Month: February 2026

The countries with the highest number of billionaires among their population, brought together in a very revealing graph

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The great fortunes they are not distributed uniformly across the planet. A few countries concentrate the majority of the world’s billionaires, while others barely contribute names to that exclusive club. The geographical distribution of extreme wealth leaves us with a snapshot that gives clues about which countries or tax policies encourage capital accumulation and they are the perfect breeding ground for generating wealth. In 2025, the wealth gap between the average population and the great fortunes has skyrocketed, but it has also left evidence of this difference between countries. The comparative graph prepared by Visual Capitalist allows you to compare this distribution in a very visual and direct way. The graph is powered by data provided by the study’Billionaire Ambitions Report 2025‘ prepared by UBS and the consulting firm PwC, in which an annual record of the number of billionaires is maintained. That is, people with assets exceeding one billion dollars at the beginning of the year. A billionaire factory To no one’s surprise, the US dominates by a wide margin the world ranking of countries according to the number of billionaires. The country hosts 924 people with a net worth of over a billion dollars, a figure that practically doubles that of the second-ranked player. This concentration also translates into a increase in joint wealthsince the sum of the US fortunes reaches a total of about 6.9 trillion dollars. China is in second place with 470 billionaires among its population. However, despite accounting for almost 50% of the billionaires in the US, their combined wealth is much lower, being close to 1.8 trillion dollars. That is to say, we only have half as many millionaires as the US, their combined assets are almost four times less. Third place on the list of countries with the most billionaires is occupied by India with 188 people with assets exceeding one billion dollars. Again, the comparison between India and China reveals a asynchronous growth between the number of millionaires and their total assets, with a combined capital of 888,000 million dollars. That is, with one third of China’s millionaires, the sum of the assets of the Indian magnates It is half of its Chinese counterparts. This reveals that a good number of Chinese millionaires have managed to overcome the billion-dollar barrier, but the accumulation of wealth from these great fortunes is not as pronounced as in other countries such as the US or India. The European map of billionaires Europe presents a internal distribution marked by notable differences between countries. According to data from the UBS report, Germany tops the European list with 156 billionairesbeing the main country on the continent in this aspect. Their combined fortune amounts to 692 billion dollars, which places them in a position alienated from the proportions of the United States or India. Common names also appear in the list in the lists of countries with millionaire populations, What are the United Kingdom like?which occupies fifth place with 91 billionairesor Switzerland with 84 great fortunes. In the following ranks are countries like Italy, which with 61 billionaires occupies the eighth position in number of great fortunes. France is also among the countries with outstanding figures, although well below these three leaders as it occupies thirteenth position in the ranking. In these cases, the harsh sales crisis in the Chinese and Asian markets for luxury products have seriously affected the balance sheets of exclusive brands like LVMH or Ferrariwhose owners are located as standard bearers of those great fortunes. The distribution of fortunes makes it clear that, even within Europethe concentration of billionaires tends to cluster in industrialized economies or with fiscal policies very oriented to capital returns. Spain takes positions Spain is not among the European countries with more billionairesalthough it has experienced recent growth in that select group. According to UBS data for 2025, the total number of Spanish billionaires who exceed the billion-dollar threshold It is 32 people. This figure places Spain as the seventeenth country with the most billionaires behind countries such as Germany, the United Kingdom or Italy in the continental ranking. The total combined wealth of the Spanish billionaires reaches $213.1 billion (about 182,602 million euros) in 2025, with an increase of 21.5% compared to previous years. However, in the Spanish case, the concentration of assets is not uniform, there is one figure that monopolizes a good part of that total assets: Amancio Ortega. In Xataka | Seven of the ten largest fortunes in the world in 2026 are due to AI: this illustrative graph makes it very clear Image | Visual Capitalist

Creating a C compiler cost 2 million dollars and took 2 years. Claude Opus 4.6 did it in two weeks for $20,000

