Mobile Tech & Gadgets

Italy has convinced Olympic nutritionists to put cheese in every risotto

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Brazilian snowboarder Pat Burgener has summed up better than anyone the paradigm shift that separates the Winter Olympic Games in Beijing 2022 and those in Milano Cortina 2026. In a video that has gone viral, it contrasts two scenes: in one, the Swiss Nicolas Huber stoically endures the endless nasal tests in the Chinese health bubble; In the other, Burgener appears enthusiastically tasting Italian food in the Olympic village. He’s not the only one. Austrians Stefan Rettenegger, Johannes Lamparter and Thomas Rettenegger have documented on social networks how they unapologetically enjoy local cuisine and even Italian-style naps. The contrast is total. The restrictive and purely clinical environment of four years ago has given way to an authentic Mediterranean feast. And at the epicenter of this culinary revolution in the Olympic villages, there is an undisputed protagonist that crowns each pasta or risotto dish: mountains of grated cheese. Far from being a simple gastronomic whim, the decision to replace the classic synthetic energy bars with portions of cheese wrapped in Olympic logos, or to snack muffins rich in proteins baked with this dairy, responds to a calculated nutritional and commercial strategy, As detailed in a report in The New York Times. If Italian food had an athlete competing in these Winter Games, it would undoubtedly be cheese Grana Padano. This cured dairy, often considered Parmigiano-Reggiano’s less expensive sibling, has literally colonized the event. The strategy goes far beyond putting cheese wedges on Olympic buffets. The intention of Mirella Parmeggiani, marketing manager of the consortium that manages its production, is to position this food, which Benedictine monks began to make in the 12th century, as a true “ally in the healthy diet of sports enthusiasts.” To achieve this, the Organizing Committee of the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games has signed an official collaboration agreement with the Grana Padano Consortium. The organization considers this entity a firm “ambassador of Italian taste throughout the world” and highlights that they share fundamental principles of sport such as commitment, passion and generosity. But the agreement also has a geopolitical dimension. Italy will reach a record of 70 billion dollars in 2025 in agri-food exports. And the DOP (Protected Designation of Origin) system of the European Union protects more than 850 Italian products under strict standards of origin and elaboration. In the case of Grana Padano, the milk must come from specific regions in northern Italy and the cheese must mature for at least nine months. In fact, only in 2024 were exported 2,685,541 Grana Padano wheels to international markets The message is clear: cheese is protein, but it is also national identity and gastronomic diplomacy. Marketing genius or real nutrition? Seeing this display of gastronomic diplomacy, it is inevitable to ask: are we facing simple marketing genius or is there a real scientific basis that justifies the constant presence of cheese in high-performance Olympic menus? From a nutritional point of view, Grana Padano provides approximately 33 grams of protein per 100 grams of product, without carbohydrates or sugars and with a high concentration of calcium and vitamin B12. Sports nutritionist Saúl Sánchez points out that parmesan and Grana Padano They are placed among the cheeses with greater protein density – 32 grams per 100 grams in the case of Grana Padano – and maintains that its saturated fats should not be demonized in the context of a varied diet. From the sports fieldswimmer Gemma Mengual has described cheese as a “superfood” for elite athletes, while karate fighter Damián Quintero highlights its usefulness both before and after training. The technical explanation usually focuses on casein, a slowly digestible protein that progressively releases amino acids, contributing to prolonged muscle recovery. In the Nutrimi Forumone of the main scientific meetings on nutrition in Italy, Dr. Maria Letizia Petroni defended the approach Food Firstwhich prioritizes natural foods over the systematic use of isolated supplements. In that context, he mentioned cured cheese as a rich source of leucine and proteins of high biological value useful in post-workout recovery strategies. The milky labyrinth and the “protective matrix” The success of cheese in sports clashes, paradoxically, with the controversial scientific debate on the consumption of liquid milk in adulthood, what many experts already call the “dairy labyrinth.” While some studies associate a high consumption of full-fat dairy products with certain metabolic problems, cheese is saved from this screening thanks to the so-called “dairy matrix”. Modern science has discovered that the saturated fat in cheese does not behave in the body the same as that of an ultra-processed product. The bacteria, vitamins and polar lipids produced during maturation alter the way the body absorbs these fats, mitigating inflammation. In addition, it solves the big problem with milk: lactose. While in countries like Spain lactose intolerance affects around 30% of the population, the long fermentation process of Grana Padano (often more than 24 months) makes it a natural product lactose free and highly digestible for athletes around the world. The evidence, under the papers One of the studies most cited in this conversation was published in 2024 in the Journal of Exercise Science & Fitness. He tested 35 untrained young men during four weeks of strength training combined with cheese supplementation. Participants who consumed a dose equivalent to 13.4 grams of protein from cheese three times a week showed improvements in body composition and reductions in total and LDL cholesterol compared to the lower dose group. However, it is worth clarifying: the study was not carried out on elite athletes, the sample was small and no significant additional improvements in strength were observed compared to training alone. The authors themselves pointed out the need for broader research. In the field of aging, a systematic review published in Nutrition Research observed that dairy protein may help increase lean body mass in older adults. It also found small benefits associated with vitamin D in functional tests. However, the results were not consistent in all the trials analyzed. In other words, there are interesting … Read more

