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The College of Engineers fears that it will remain like this forever

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The AVE to Extremadura is causing quite a few headaches, especially in the bottleneck represented by the part that connects with Castilla-La Mancha. And the provisional branch designed to advance the arrival of high speed to Extremadura without waiting for it to be resolved his complicated passage through Toledohas hit a new obstacle. According to share From ABC, the College of Civil Engineers, Canals and Ports of Castilla-La Mancha demands written guarantees from the Ministry of Transport that this provisional branch will not end up replacing the definitive route. what has happened. The Ministry provisionally approved the informative study of the Pantoja-Bargas branch on May 19 and submitted it to public information through an announcement in the BOE five days later. Now, within this process of allegations, the College of Engineers of Castilla-La Mancha has requested that in the final resolution it be declared in writing that this work has a “strictly transitory” character, according to collect the group itself in a statement cited by ABC. What exactly is it about?. The branch is a connection of just over 18 kilometers between the Madrid-Seville high-speed line and the conventional Madrid-Valencia de Alcántara line. In practice, it would allow trains bound for Extremadura to leave Atocha, take advantage of the high-speed tracks to the Pantoja area and from there connect, via Bargas, with the route to Talavera de la Reina and Extremadura. This is what the Ministry proposes as a shortcut to speed up travel times without having to wait for the final design of the passage through Toledo to be finalized. Why is it important. The passage of high speed through Toledo has been blocked for years. Since the first study of the Madrid-Oropesa line was submitted to public information in 2020, the different allegations presented have forced the routes through Toledo and Torrijos to be revised several times, and in 2024 the City Council, the Provincial Council and the Junta de Castilla-La Mancha proposed alternatives that the Ministry considered important enough to commission a completely new study, according to explained The Extremadura Newspaper. Given the uncertainty of how long this process could take, the Government decided to take the fast track and design a provisional branch. A temporary patch. The College does not oppose the railway improvement to Extremadura, which it considers “strategic” for territorial cohesion, but warns of the risk that a work intended as a temporary patch ends up, in practice, becoming the permanent solution. Its main argument is based on the deadlines, since after 32 months of work it would still be necessary to add the environmental processing, the drafting and approval of projects, the bidding and the tests prior to start-up. Times that, according to the groupthey could dilate enough that the branch ends up settling by default. Money. The provisional branch has a tender budget of 333.9 million euros, a figure that represents 60.8% of what the Toledo Central alternative would cost (549.2 million) and 48.1% of the Toledo Exterior alternative (694 million), according to share from the middle. If the two infrastructures are finally built (first the branch and then a definitive solution through Toledo), the joint investment would be between 883 and 1,028 million euros, without counting price reviews, maintenance, operation or a possible partial dismantling of the branch once it becomes obsolete. What engineers ask for. Beyond the complaint, the College poses that: The Ministry compares all possible scenarios, including the option of directly accelerating the final solution and launching it in phases. That the risk that the provisional work ends up being consolidated be incorporated into the analysis. That it be better detailed how the service will operate during the transitional stage, with frequencies, stations, travel times and compatibility with the trains that currently circulate between Madrid and Toledo. That both the branch line and the future route leave open a connection between the Extremadura and Andalusia lines, which would allow travel between both communities without passing through Madrid. And now what. Despite the allegations, the project continues with its environmental and administrative procedures. What they do add is political pressure on the Ministry at a time when Europe’s objective is to complete the Madrid-Lisbon journey in about five hours in 2030, and in 2034 the aim is to lower the three hours between Madrid and Badajoz. To unblock the disagreement, the College has offered to participate in a technical table together with the Ministry, the Junta de Castilla-La Mancha, the City Council and the Provincial Council of Toledo, and Adif, with the idea that the provisional branch serves to pressure the final agreement, and not to postpone it indefinitely. Cover image | Renfe In Xataka | Salvador Galve, railway expert: “When I go from Zaragoza to Barcelona, ​​I go by car”