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We are facing a technological inflection point. Uo in which software engineering, one of the most complex and demanding technical tasks in history, little by little It is becoming the “killer app” of AI. It is clear that generative AI models are not perfect, but we continue to see extraordinary evolution. The latest example? The C compiler that Claude Opus 4.6 programmed all by himself. what has happened. Nicholas Carlini, researcher at Anthropic, I counted yesterday how “I’ve been experimenting with a new way of monitoring language models that we’ve called “agent teams””. What it has done is ensure that several programming agents work in parallel using the recently released Claude Opus 4.6, and thanks to that it has developed something exceptional with 16 of these agents: a C code compiler. Hello CCC. At Anthropic they have called it Claude’s C Compiler (CCC), and they have published the code, completely generated by Opus 4.6, on GitHub. The project consists of 100,000 lines of Rust code that were generated in two weeks with an API cost of $20,000. And it works: with it they have compiled a functional Linux 6.9 kernel on x86, ARM and RISC-V. Before it was (at least) two million dollars and two years. What this experiment has achieved is to demonstrate how software development can be much cheaper and faster thanks to the use of these agents. Although there is no readily available data on how much time and money compilers cost in the past, the size of these products was enormous, as is the case with Microsoft Visual C++For example. It is difficult to know how much it cost, but it is estimated that it involved 15-20 people working for five years. That’s a lot of man hours and a lot of money to develop and polish that compiler. The estimate of two years and two million dollars may in fact be overly optimistic. another example. Historically, building a C compiler from scratch was considered one of the pinnacles of systems engineering. Not only was in-depth knowledge of processor architecture required, but thousands of man-hours were required to manage optimization and machine code generation. In the 90s the company Cygnus Solutions (clue in compiler development gcc) came to invest more than 250 million in a decade to maintain and port build tools. The real cost was not just in the final lines of code, but in countless hours analyzing CPU and memory patterns to make the resulting binary efficient. Far from perfect, but… Carlini himself explained in the post that this compiler had serious limitations and for example “it does not have a 16-bit x86 compiler which is essential to start Linux outside of “real mode”, and it does not have its own assembler nor its linker“. It is probably far from mature compilers, but even so the achievement remains exceptional and points to that future in which even very complex developments can be supported with AI. They will be expensive, no doubt, but their total development will probably be a fraction of what they cost a few years ago. Cursor already demonstrated it. Before Anthropic launched its AI-programmed compiler, Cursor completed a similar project, combining GPT-5.2 agents into its development platform to create a working browser in a week. In total the AI ​​programmed three million (!) lines of code in Rust, and although it was again far from being perfect or competing with Chrome, it demonstrated the current capacity of these agentic programming systems. Turning point (especially for Anthropic). For the SemiAnalysis experts Claude Code, current leading exponent of this new era of AI-driven programming, is a paradigm shift: “We believe that Claude Code is the turning point for AI agents and is a glimpse into the future of how AI will work.” This prestigious newsletter predicts an exceptional 2026 for Anthropic, and so much so that they believe it will “dramatically surpass OpenAI.” You ask, the AI ​​programs. If you have tried the vibe codingI’m sure you agree with me: AI allows you to do things you would never have dreamed of. What I did a few weeks ago with Immich made it clear to me, and I continue experimenting with AI and programming “custom” things that solve real problems and needs for me. Yes, for now they are for me and therefore they are not large and complex systems that need to be put into production as happens in professional environments, but I am clear that this is being done little by little and more will be done. In fact, both OpenAI and Anthropic have stood out how in the development of their latest models part of the work has been done, paradoxically, by those same models, which have fed back to each other. And the result is in production and used by millions of people. Something is changing. And it’s something big. In Xataka | OpenAI has a problem: Anthropic is succeeding right where the most money is at stake

