD. All rounded off by a 16-inch screen with 165 Hz. Its price is now 1,499 eurosbut from the app it stays on 1,274.15 euros. Gaming laptop – ASUS TUF Gaming FX608JMR-RV003, 16 “WUXGA, Intel® Core™ i7-14650HX, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, GeForce RTX™ 5060, No operating system The price could vary. We earn commission from these links DualSense V2 The DualSense is a very interesting controller to play, both on PlayStation 5 and PC. It is wireless and has a built-in battery, which is always a plus. Its ergonomics make it quite comfortable and on the Sony console we can enjoy a series of functions that are great for immersion, such as adaptive triggers or haptic vibration. Its price on MediaMarkt right now is 72.99 eurosbut we can get one from the app by 62.04 euros. PS5 Controller – Sony Dualsense V2, For PlayStation 5 and PC, Bluetooth, Haptic feedback, White The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Dyson V15 Detect upright vacuum cleaner Within all the upright vacuum cleaners what’s up, this one Dyson V15 Detect It is one of the best currently available. It offers 240 AW of suction power and has laser lighting so that we don’t leave any dirt behind while we pass it. Its LCD screen will show us information in real time such as its autonomy and, as it comes with several accessories, it will be easy for us to vacuum any corner of the house. It is reduced to 599 eurosalthough from the app it stays on 509.15 euros. Stick vacuum cleaner – Dyson V15 Detect™ Absolute, Suction power 240 AW, 60 min, Intelligent and Powerful, 3 Modes, Laser Technology, Dirt Sensor The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Google Pixel 10 We close with another mobile, also one of the best Android phones of 2025. We talk about the Google Pixel 10an ideal device for those who like compact phones. It uses a 6.3-inch OLED display with 3,000 nits of peak brightness, and under the hood comes the Tensor G5 (as well as 12GB of RAM). Its battery is 4,970 mAh and it has a triple rear camera system, as well as seven years of guaranteed updates. It is reduced to 749 eurosalthough we can get it for 636.65 euros from the app. Mobile – Google Pixel 10, Obsidian, 256 GB, 12 GB RAM, 6.3″ Actua OLED, Google Tensor G5, 4970 mAh, Android 16 The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Images | Purchase addiction, Samsung, Asus, PlayStation, Dyson, Google In Xataka | The best mobile phones, we have tested them and here are their analyzes In Xataka | Best cordless upright vacuum cleaners. Which one to buy and seven recommended broom vacuum cleaners from 139 euros

In its obsessive effort to be Spain within Spain, Madrid now has a new festival: the April Fair

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It’s been a while since the April Fair It took flight to expand beyond (much beyond) Seville. Today they organize their own fairs with a profusion of flamenco and polka dots in Galicia, Catalonia, Castile and León either Cantabriaas well as in other countries, including other side of the ocean. The reason is very simple. Its mix of dance, gastronomy and culture is popular. So much so, in fact, that in Madrid they have decided to launch your own fair in a big way, with a multi-week event. Its objective is to expand by 200,000 m2 and attract 800,000 visitors. One word: Madrilucía. The name is a declaration of intentions. The objective of Madrilucia is to bring the spirit of the April Fair to the capital. In fact, its organizers they present it as “the first great Andalusian fair in Madrid”, with hundreds of booths, spaces dedicated to fashion, horse parades, gastronomy, music, culture… A little piece of the south spread throughout the capital. The event aspires to take up the witness of the fairs held between 1986 and 1995 at the initiative of Francisco de Paula López and which filled the Puerta de Alcalá or Gran Vía with horses, with carriages like those seen in Seville. López, a Sevillian who emigrated to Madrid in the early 70s, decided to promote a fair in the city to “unite the Andalusians” and overthrow clichés. The initiative even gave rise to a documentary broadcast by Canal Sur, ‘Operation Madrilucía’. One figure: 200,000. The Madrid fair will be organized in the Iberdrola Music (Villaverde, Madrid) and will occupy in total, according to those responsible, more than 200,000 square meters“an ephemeral town” made up of more than 400 booths. The offer is completed with “horses, tapas, concerts and flamenco fashion.” The space will in fact be divided into a “festive” area dedicated to live music, with booths and catering; another cultural one, in which stands dedicated to art, fashion and saddlery will be concentrated; and others focused on equestrian culture, gastronomy, leisure and music. Of course, reserve one of their booths it doesn’t come cheap: the Madrilucía website provides information on options that they range from 55,000 to 59,000 euros (plus VAT) per week, depending on the level of decoration. Go for 800,000. The Madrid fair will not overlap with that of Seville, scheduled for the week from April 21 to 26. Madrilucía will start almost immediately afterwards: on May 9. Those in charge already warn that it will be prolonged 20 days and the objective is to attract some 800,000 people until the first days of June. For now, it already has the support of popular figures, such as the bullfighter Sebastián Castella, who has dedicated a video to promote the event. Heads and tails. Although the organizers point out that they hope that the fair “coexist with the local environment”the neighboring Getafe City Council has already expressed its concern about the noise and overcrowding that the fair may generate. “If for a weekend like the Mad Cool or Regaetton Beach Festival the M45 and streets of the Marconi industrial estate in Villaverde are closed, affecting companies and workers, and access is prevented for residents of Getafe and Villaverde to get to their homes, what will be the device that the Madrid City Council and the Community intend to deploy for a fair that will last 20 days?” they pointed out recently to News for Municipalities from the Executive of Getafe, governed by the PSOE. Why is it important? Because beyond the event, its scope or impact on the environment, Madrilucía confirms the expansion (and popularity) of the April Fair beyond Seville and Andalusia. two years ago in fact we told you how a debate had spread on networks about the appropriate dress code to attend the fair or how virality of the hashtag #papagorda to show people who had overindulged in drinks at the fair led the Audiovisual Council of Andalusia (CAA) to warn of the risks to record without consent. Images |Madrilucia In Xataka | Seville wanted more security on its streets at night. To achieve this, he has recovered an old figure: the night watchman.