there are already 265,000 million dollars for 2 nm

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TSMC is going to invest an additional $100 billion in the US to build at least four more factories and several advanced packaging plants in Arizona. It CC Wei announcedthe president and CEO of this company, during the second quarter results conference held in Taipei (Taiwan). The new facilities they will produce chips at the 2nm node and later generationsand confirm a rumor that was already circulating in February. TSMC’s total commitment in the US now amounts to $265 billion. However, the company has not offered a specific construction schedule. And, according to Wei, the pace of the works will depend directly on the evolution of market demand, not on a commitment with a date fixed in advance. The announcement also comes accompanied by another historic quarter for TSMC, with a net profit of $22.35 billion between April and June (77.4% more year-on-year), its fifth consecutive quarterly record. The figures and background of this bet Equipping and building a state-of-the-art 2nm semiconductor fab with capacity for about 20,000 wafers per month costs between $25 billion and $35 billion. With this reference, the 100,000 million announced fit with the four minimum plants that Wei mentioned. The most revealing data, however, is provided by Bloomberg: The expansion would bring TSMC’s US footprint to 10 factories and two advanced packaging plants, about half of the final 12-factory plan announced in April. TSMC’s revenue has grown by 36% between April and June and its gross margin has reached 67.7%, also a record figure This scenario invites us to stop at the packaging, probably the most relevant part of the ad. CoWoS capability, and not wafer production itself, remains the real bottleneck for manufacturing accelerators for artificial intelligence (AI). Count on advanced packaging in Arizona would give TSMC’s American customers, for the first time, a complete supply chain within the country, from wafer processing to the packaged and ready-to-assemble chip. TSMC’s revenue has grown 36% between April and June and its gross margin has reached 67.7%, also a record figure. This company now forecasts revenue of between $44.6 billion and $45.8 billion for the third quarter, and has raised its annual growth forecast to slightly above 40%. Another note: the capex of 2026 will rise to between 60,000 and 64,000 million dollars, compared to the 52,000 and 56,000 million dollars initially budgeted. Be that as it may, this announcement cannot be separated from the trade agreement between the US and Taiwan, which reduced tariffs on Taiwanese products to 15% in exchange for 250 billion dollars in Taiwanese investment in the US. As can be expected, the execution of the plan in Phoenix will continue to be conditioned by the availability of labor, water and visas, three of the great challenges that TSMC is facing in Arizona. Image | TSMC More information | Reuters | Bloomberg In Xataka | The war in Iran and the Chinese veto redraw the world map of helium for semiconductors

How to know someone’s location with their phone number on Android or iPhone

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We are going to tell you the methods to know someone’s location with their number phone, both on Android and iOS. This way, you will know the best ways to do it in a simple way. But before starting, one thing must be made clear: you can’t know someone’s location without their permissionthere are no methods to spy on a person without them knowing using their number. Fortunately, mobile phones have privacy systems with which to avoid this. Share location with Google Maps The easiest way to find out the location of another person with their number is to Share it with you through Google Maps. It is the simplest process, and the steps to follow are as follows: Open Google Maps and sign in with your account. Tap on your profile photo and choose the option Location sharing. Choose the contact with whom you want to share it, and you can use their phone number. The system will send a notification to this person. If the person acceptsthen you will be able to see its location on the map, as well as the exact distance between you or its battery level. Using Android Locator On Android, an application called Locator comes pre-installed. It is used to know where the devices registered in your account are, but you can also use it to locate usersalthough again it’s not something you can do without them knowing. The steps to take are the following: Open the Locator app, make sure you are logged in with your account. Press the tab People. Now click on the + button. This will take you to a screen where you can first choose how long you share your real-time location with this person. Then, below you can choose the person to send it to, using their phone number. The person receives the link and accepts it. The other person will have to follow these steps to invite you to know its location. If not, you won’t be able to know. Using Search on iPhone On iOS you also have a native application called Look forwith which you can know the location of other people. Yes, again the other person has to give you permission so you know its location. It is done like this: Open the app Look for of the iPhone. Click on the tab People. Click on the + button and choose Location sharing. Write down the other person’s phone number. If your number is linked to an Apple account, you will receive a request via iMessage to share locations. If he accepts it, he will be added to your people index and you will be able to know each other’s location. Using Glympse If the other person does not have the applications configured or if you have different operating systems on your mobile, you can use third-party tools. For example you have Glympseone of the safest options for temporary location sharing with another person. It works like this: Open the Glympse app on your mobile. Choose the option Request locationrequire location. Write the phone number of the person whose location you want to know. The other person will receive an SMS with a secure link, and when they click on it they will see the request. With a single touch, the other person will be able to transmit your GPS position in real time. You can’t spy on WhatsApp No, You cannot know the location of any user through WhatsApp without this person knowing. Sometimes some methods are spread on the Internet, such as the command netstat -an on a computer terminal to know the IP of the person you are talking to, but the messaging platform uses intermediate servers to avoid this. So, if you use this command when you message or talk to a person on the Internet you don’t get this person’s IPbut rather that of one of the many WhatsApp data centers through which the information passes. In addition to this, WhatsApp has end-to-end encryption that does not allow us to read the messages or know where we are. The only way to know someone’s location on WhatsApp is for this person to deliberately share it with you. In Xataka Basics | How to send a fake location on WhatsApp without being in that place