nothing is what it seems

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Television had learned before that a single scene could justify huge budgets if it served to fix a series in the collective memory: game of Thrones burned millions in battles and dragons to redefine the television epic, lost Its story began with a pilot as expensive as it is risky to “leave the viewer nailed” from the first minute, and Friends turned special episodes into truly global events based on of astronomical checks. Therefore, what is truly surprising is not that a series spent a lot of money on a key scene, but that a small and apparently cheap comedy like The Office decided to do it at “that” moment. The millionaire exception. The Office was always built from budget containment, relying in scripts, rhythm and characters rather than in large technical displays, but that logic was consciously broken with a specific scene: the proposal from Jim to Pam at the beginning of season five. What on the screen seems like an everyday moment, one almost improvised and without artifice, ended up becoming the most expensive sequence of the entire series, a deliberate contrast between narrative simplicity and technical complexity. The simplest proposal… And more expensive. The scene that we are going to see next lasts just 52 seconds and cost around a whopping of 250,000 dollarsa totally disproportionate figure for an office comedy almost always shot indoors. The original intention was for Jim Halpert’s proposal to Pam Beesly to come up in a completely ordinary place and common in the United States as a highway gas station, and it was to reinforce the idea that important moments do not always occur in special settings. It was precisely this normality that forced an extraordinary production. Let’s see the moment: A fake highway in California. Filming in an authentic East Coast service area it turned out to be impossiblepartly due to security restrictions imposed after the 9/11 terrorist attack, so the team decided rebuild it from scratch in a parking lot in Los Angeles. As? Apparently inspired by a real Connecticut stop that series creator Greg Daniels knew about as a child. The team used images of Google Street View to replicate every detail and then built the set in just nine days. Trucks, rain and invisible tricks. Not only that. To simulate real highway traffic, built a track four-lane road around the set on which cars and trucks traveled at more than 80 km/h, vehicles driven by dozens of specialists, so that the wind and noise were real. Added to this were enormous rain machines and a later digital work to erase Californian mountains and replace them with trees from the East Coast, completing an illusion that the viewer was never supposed to notice. A decoration that was not what it seemed. Furthermore, the gas station seen on the screen was, in reality, almost flat: The interior of the minimarket was barely eight feet deep and many of the products in the back were simply printed and laminated photographs. As the author Andy Greene said in the book The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000severything was designed to fool the camera, not to exist as a functional space, reinforcing the paradox of a scene that appears to be the most realistic and spontaneous in the series. Romanticism on toxic terrain. As a final irony, the place chosen to build the set was neither more nor less than a former industrial site with toxic waste sealed under the asphalt, a detail that did not affect the filming but added another layer to the story. However, for its protagonists, the memory of filming of the scene in question was genuinely romantic and the result fit perfectly with the tone of a unique series: a great emotional moment hidden within a seemingly insignificant scenario. Image | The Office In Xataka | In 1987 a death was filmed so savage that people had to cover themselves. The trick to achieve it turned RoboCop into a cult work In Xataka | In 1978 Christopher Reeve was chosen to play ‘Superman’. He got so beaten up that he literally couldn’t fit into the suit.

The US has such a big problem with Asian carp in its rivers that it has decided something extreme: electrocute them