now everyone wants to fill the sky

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Launching the first commercial satellites, Telstar-1 and Telstar-2, cost almost $400,000 per kilogram in the 1960s. Today it costs about $6,500 per kilogram if you use the program Falcon 9 of SpaceX to send cargo, according to data from the Kfund venture capital fund. The drastic reduction in costs has enabled organizations and companies to send more and more satellites per year and, consequently, the Earth’s orbit to become saturated at an unprecedented rate. filling the sky. What was once the exclusive territory of governments and large corporations is now within the reach of startups with modest budgets. FOSSA Systems, a Spanish company, has deployed more than 20 satellites with less than 10 million euros in total financing, according to Kfund. In Spain, the number of objects launched into space has more than tripled between 2021 and 2024, going from 21 to 69 payloads. At a global level, the change is even more dramatic, because while it previously took decades to deploy entire constellations, now this is achieved in a matter of months. Changes. The drop in prices is mainly due to a series of converging factors. On the one hand rocket reuse that they have perfected since SpaceX. In addition, there is now a satellite standardization (from giant, customized machines to modular microsatellites), while also taking advantage of economies of scale. Everything indicates that the cost per kilogram would continue to trend downward, and the next jump could come from StarshipSpaceX’s heavy-lift rocket that promises to reduce costs even further. More satellites, also more problems. This democratization has been a complicated scenario. Now the barrier to entry for sending objects into space is much lower than before, so the risk of launching satellites without centralized coordination also increases. A while ago we also talked about the risk of collisionwhich has accelerated in recent years due to the massification of low Earth orbit. Among the consequences we find space junk that grows exponentially (each collision generates fragments that can cause new collisions), interference between communication frequencies, and a growing orbital militarization difficult to monitor. Insufficient legal frameworks. Outer space operates under international treaties designed since the Cold War, when only two powers had orbital access capacity. Today, with hundreds of private and state operators, these legal frameworks are insufficient. For this reason, the limitations on how many satellites an operator can launch, where they should be located or where they end up at the end of their useful life are issues that They are not managed by any global authority. The result is a kind of orbital “tragedy of the commons” in which everyone benefits from cheap access, but no one fully bears the costs of this massive traffic. Fragmentation. “The world is continually changing, in some places faster than before,” points out Silviu Pirvu, Chairman and CTO of Optimal Cities, to the firm Kfund. Space infrastructure serves us more than ever to respond to crises, manage risks or make decisions in real time, although the control and governance landscape of this same infrastructure is difficult. Meanwhile, Europe is trying to gain sovereignty with initiatives such as IRIS² to reduce dependence on non-European suppliers, but regulatory fragmentation persists. The long-term risks. The scientific community has been warning for years about the Kessler syndrome: a scenario in which the density of objects in low orbit reaches a critical point where cascading collisions make the use of certain orbits unfeasible for generations. Although we are far from that extreme, each year that passes without effective regulation brings us closer to that reality. The European Space Agency esteem that there are already more than 36,000 objects larger than 10 centimeters in orbit, most of them junk. Regulate a common good. There are several questions on the table, but perhaps the most interesting would be to know how a global common good is regulated when there are commercial and strategic incentives that push in the opposite direction. Although there are numerous spatial monitoring systems, such as the SSA (Space Situational Awareness) of the ESA, this capability is not a solution to the underlying problem of setting limits. Cover image | THAT In Xataka | The Challenger explosion: 40 years of the accident that forever changed the course of NASA and space exploration

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