The US is obsessed with achieving General Artificial Intelligence before China. China couldn’t care less

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The promise of the AGI has become the “the wolf is coming” from some AI companies. The gurus of American AI companies do not stop hype with the long-awaited general artificial intelligencethe one that will surpass humans in all areas of knowledge. Meanwhile, In China it doesn’t seem to matter too much. The AGI gap. Elon Musk, Dario Amodei, Sam Altman…everyone agrees that the AGI is about to fall, or so they have said at some point. We cannot know how close they are, what we do know is that to achieve AGI they need more computing power, for which they need a lot (more) money. The AGI as a justification for an insane investment. They count in High Capacity that China barely mentions AGI in its 2025 AI+ initiative nor did it mention it in the ‘Next Generation AI Development Plan’ 2018. AI is a strategic technology of great importance, but they focus on specific applications such as industrial automation, autonomous driving or robotics. Transformative, yes, but not turning points that will change the world completely. Whoever arrives first wins (or not). It’s American logic in this race. To achieve this, they are betting everything on one horse and AGI is the goal. If they arrive before, they will obtain an insurmountable economic and military advantage: they will have won. On the other hand, if China arrives before, the power relationship would change completely. The truth is that things have to go a lot wrong for the US to not win this race. The problem is that, while they are making this titanic effort, China is beating them on other fronts such as the electric car, industrial robotics, drones, solar panels… Win the AI ​​battle, but lose the economic war. China is calm. Why aren’t China so excited about AGI? To begin with, it is not so clear that scaling the models is the fastest route to AGI and that requires a gigantic investment with no guarantees. But above all it is because they do not buy the idea of ​​”arriving first”; Even if the US overtakes them, they can simply copy them and catch up quickly. Yao Shunyu said itchief AI scientist at Tencent: “History shows that once a technical pathway is validated, Chinese teams can quickly replicate it and even surpass it in specific areas, such as electric vehicles or manufacturing.” The question is not so much who gets there first, but who makes the best use of it. Who does talk about AGI in China. Yao Shunyu’s statements occurred within the framework of the AGI-Next Summit, where several leaders of Chinese AI companies met to talk about the future of the sector. Figures such as the founder of DeepSeek, the CEO of Ziphu or the founder of Moonshot have talked about their goal being to achieve AGI, although they have not shared many more details. Maybe the company that Alibaba has gone deeperwhich gave a presentation detailing its plans to achieve superintelligence (ASI). These leaders, like those of American companies, may have commercial motivations in these statements, but there are other organizations in China that are investigating this field such as the Beijing Institute for General Artificial Intelligence or the Chongqing Institute for General AI. There are initiatives, but there is nowhere near the level of obsession that they have in the US. A restful strategy. While the US hoards chips and scales like crazy, in China they are choosing to do it more slowly. They are prioritizing national chips and open source with the idea of ​​promoting the adoption of their models. It is a more long-term vision. A long distance race, not a sprint. In Xataka | There is a city in China that goes head to head with Silicon Valley: welcome to Hangzhou, the home of the ‘Six Little Dragons’ Image | Steve Johnson in Unsplash