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Back in the 70s in the United States someone had an idea to control the growth of algae, weeds and parasites from aquaculture farms in the southern states: introduce four species of carp from Asia, more specifically the bighead carpthe black carpthe grass carp and the silver carp. If you know a little about biology or ever fishing you have come across a tremendous catfishwhat happened next will not surprise you: he got into a mess. Tonight we cross the Mississippi. These four voracious “natural herbicides” released in Arkansas were colonizing the river network, first ascending the Mississippi River and its tributaries and helped by floods to reach open rivers until threatening the Great Lakes located in the northern United States, this chronology of expansion and reproduction details it the United States Geological Survey (USGS). The impressive Mississippi basin or how carp left Arkansas for the Great Lakes. Via Shannon1 They are true titans. Carp are a great example of adaptive management of invasive species: they are able to withstand different environments, can live for several decades and lay millions of eggs. Carp are in their element at the bottom of lakes, ponds or rivers and they swallow everything, since practically any organic matter will do, from plankton to small fish. So they gobble up food that native species could eat. Destination: Great Lakes. Present in every state of the continental United States, the northern Great Lakes are a destination as desirable as it is devastating. In addition to the damage to the ecosystem, a large-scale invasion would cause a catastrophe to the local economy while decimating the fishing industry, which generates approximately 7 billion dollars a year. So the Administration, scientists and environmentalists have been drawing up plans for years to keep them out of there. The grass carp has already been sighted in the lake erie. How many Asian carp can you catch? The first measure they implemented was to encourage the increase of their fishing, with tournaments such as the Redneck Fishing Tournament so that those who participate try to capture as many as they can. The problem is that fishing is not enough to decimate a species with such a reproductive desire. Michigan DNR Aquatic Species Expert Seth Herbst concludes that It would be necessary to get rid of 80% so that its population does not recover. If you can’t handle it, eat it.. In 2022 the Illinois Department of Natural Resources had an idea: use large-scale commercial fishing as an aquatic management tool to reduce population pressure. In other words: encourage human consumption of carp, which renamed “Copi”. Carp meat is rich in protein and is consumed in China and other Asian countries, so why not in the United States? The campaign is still alive and well (like the tents): on the campaign website there is a long list of recipes and restaurants in different states where you can try them. And speaking of recipes, this one from “Can’t Beat ‘Em, Eat ‘Em” (if you can’t beat ’em, eat ’em) gives more ideas for cooking this and other invasive species. The delicious Asian carp taco Chicago’s electric wall. Since 2013, the United States Army Corps of Engineers A series of permanent electric barriers are operational in the Chicago area waterway system with a direct current field of 2.3 Volts per square inch (about 0.35 Volts per square centimeter). This spark does not kill the carp, it only paralyzes them so that they do not advance and remain downstream. Of course, this method is not infallible: changes in water levels or the salt used for defrosting can alter the conductivity of the water and, therefore, the effectiveness of this method. In addition, smaller specimens can escape into shelters that form between boats. And one obvious thing: it affects carp and non-carp fish, thus altering their behavior. And yet, it continues to be used. Looking for the infallible system against carp. In the river basins of Illinois they have tried walls of bubbles made from a pipe, thus obstructing their vision. Its sound also serves as a warning. The problem? That also affects native species. And one step further, a variant in the form of cavitation curtains in which the bubbles are broken to disturb the fish. This method was the winner of the contest Carp Tankwith a succulent reward of $500,000 to whoever came up with the definitive idea. Brandon Road Dam Project The chaos zone. Since electricity is not 100% infallible, in 2024 they allocated 858 million dollars to build the dam project. Brandon Road Interbasind which has everything: improved electric barriers, acoustic deterrents (the silver carp jump when they hear the noise of the engines) and bubbles to obscure their vision. The objective is to prevent the carp from crossing the dam at all, minimizing damage to the rest. In Xataka | The Iberian Peninsula is being invaded: more than 1,200 exotic species have come to stay In Xataka | The coypu, one of the 100 most harmful invasive species in the world, is at the doors of Barcelona Cover | Flickr