China has a plan to win the AI ​​war against the US. And DeepSeek is its champion

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Liang Wenfeng is the most elusive person in the Chinese manufacturing industry. artificial intelligence (AI). The founder of DeepSeekwho also runs the hedge fund High-Flyer, recently held a four-hour video call with potential investors from Hangzhou, China, an unusual format in every sense: only two representatives per institution, and for most of the attendees it was the first time they had seen the founder. “We are a very normal group of people,” Wenfeng told them. And this apparent simplicity hides the company that, in just over a year, has rewritten the economic rules of generative AI. However, what began as a start-up reluctant to any outside investment has come full circle. DeepSeek recently closed a financing round of around $7 billion, with a valuation of $52 billion. The most revealing data, however, is provided by SCMP: This company is already negotiating a second round that is expected to raise that figure to $71 billion just weeks after closing the first. The power map of Chinese AI Reuters has confirmed that DeepSeek develops its own ASIC chip aimed at inference and not training. With it, it aims to reduce its dependence on Nvidia and Huawei, its two current suppliers. If the project succeeds, it would mark a huge strategic shift for a company that until now has built its entire reputation on software efficiency rather than hardware control. Be that as it may, this move would add additional pressure to Huawei, which competes for the same space within China. Huawei now integrates DeepSeek into its cloud services in sub-Saharan Africa In this scenario we are interested in focusing on the real magnitude of this phenomenon. According to FortuneChinese open source models (led by Qwen, MiniMax and DeepSeek) already represent a third of global use of large language models, compared to an almost non-existent presence at the end of 2024. Emerging companies in Silicon Valley and Southeast Asia adopt them due to their openness, transparency and a much lower operating cost than American alternatives. Huawei, in fact, already integrates DeepSeek into its cloud services in sub-Saharan Africa. As expected after such an escalation in valuation, several sources suggest that DeepSeek could present its IPO this year, following in the wake of other low-cost Chinese startups such as Zhipu AI and MiniMax, which are already listed on public markets. A successful placement would give DeepSeek the institutional capital necessary to scale its computing infrastructure and sustain its long-term price war against large American players. DeepSeek is no longer just the startup that sparked Nvidia’s biggest stock scare in a single day: it is the battering ram with which China tries impose its open and cheap AI model as a global standard. Image | Generated by Xataka with ChatGPT More information | Bloomberg In Xataka | While most oppose AI data centers, there is one group enthusiastic about them: merchandise thieves