The scientist who made the AI ​​we know today possible has just raised 1 billion. His new goal is to teach him to see space

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Fei-Fei Li, known as the godmother of AIjust closed a $1 billion round for World Labs, his startup dedicated to teaching machines to understand the world in three dimensions. Behind this bet are large companies such as NVIDIA, AMD, Autodesk or the Andreessen Horowitz fund, among others. Li, like other important figures in the field of AI, believes that world models are the way to go, instead of the AGI. Who you are and why what you do matters. Li is one of the people who made it possible for the Generative AI as we know it today existed. He was part of the team that developed ImageNet, a database of millions of images that allowed computers to learn to recognize objects in photos. That academic work was the trigger for the leap towards deep learning that gave rise to everything that came after: from voice assistants to generative models of text and images. Now, from Stanford University, where he directs the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, and from World Labs, the startup he founded in 2024, Li points to what he considers the next big unsolved problem in AI: that machines understand the physical world, not just text or flat images. The problem you want to solve. The great language models like GPT either Claude They are extraordinarily good at processing text. But the real world is not text, or at least it is not only text: it is three-dimensional, it has physics, it has geometry, it has objects that move and relate to each other. “If AI is to be truly useful, it must understand worlds, not just words,” counted Li in his statement. That is what so-called spatial intelligence, the central focus of World Labs, pursues. Unlike working with two-dimensional data, the models the startup works on are designed to perceive, generate and interact with three-dimensional environments. The idea is that an AI with spatial intelligence can reason about how things work in space, where an object is, how it moves, what will happen if it is pushed, how it fits into a larger environment, etc. What already exists and what is coming. In November of last year released Marbleits first commercial product. It is a model that generates editable and downloadable 3D environments from text, images, videos or panoramas. The user can create a virtual world, modify it, expand it and export it in different formats. The startup positions it mainly for video games, visual effects and virtual reality, or sectors with a huge demand for 3D content in which there are few tools to put them into operation. With this new round of financing, the focus also expands to robotics. And in this field, spatial intelligence is especially critical, since a robot that understands the space around it can plan actions before executing them, process different ways of completing a task or adapt to changing environments without needing to be reprogrammed for each situation. Autodesk has put 200 million at your table. It really makes perfect sense. It is the company that makes the design software used by architects, engineers, animation studios and manufacturers around the world. Your business is, by definition, thinking in three dimensions. And if Li’s models can generate and reason about 3D environments, Autodesk tools can also benefit from what the startup aims to offer. Daron Green, chief scientist at Autodesk, explained to TechCrunch that the collaboration between both companies will initially focus on entertainment and audiovisual production. The idea is that design workflows can be combined with AI-generated worlds. In this way, a user designs an object in Autodesk and places it in an environment created by World Labs, or the other way around. “You might anticipate that we will consume their models or that they will consume ours in different contexts,” Green said. You are not alone in this race. World Labs is not the only commitment to world models. Google DeepMind works on your family of Genie modelscapable of generating and simulating 3D environments. Yann LeCun, who was chief AI scientist at Meta, just founded AMI Labs with the same approach. Startups like Decart and Odyssey They also move in this spacealthough with products still in the demo or research phase. However, there are differences in their respective approaches. LeCun, for example, defends that to build true world models a completely new AI architecture will be needednot generative. Li, from World Labs, is committed to advancing with current generative models and improving from there. Cover image | World Labs and Andria Lo In Xataka | We’d love to tell you that ‘Her’ hasn’t come true and there aren’t people dating an AI, but we can’t.