Airbus Beluga retires after failing in commercial aeronautics

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Few commercial airplanes that have flown through the sky have had a shape as particular as the Airbus Beluganamed after that snout so similar to that of the cetacean from which it takes its name. However, despite escaping the perception we have of aerodynamic shapes, its lines made all the sense in the world given its function: carrying large pieces, specifically airplanes. It was an essential aircraft for making airplanes in Airbus logistics. The beluga became small. With a capacity With a load of 47 tons and space to accommodate items up to 30 meters in length, the A300-600ST had the capacity to accommodate one wing per trip. However, in the new BelugaXL two wings fit. The company explained that with an increase in manufacturing and your just in time logisticsthis change represented a before and after in the efficiency of its logistics. For example, for operations such as taking the wings manufactured in Broughton (United Kingdom) to the assembly lines in Toulouse (France) or Hamburg (Germany). By increasing the production rate, with the old Belugas they needed either more ships or more flight hours to meet deadlines. So the half-dozen BelugaXLs became the official ships for Airbus logistics. Airbus infographic to explain the second life of the BelugaST The second life of the Belugas. Designed for last about 40,000 flight hours and with entry into service in 1995, around 2022 Airbus estimated that these units retired for their own logistics still had up to 20 years of life left, so he gave them a new mission: to be delivery planes through the new cargo airline that created for the occasionAirbus Beluga Transport (AiBT). In November 2023 obtained their air operator certificate to operate. In this way, they would cover a specific niche: high-capacity air delivery, aimed at transporting satellites, aircraft engines, helicopters or heavy machinery. The timing was ideal as the enormous Antonov An-124 Soviet containers that were traditionally used for this type of distribution had been recovered for the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The market did not think the same: approximately a year later closed the business due to lack of demand. Only one remains operational. Of the five BelugaSTs that existed, only one remains in service: the one with registration F-GSTC “3”, the rest have been retired or are awaiting destination. The first (registration F-GSTA “1”) was retired in Bordeaux on April 21, 2021, the same city in which the F-GSTB “2” said goodbye on December 18, 2025. The F-GSTD “4” retired in Toulouse on September 17, 2025 and the fifth said goodbye in Broughton on January 29. The F-GSTF “5” is the only one of which we know a clear destination– will become an interactive classroom for STEM studies in the UK. Spain repeats mistake. As happened with his predecessor, Super Guppyit seems that Spain will not keep any Beluga either. At the time he was due for a Super Guppy, but they ended up rejecting it due to lack of space at the Getafe Air Museum. The plane was sold to NASA and still flies. The prototype of the A400M that was in Seville did not have any good luck either: ended up scrapped while its brothers are on display at the French Aeroscopia museum or at the Airbus factory in Bremen. In Xataka | The triangles on the plane window are not for decoration: they are a quick way to check that the flight is going well In Xataka | We believed that everything happened because of the new fighters. The F-16 has been in the air for 50 years and continues to sell like hotcakes Cover | Brian Bukowski CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

There are people capable of testing positive in a breathalyzer test without having drunk a drop of alcohol. And we already know why

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Although it may seem crazy, failing a breathalyzer test after drinking only water and a plate of pasta is possible. And while explaining it that way to a police officer may raise questions about a poor excuse, The truth is that it is a medical reality for those who suffer from the known self-fermentation syndrome. The investigation. Until now we attributed this problem to yeast, but a team of researchers from UC San Diego and Massachusetts General Hospital has identified specific strains of Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae as those responsible for generate intoxicating levels of ethanol in the intestineopening the door to treatments as surprising as fecal transplantation. That is, there are bacteria that can literally make us drunk without drinking a drop of alcohol. The metabolic storm. To reach this conclusion, the study analyzed to 22 patients diagnosed with this metabolic problem, comparing them with 21 healthy relatives. In this case, the results were quite compelling, because fecal samples from patients in the midst of the outbreak were capable of endogenously producing ethanol at alarming levels. In order to know much more, These samples were cultured and an ethanol concentration of up to 136 mg/dl was observed.. To put it in context, in many countries the legal limit for driving around 50 mg/dl in bloodso these patients without drinking would be doubling the level of alcohol permitted while driving. An alcohol factory. The novelty of this study is that it shifts the focus from yeast to bacteria, since genomic analyzes showed a massive enrichment of genes related to mixed acid fermentation. But we must not fall for the statement that these bacteria are ‘bad’, but rather that the ecosystem is broken to give rise to this problem. And what is the trigger? The antibiotics. And the use of these drugs can sweep away the balanced flora, allowing opportunistic pathogens to take control of the intestine and begin to metabolize sugars into alcohol. The treatment. Logically, this is a serious problem, not because of the fact of testing positive in the alcohol test, but because of the toxicity that the body faces. That is why the objective right now is on the treatment that now has the focus on a fecal microbiota transplant. For this study, the donor of his fecal microbiota was a personal trainer with enviable intestinal health. And the result was incredible, since the patient with this problem saw these problems disappear permanently, and his ability to “self-produce” alcohol disappeared after repopulating his intestine with the healthy bacteria of another person. Beyond getting drunk. As we have said before, it may seem ideal to have a feeling of intoxication without having to spend a single euro on a drink, but the reality is that this problem also leads to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. And constantly producing alcohol can cause very serious liver damage. But on the social issue, this endogenous overproduction of ethanol has led people to lose their driving license or face labor problems unfairly. All for a problem that may seem like the perfect excuse, but is actually a major medical problem. Images | Lawrence Krowdeed In Xataka | There is an age at which we should stop drinking alcohol forever. Neuroscience is clear why