30% of workers feel less useful

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According to the latest study from Ionos, 41% of SMEs in Spain already use some AI tool in their daily processes. That, on paper, should imply an increase in productivity in these tasks. However, the reality is much more stubborn. The annual report ‘People at Work 2026‘ prepared by the consulting firm ADP Research points out that despite this increase in the use of AI tools for automation, employees feel that they perform less. The mirage of productivity. The ADP report asked 39,000 employees in 36 countries about how AI affects them in their daily lives. The result shows that among those who use AI daily, 30% say they feel very committed to their work. But that same group also reports feeling less productive than before. Heavy AI users are four times more likely to feel like they are underperforming. The study itself admits that there is no simple way to measure real productivity of these people. In reality, they may work harder as has already been shown in other areas as in software engineers, but they feel that they achieve less on their own. The fear of losing your job is still there. According to the same survey, in Spain, 15% of workers use AI every day, and 11% believe that this tool will end up replace him in his position. Only 14% of the participants in our country view the progress favorably. Fear is not shared equally between generations. Nearly two in ten 18- to 26-year-olds use AI daily. Among those over 55, 33% have never tried it. A Funcas report estimates that, between 2025 and 2035, AI could end up to 2.3 million jobs in Spain. Above all, in administrative and data management tasks. What the official data say. The European Central Bank has been closely observing the phenomenon for months and, according to its own analysisthe companies that invest the most in AI are not the ones that then they fire more. In fact, they tend to increase the number of hires. For now, technology acts as a complement to human work, not its substitute. No matter how much some companies put it as an excuse. Another study, from the European Investment Bank, calculates that AI has increased productivity European labor 4%. The increase comes mainly from investment in tools and training, not from staff cuts. However, despite these signs, experts point out that it is still early to see the possible increase of AI in productivity data due to its low implementation and they attribute this increase to the other major impact on the labor market in recent years: teleworking. Commitment yes, performance not always. Bárbara Gómez, operations director of ADP Iberia assures in a company statement that “AI is transforming the way we work, but its adoption alone does not guarantee greater productivity. Workers must improve their skills and become familiar with AI tools, understanding how they integrate into their workflows.” The technology change and automate processesbut it does not change results by itself. Nela Richardson, chief economist at ADP, goes a little further. “AI changes the way we work but also how people in companies feel,” he explains in the report. His recipe is to stop seeing AI as a threat and treat it as “a companionanother member of the team.” From saying to fact. Spain is no exception in the unproductive feeling of employees who use AI. The pattern is repeated in almost all the countries in the ADP survey. Regular AI users show less stress, better relationships with their teammates, but almost none say feel more efficient in his work. The key may be in the curve learning these tools. Changing tools costs time, although in the long run it pays off and companies need an implementation period to improve your processes. Meanwhile, millions of workers remain caught between two sensations: using more technology than ever and feel like they are performing less than before. In Xataka | Bill Gates: “As AI takes on more jobs, you’ll be able to retire earlier and work shorter work weeks” Image | Unsplash (Flipsnack)

63% of workers do not reach the average salary

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Although it is true that salaries in Spain they have not stopped rising In recent years, the data suggests that this increase has been insufficient. The data collected in a report of CCOO confirm one of the paradoxes that the Spanish labor market registers: while employment breaks records month after month, with more than 22 million people workingthe majority cannot reach the average salary in the country. An average salary that almost no one earns. According to the report prepared by the CCOO Economic Cabinet, the average salary in Spain is 2,386 gross euros per month in twelve paymentsaccording to data from the EPA 2024. However, 63% of employees, some 11.64 million people, do not reach that figure on their payroll. The trick is how the average salary is calculated and how the high salaries of a minority they pull up the stocking leaving the rest beloweven though they are the majority. Therefore, the median salary data consolidated in 2024 is more revealing: half of the workers did not reach 2,041 gross euros per month in 2024, 345 euros less than the average salary. That is the point that divides Spain into two halves. A labor market with two speeds. According to the Salary Structure Survey 2024the most common gross annual salary in Spain was 16,520 euros, far from the 29,540 euros of the annual average. Almost three out of ten employees earn between 16,000 and 23,000 euros per year, the range where the majority of the country actually lives. Young people who start working earn an average of 1,372 euros gross per month, well below the 2,680 euros of those who close their careers. Temporary contracts and moonlighting They explain a good part of that distance. There is also a gap between autonomies: Extremadura, the Canary Islands and Castilla-La Mancha continue to lag behind in salaries, although they are the ones that grow the most, driven by the increases in the SMI. The increases finally reach those who earn the least. The interesting thing about the report prepared by the union is not only the diagnosis, but also the change in trend that is drawn. Between 2018 and 2024 the average salary gained 2.8% real purchasing powercompared to the 1.6% registered between 2007 and 2018. The important difference is in the lowest salary range: the 10% of workers with the lowest income have improved a real 24% since 2018, after having lost 17.8% during the previous crisis. This change is defined by salary policies such as increase in the Minimum Interprofessional Wageset at 1,221 euros per month in 14 payments by 2026, which has raised the floor for the lowest payrolls. The decree that established the SMI itself recalls that one of its objectives is to reach the 60% of the average salaryas required by the European Social Charter. Housing eats up the salary improvement. Earning more no longer guarantees a better life if basic goods such as rent rise faster than payroll. And in Spain it is doing it. Rental prices rose 2.5% year-on-year in June, according to data from the INE CPIand accumulates an increase of 1.4% only so far in 2026. According to the authors of the report, rising housing prices “reduce the impact of wage increases”, especially among the lowest incomes and young people. A floor that rises more than the salary translates into less savings and a longer delay in emancipation. In Xataka | A study has compared the gap in public salaries vs. private companies in Europe and has found a problem: Spain Image | Unsplash (Acton Crawford)