In Tokyo there is a bookstore with only one book in the catalog. It has been open for ten years and works

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In an alley in the Ginza district of Tokyo, a small white-painted room houses what could be considered the most radical bookstore in the world. Morioka Shotenopened in May 2015 by Yoshiyuki Morioka, reverses the commercial logic of the book: while the Japanese publishing industry produces approximately 80,000 new titles each yearthis establishment only sells one, which is renewed every week. It is not performance. Morioka Shoten It is a business that works, selling multiple copies of a single work for six consecutive days. The interior is unusually bare for a bookstore (concrete walls, a piece of furniture used as a counter, a cable telephone) and serves as a canvas for displays inspired by the current book. It is a bit the absolute opposite of Amazon: from infinite offer to minimalism in choice. How it works. Each title remains on display for exactly six days, from Tuesday to Sunday, accompanied by artistic installations, objects or photographs related to its content. The space functions simultaneously as a gallery and a point of sale. The location of the project reinforces this symbolic dimension: the Suzuki Buildingbuilt in 1929 and protected as historic architecture, housed between the 1930s and the end of World War II the offices of Nippon Kobo, the publisher that produced the magazine ‘Nippon’, which many consider foundational for the modern Japanese publishing industry. The context. The opening of Morioka Shoten in 2015 comes at a critical time for the industry. Two decades earlier, in 1995, Amazon had begun operations, and the domino effect was inevitable: American independent bookstores went from more than 7,000 stores in 1994 to just 1,651 in 2009, a reduction of 76%. The physical bookstore model seemed obsolete given the speed of the Internet and recommendation algorithms. Morioka Shoten proposed just the opposite: concentration, deliberate scarcity and time to focus on a single work. The philosophy of issatsu, isshitsu. The Japanese expression issatsu, isshitsu It means “a room, a book.” For eight years, Yoshiyuki Morioka worked as an employee in second-hand bookstores in the Kanda neighborhood, a traditional bibliophile district in Tokyo. He later opened his own independent bookstore in Kayabacho, where he organized author presentations that multiplied sales. The question that it was done was: why maintain hundreds of works if the optimal experience was produced with just one? The Takram design studio developed the store’s visual identity based on a sketch by Morioka himself: a rhombus that condenses the double metaphor of the project, simultaneously representing an open book and a single room. The resurgence of indie. The proposal is part of a broader recovery of independent book trade. In 2015, a curious phenomenon occurred in the United States: American indie bookstores. They began to multiplyup to 49%. The study cited factors such as the feeling of community, the work of booksellers as curators and the capacity of bookstores as meeting points. The pandemic accelerated the trend: since 2020 The sector grew by 70%, in 2024, 323 new stores were inaugurated and in 2025, more than a hundred additional stores were opened in the first months of the year alone. Quality over quantity. The commercial results of the experiment confirm the viability of the model. Morioka Shoten has sold more than 2,000 works since its inauguration. The weekly catalog has ranged from comics by Tove Jansson to botanical photographs by Karl Blossfeldt, novels by Mimei Ogawa and short stories by Hans Christian Andersen, spanning fiction, non-fiction, manga and illustrated books. In an era that offers immediate access to millions of titles, abundance generates paralysis when it comes to decisions. From that point of view, Morioka’s radical limitation does not restrict, but liberates. In Xataka | The 24 most beautiful bookstores in the world

We have been waiting for years for 8K TVs to take over the world. It is evident that we are going to sit and wait

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In the 80s you guessed that Indiana Jones had a four-day beard, but that’s all. You couldn’t really see it, because on your VHS tapes it was more of a shadow than anything else. Those of us who have gray hair are lucky (or unlucky) to have lived in past times in which image resolution It was something arcane and mysterious. I was content with the video quality of the VHS tapes of ‘The Goonies’ or ‘Indiana Jones and the Lost Ark’ and I was happy with my C64 and its 320×200 pixels and those matches of ‘Match Day II’ with my brother in which we both enjoyed (and fought) as if we were playing the last game. FIFA EA Sports FC. Then, of course, everything improved and we began to realize that the resolution was important. We discovered that DVDs and their 720×576 resolution (in the PAL system used in Spain, in the US the NTSC only reached 720 x480) was like seeing the future until that future became the past with the arrival of HD Ready (720p) and especially Full HD (1080p) resolutions. Suddenly it was absolutely obvious that Harrison Ford hadn’t shaved.

an unfinished highway that isolates half the region

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The A-43 highway, which should connect Ciudad Real with Extremadura, has been stumbling for almost 30 years. Just like counted The Ciudad Real Tribune, the project first appeared in the General State Budgets in 1997, but has not yet materialized. The connection between Ciudad Real and Extremadura is still in an administrative stage, and it has not really been decided which route it will take to the final point. Very curiously, and as the media reminds us, the Romans solved this same dilemma two thousand years ago: by passing through the south. Why it is important. The N-430, which currently connects both regions, is the only unturned national highway in the entire corridor that crosses the peninsula from east to west. Just as it they remembered In El Periódico de Extremadura, it is “a road with great intensity of traffic, volume of goods and accidents with fatalities.” In June 2025, more than 1,500 people demonstrated in Santa Amalia under the slogan “No more deaths on our road.” In detail. The Ministry of Transport approved last October the public information file for the first Extremaduran section of the A-43, between Torrefresneda and Santa Amalia. There are 11 kilometers with a budget of 78.31 million euros. The new route will start at the junction with the A-5 and will connect with the N-430 east of Santa Amalia, including three junctions, seven overpasses and three viaducts. However, this section is just a fraction of what is expected, since the final objective is to connect Extremadura with the Valencian Community. Furthermore, the decision on which direction to take from Ciudad Real to Extremadura has not yet been definitively made. The Government has been debating for years about whether to follow the N-430 north of Ciudad Real or go through Puertollano to the south. It has also been considered not to build a highway and to carry out maintenance works for this national highway and adapt it. The lesson of the romans. The project Itiner-eled by researchers from Spain and Denmark, has mapped 300,000 kilometers of Roman roads throughout the empire. In Ciudad Real, according to publish La Tribuna, the Roman roads anticipated the layout of current highways such as the A-4, the A-43 between Manzanares and Tomelloso, or the N-420. To connect with Extremadura, Rome chose the southern option. Just like they count From La Tribuna, the old road left towards Poblete, as the A-41 does today, passing through Caracuel de Calatrava, Villamayor, the mining city of Sisapo and continuing to Almadén before reaching Mérida. Two millennia ago the northern option was ruled out due to the difficulty of the terrain. And now what. While the Romans have laid out paths that have lasted for centuries, in Spain we still have doubts about how to tackle the problem of the A-43, a project that has been in vain for almost 30 years. The approved section between Torrefresneda and Santa Amalia is progress, but insufficient to solve the isolation of the region. It remains to define the route in Ciudad Real, budget the remaining kilometers and carry out the works. Cover image | Wikimedia Commons and Google Maps In Xataka | Mérida is not a city used to being at the forefront of technology. That is going to change with the electric car