brands need streamers but can’t tolerate what they really are

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Xokas has been in the eye of the hurricane for more than a week for his words about Ester Expósito. But the video that ended with his hamburger at Burger King talks about something else: about money, class and the erratic attempts of big brands to reach the youth audience by signing role models born on the Internet who are not exactly impeccable. What has happened? Burger King Spain canceled on Thursday its collaboration with Joaquín Domínguez, known as El Xokas, within the Grand King campaign in which four influencers They promote a different menu, and with their choices, customers choose who the winner is. The brand removed from its website and application the Cheese Bacon Classic menu, associated with the content creator. Hours later, via an Instagram storythe company confirmed the breakup and assured that the streamer’s statements “in no way represent the values ​​that we defend as a brand.” Fame is sought. Xokas was chosen for this campaign because he was, of the four creators signed (with him were Marta Díaz, Peldanyos and Marina Rivers), the one with the greatest reach: he became the streamer Spanish with the most subscribers on Twitch and has had some milestones on the platform, such as when in 2022 it had one of the highest audience peaks in its history, with 1.2 million viewers in the final of a recreation of the Squid Game in ‘Minecraft’. That explains why Burger King chose him and why his departure from the campaign has had so much echo. The version that has circulated these days places the origin of the conflict in El Xokas’ comments about Ester Expósito, and it is true that they were the triggers of the controversy, but not its complete cause. The origin of the controversy. The first controversial comments came more than a week before the dismissal: while talking about Mbappé, the actress’s partner, El Xokas reacted to a phrase that she had uttered on the podcast La Pija and La Quinqui“I wouldn’t talk to Nazis.” From there he said that it was not worth being with such an attractive woman if he maintained that political thought and finished by saying that “I would rather be with a 6 than with someone like Expósito.” The reaction was immediate: figures like Irene Montero or Javier Bardem publicly criticized the streamer. Burger King, however, did not move the menu from the website in those days. The icing. What did make the company rethink its deal with El Xokas was another video, later and not directly related to Expósito. In a live interview, after being asked in a mocking tone if he had tickets for the soccer World Cup final, El Burger King became an argument for humiliation. The boycott pressure escalated to Congress, where Compromís spokesperson, Águeda Micó, demanded explanations. It’s not the first time. Spain already had a comparable precedent. In 2018, Cuétara canceled his Choco Flakes cereal campaign with Cabronazi, a meme account that had dressed his mascot, in less than 24 hours after a wave of criticism. like a pink version of Hitler. The company apologized and stopped marketing the limited edition, claiming that it had miscalculated the impact of a collaboration designed with “a casual tone”. The Xokas shares a pattern with cases where the problem was outside the campaign: Adidas, for example, broke its agreement with Kanye West in 2022 after a series of anti-Semitic comments, a decision that It cost the artist close to 250 million dollars. Five years earlier, Disney had broken off its relationship with YouTuber PewDiePie, then the creator with the most subscribers in the world, after one of his videos will display a poster with an anti-Semitic message. The past returns. Another pattern, different but also frequent: controversial and old content that resurfaces and dynamites a recently signed collaboration. Doritos named Samantha Hudson an ambassador and fired her 48 hours later, when Tweets that she had published in 2015 went viralonly fifteen years old. Something similar happened to YouTuber Shane Dawson in 2020: when old videos of his with racist jokes and content that sexualized minors resurfaced, Morphe withdrawn from sale the makeup line she had launched with him, Conspiracy. The brand discovered, at the same time as the public, that the history of the person it had signed was longer and more problematic than it believed. What this tells us. Each of these cases has its peculiarities, but a common structure: brands need what only an internet creator can give them, proximity to young audiences who no longer watch television. But that access sometimes comes without a script or editorial control. Hiring an actor for an advertisement is buying a closed message, but hiring a creator is buying a person, not just their image: with their history, their unfiltered live performance and the controversial opinions they carry. In his day we already have how food brands have been betting for years on this access to influencers despite the risk and the surveillance of the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, but this controversy, above all, reveals how the need for traditional brands that have built their wealth and the prestige of their brand through offline It has to adapt to new times, new languages ​​and, above all, more extreme personalities. At the moment, it is the law of the jungle: the creator with the most followers wins the contracts, but it does not guarantee a campaign free of controversy. Another very different question is to what extent this risk is not implicit in the contract they sign, because in these times some noise in any direction is a real treasure. In Xataka | The controversy of Lola Lolita and the 4,000 euro bag reveals something else: influencers have stopped having normal lives

Spain’s regulatory confusion with full-body swimsuits

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This summer the pools have been filled with a new component. And we are not referring to the human feces located in several swimming pools in Toledo, which requires them to be evacuated and immediate treatment carried out. We are talking about the burkini, a garment that has been the springboard to expel three women that they were bathing in two different pools. All under a regulation that does not mention the word “burkini” not once. Burgos and its own rules. The facts, which follow: staff from El Plantío and San Amaro prevent three women from bathing. Two wore burkinis. The third was wearing a rashguarda technical sun protection shirt that is also used by athletes and people with skin problems. The case, to begin with, already mixes two different garments under the same label. The regulations say this: swimsuit only, street clothing or shoes prohibited. Jumping into a pool with boots is dangerous, of course. But if the regulation allows lycra or neoprene – only with express medical authorization and an expiration of six months – and does not mention the burkini, is there a legal loophole? A priori it is similar, by interpretation, to street clothes. The mayor comes out in favor. Cristina Ayala, mayor for the PP, supports your staff: It has been limited to complying with current regulations, the same as previous years. And they have taken the matter to the Sports Facilities Council, where PP, PSOE and Vox will have to establish a position. It is not the first friction of the year: in February, Vox and PP They have already agreed to prohibit access to municipal buildings with a burqa or niqab, for security and identification reasons. The PSOE responded by accusing Vox of fueling Islamophobia. Same script, two months later, with the swimsuit. At the regional level, the government pact between PP and Vox in Castilla y León It also prohibits the burqa and the niqab in the offices of the Board. The argument: incompatibility with “security, personal identification and the basic principles of coexistence.” The burkini leaves the face, hands and feet exposed. Neither the pact nor the Burgos regulations resolve whether that excludes him from the case. Lack of legal framework. If we compare, for example, with BelgiumSpain does not have a state or regional law on the burkini. There is also no ruling on its use in public swimming pools or beaches. The void is filled by each city council with its own regulations, and each lifeguard with its own reading, who in the end are the ones who raise the alarm because they are the ones at the poolside, next to the ticket takers and the hired cleaning staff. The underlying legal argument is Law 15/2022, comprehensive for equal treatment and non-discrimination. Any rule that discriminates based on religion is null and void. The available legal analysis maintains that, if the fabric is designed for bathing and complies with health regulations, prohibiting it from a woman for religious reasons would be discriminatory. Let us remember, by the way, that the veil is not synonymous with Islam. A garment does not speak of a person’s origin. What have the neighbors done?. Within Castilla y León itself, the reading changes from city to city. In León, when asked by Vox, the PSOE defended total permissiveness: the burkini is a sports garment approved by federations, it is made with the same technical fabrics as a full-length swimsuit or a sun protection shirt, and there is no objective hygienic difference that justifies different treatment. In Salamanca, on the other hand, the city council expelled a woman last summer for the same reasons, citing hygiene. Burgos, León, Salamanca: to each his naked bread. Outside of Castilla y León, Lleida is the opposite extreme. Since 2019 it explicitly allows the burkini and topless in their municipal swimming pools, with signs that specify it. In 2023, the Generalitat sent a letter to all Catalan city councils: banning the burkini, just like banning toplessness, excludes part of the population from access to certain services and violates free choice over one’s own body. The extreme right often errs on the side of confusing. Same law, read backwards. France, which does have jurisprudence, offers a useful nuance. In 2016, the French Council of State knocked down several municipal sides that banned the burkini without proving a real threat to public order. But in 2022 the same court stopped Grenoble for the opposite reason: the city council had modified its regulations to expressly allow the burkini, and the Council of State considered that this exception, designed to satisfy a religious demand, broke the neutrality of the public service and equality between users. In June 2025, a court confirmed the definitive annulment of that article. It is the French doctrine, summarized: a general and neutral rule on the swimsuit is maintained; an explicit exception, in any sense, no. Nine years to resolve something that in Burgos they have fully decided in a couple of days. The Burgos regulation, in that particular aspect, is more similar to the model that the French courts support: it does not name the burkini, neither to prohibit it nor to allow it. Only requires a swimsuit. Spain, at the moment, does not have a court that confirms it. And that is why a municipal council is deciding it, with jurisprudence but lack of regulations. Images | Flickr (Miet) In Xataka | South Korea’s population is aging so much that the country has opened a debate: what is an “old man” today?