literally, it will bathe its streets in gold

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Architecture and urban planning have flirted many times with extreme materialssymbols of wealth or technical bets at the limitalmost always to send a message of power, modernity or exceptionality. Some came forward and today they are iconsbut others ended up becoming warnings. Dubai has just opposed the list, although it still does not know which of the two. The saying becomes literal. Yes, Dubai has decided to turn into reality one of the most repeated phrases about the city, that of the streets paved with goldannouncing the construction of a road literally made with this precious metal in the future Dubai Gold District. The project, presented at the end of January, deliberately plays with the symbolism of gold as a sign of the economic, cultural and tourist identity of the emirate, although for now it is not clear How far The material will be used in a structural, decorative or symbolic way, a key detail that remains unspecified, and one that is not trivial if we turn to the history of architecture. Bathing cities in “gold”. In Antiquity and the Modern Age, the equivalent of “urban gold” was massive use of noble materials for public spaces. In Rome, imperial avenues and squares paved with imported marbles throughout the Mediterranean, and not out of functional necessity, but to exhibit economic and logistical dominance. In the baroque eralarge urban axes such as those of Paris or Madrid incorporated high quality stone and excessive ornamentation to turn the city into a permanent scene of power. It wasn’t literal gold, of course, but it was deliberate material display. Brasilia pilot plane Technical madness and futuristic city. In the 19th century the fever of “impossible” materials arrived. The Crystal Palacebuilt almost entirely of iron and glass, seemed like a technical madness for its time: gigantic, fragile to look at and completely new in its concept. It worked, but also showed riskssuch as its very high vulnerability to fire, which would end up destroying it decades later. It was a symbolic success and a long-term practical failure. The 20th century is also full of even more ambitious bets. We remain as an example that of Brasiliawhich was conceived as a futuristic city built from scratch, with monumental avenues designed for automobiles and sculptural concrete buildings. The result was impressive from the air, but a chaos for everyday life: enormous distances, total dependence on the car and inhumane spaces. It didn’t collapse, but it did show that grandiosity can clash with actual use. Another example we count recently, with the John Hancock Tower opting for a glass façade. The result It was terrifying. Part of the Neom project And Neom. Of course, few more hyperbolic projects in recent times like Neomthe futuristic city that aims to stay on the plansperhaps so that they can be used in a movie. An example of a project that is too bold and hyperbolic compared to the logistical, economic and practical limits of reality. Gold as an economic identity. Be that as it may, the new Dubai street will be integrated into the reconversion of the historic Deira Gold Soukan area that already concentrates around a thousand merchants specialized in gold and jewelry. The advertisement it is not coincidental: The United Arab Emirates is one of the largest global nodes of physical gold trade, with tens of billions dollars in annual exports, and Dubai has been exploiting that position for years as part of its narrative of prosperity, stability and economic opportunity without direct taxes on wages. Dubai Skyline Architecture as a claim. The “street of gold” fits into a broader strategy, the same one that already we saw in Neom based on creating extreme milestones that ensure global headlines and a constant flow of visitors. Record-breaking skyscrapers, giant Ferris wheels, abyssal pools, artificial islands and air-conditioned streets are part of clear logic: offer experiences that are impossible or difficult to replicate in other places, even when their daily usefulness is secondary to their value as an urban spectacle. Between icon and excess. As we said, this type of project is not without risks. The recent history of architecture in the Middle East demonstrates that excessive ambition can collide with technical, financial or simply practical limits, turning some ideas into reduced versions of what was promised or directly into symbols of overexpectation. The key, as in other extreme urban experiments, will be whether the street of gold It ends up being a functional and durable element or whether it remains a striking gesture designed more to reinforce the Dubai brand than to transform urban life. The message. Beyond the material, the golden way It is a declaration of intentions: Dubai continues to bet on that architecture hyperbolic as a language of power, wealth and uniqueness. It is not just about building, but about telling a story in which the excess is part of the appeal. And as has happened other times in history, it remains to be seen if the bet can become a lasting icon, or another example of how far a city can go when the symbol outweighs urban logic. Image | Ahmed Aldaie via Unsplash, אורי ר.Neom, Norlando Pobre In Xataka | Matalascañas is an example of a major architectural failure: thinking that the beach of your childhood was going to be how you remember it. In Xataka | More than 2,000 people had committed suicide at the Golden Gate. The solution has been as simple as it is shocking for those who throw

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