Alcalá de la Selva is the living portrait of a broken tourist model

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“There are people who come because they are overwhelmed by so much heat.” He says it José Edo, Councilor for Culture and Heritage of Alcalá de la Selvaabout his own people. He is not talking about weekend tourists: he is talking about people who buy a house in a municipality of 382 neighbors because he can’t stand the summer where he lives anymore. Alcalá has become, in the mouth of one of its own rulers, a climate refuge. The problem is that this “refuge” has a water network designed for 500 people, not for the more than 6,000 it hosts each summer. A pipe about to burst where it is impossible to perceive a real demographic boom. Nobody registers nor are there any census changes. What there is is a ski resort ten minutes away, eight kilometers away, and a wonderful golf course at 1,475 meters above sea level. It is just a car ride away from half of the Valencian Community. Recognizing someone on the street at this time? Risky sport. The numbers that don’t add up. Alcalá de la Selva, which does not have a jungle but does have a cool climate due to its altitude (1404 m above sea level) and being located between two mountains in the Gúdar mountain range, next to the Alcalá river, belongs to Teruel. It is one of the many Aragonese towns with white and stone houses that grows every summer. However, few grow as big as this one. From 350 to 6,500 peoplea couple of years ago, as recognized by the City Council. And without counting nearby campsites or hostelsE. That is multiplying the population by seventeen, an increase of more than 1,600%. Tourism makes money, right? Not exactly: regional and state financing is calculated only on those registered. The City Council charges the IBI and water and garbage rates from its inhabitants, but neither the Provincial Council nor the State allocates an extra euro to the services consumed by such growth. Furthermore, it depends on Teruel for everything and cannot grow much more on a stone hill. A town designed to have no neighbors. The municipal urban planning itself admits it bluntly: “There is hardly any need for a first home”recognizes the document that Alcalá presented to the European contest Europan in 2011, when the town had 513 registered inhabitants and already admitted peaks of up to 5,000. María Amparo Atienza Chisbert, from the PAR, the Aragonese Party, governs from the 2023 municipal elections. And they recognize a model problem that is suffocating them. The mayor of Cosuenda (Zaragoza) and that of Canfranc (Huesca) described exactly the same asphyxiation with governments of a different color. The El Castillejo golf coursemunicipal, 9 holes, inaugurated in 2003, is the highest in Spain and has incredible views. The Valdelinares ski resort, the closest and with 14 slopes, opened in 1970. And neither facility exists for the 382 winter residents. Along with the historic center, scattered seasonal occupation developments grew since the 80s and 90s, chalets that clean and open at Easter, in August and on snow bridges. The rest of the year, as you know: closed tight. This summer, there is also an eclipse. To finish with a certain irony, it is worth remembering that the Gúdar-Javalambre region, where Alcalá is, isIt has become one of the seven official points in Aragon to see the total solar eclipse on August 12. The area dresses up before the first total eclipse visible on the peninsula in more than a century. Aragon expects about four million visitors just for the phenomenon. Rural reservations in the area already exceed 90% for the days of the eclipseand some rural houses will bill in August 2026 up to four times more than a normal August. When it’s all over, the cold will return, the streets will be empty, the store and pharmacy on duty will no longer have to double stock, and will endure the downpour until the next bridge. The municipality has its own historical story – they fell at the hands of the anarchist “The Avengers” of the Iron Column, so that months later General Varela took the town under Franco’s mandate – and is today one of the many victims of a self-fulfilling wish regarding tourism in an emptied Spain. The national context. According to estimates, Spain will close 2026 with around 100 million tourists, a historical record, and between June and September alone, 43 million international arrivals are expected. Tourist housing reservations Airbnb types have doubled since 2018while hotel overnight stays only increased by 8% in the same period. Yes, since May 2026, all tourist homes advertised on platforms need a unique registration number, the NRUA, required by European regulations, but this has not stopped growth. Although in many regions vacation rentals are “losing its appeal“, the Bank of Spain itself warned that this type of accommodation displaces the traditional rental market, as is the case of Alcalá de la Selva, a miniature version of a country that builds for those who visit it three weeks a year, and that bills cleaning, water and roads to those who stay to live the rest of the remaining three hundred and forty-five days. It is easy to think that cities like Malaga live in worse situations, with almost 30% of the rental market. The reality is that, proportionally, Alcalá de la Selva is congested by more dangerous numbers. Image | Alcalá de la Selva City Council In Xataka | Spain promised them happiness with its airports increasingly full of tourists. Until someone calculated how it affects rents

In 2024, an eclipse wiped out 14 gigawatts from the Texas power grid. It is the best clue of what awaits Spain

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On April 8, 2024, at 12:15 noon, 13.8 gigawatts of sunlight entered the grid in Texas. Forty five minutes later 800 megawatts left: The Sun had gone out. It is true that the gas covered the gap, that the batteries helped overcome the pothole and that no one found out about anything. But that eclipse and everything we learned from it are the best possible information to understand what is going to happen to Spain’s electrical grid this August 12. What will happen? That’s the curious thing. On August 12, 2026, when the shadow of the Moon cross Spain from A Coruña to Mahónnothing is going to happen. Absolutely nothing. And not because we have a model electrical grid, nor because (since the blackout) we have done our homework. Nothing will happen because it will be half past eight in the afternoon. What happened in Texas. According to ERCOT datathe Texan operator, photovoltaics went from 27.6% of the electricity mix to 1.7% and then back to 27% in just two hours. The gas filled around 80% of the gap and the batteries helped as well (with, around, 1.4 GW). The thing is that during the Texan midday there is a lot of sunlight. Between 8:28 p.m. and 8:32 p.m., the Sun It will be just 12 degrees above the horizon in Galicia and only 2 in the Balearic Islands: Solar energy available on the grid will already be very scarce. That is, the eclipse will arrive in Spain when the photovoltaics will already be turning off by themselves. So nothing will happen? Although there are no official forecasts yet published, calculations indicate that the eclipse will add a second-order disturbance: the loss it can cause (between 4-5 GW) is in the order that the network usually handles on August afternoons. Shouldn’t cause too many problems this August. And “this August” are the key words. Because if we are wondering about the impact of the eclipse in Spain, perhaps we are looking at the wrong eclipse. On August 2, 2027, between 10:45 and 11:20 in the morning, we will see how The Moon will cover a minimum of 70% of the solar disk throughout the national territory (85% in Madrid and close to 100% in Cádiz and Málaga). That will be a test for the electrical grid because 65% of Spain’s photovoltaic park is in Andalusia, Castilla-La Mancha and Extremadura and, at that time, it will be in full ascending ramp. And are we prepared? To tell the truth, it shouldn’t catch us by surprise. The Government has already created a commission with thirteen ministries for the trio of eclipses 2026-2028. However, today, we do not have a public plan for the network in 2027 and it would not be bad if someone started talking about this. Image | Luis Olmos | Martijn Baudoin In Xataka | A unique opportunity of 1 minute and 40 seconds: what citizens can contribute to science during the eclipse

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