Lockheed has created an underwater drone that clings to ships like a lamprey. And when released, it launches torpedoes

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The lamprey is a fish that has survived 360 million years thanks to a simple strategy: sticking to its prey to suck its blood. Lockheed Martin has taken that idea literally to name its new weapon, and the analogy is quite literal. The new thing from Lockheed is called Lamprey Multi-Mission Autonomous Undersea Vehicle (MMAUV). It is an underwater drone just over 7 meters long, capable of traveling attached to an allied ship or submarine with a lamprey-like system. While attached to the host ship, it can recharge its batteries using its built-in hydrogen generator. Stealth or attack The Lamprey MMAUV does practically everything, although it is primarily designed for covert missions. It can remain on the seabed, monitoring the enemy without being detected thanks to its acoustic signature profile. practically invisible when sonar. When the time comes to act, the Lamprey can do almost anything: it deploys decoys to confuse the opponent, it is equipped with anti-submarine torpedoes and, if it rises to the surface, it can also launch aerial drones. What makes the Lamprey especially striking is that it concentrates in a single system capabilities that until now were distributed across different platforms: surveillance, anti-submarine warfare, deception, attack and aerial reconnaissance. It can operate in a swarm coordinating with other unmanned systems. And it can do so autonomously, making decisions without direct human intervention. Autonomous submarines The Lamprey will not be the United States’ first unmanned underwater vehicle. There are antecedents like Boeing Orca submarinewith the difference that it cost eight years and 885 million dollars to develop it, all so that today it is not clear if it will end up becoming a program in the US Navy. The Lamprey has been funded internally, which Lockheed vice president Paul Lemmo said has allowed them to “iterate at lightning speed and deliver to the Navy a truly multi-purpose weapon that detects, disrupts, deceives and attacks on its own.” Furthermore, he presumes that Its cost is significantly lower than that of other manned platforms. But the United States is not the only power exploring unmanned vehicles. China has been developing its own fleet of underwater drones for some time and at the military parade in September 2025 presented the AJX002an unmanned underwater vehicle between 18 and 20 meters capable of operating autonomously, laying mines and networking with other attack systems. In Xataka | The US wants to give up bringing the most valuable samples collected on Mars. Lockheed promises to do it for less than half Image | Lockheed

when the boomers retire

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Although the teleworking rate in Spain has been doubled since 2019, in the last two years has stagnated around 14%. The return to the office that companies have promoted has caused the hybrid day to climb positions, while 100% remote days they are going backwards. However, according to a recent report from the US National Bureau of Economic Research, in the not too distant future this situation will once again shift towards remote work models. Specifically, the report places this change at the moment in which current CEOs retire of the Baby Boom generation. Young people love teleworking. According to the study of National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), workers in companies created after 2015 allow on average 27% more days of teleworking than those companies founded before 1990. For their part, self-employed professionals work from home more than twice as often as other workers. Researchers at Stanford University observed a pattern in data from 8,000 American workers ages 20 to 64, surveyed monthly through 2025. Startups often adopt technologies and ways of working that facilitate remote work from the start. As your age advances, the possibility of teleworking is progressively reduced. The age of the boss makes a difference. The study found a direct relationship between the age of the company’s CEO and the number of days its employees were allowed to telework. The younger the CEO, the more days a week teleworking was allowed to your employees. The data show a clear drop in required office days as the age of the manager decreases. This suggests that younger managers accept teleworking as something natural, not as an extra effort that slows down daily performance. “Employees telework more frequently in companies with younger CEOs,” the study’s authors noted. Relationship between the age of CEOs and teleworking time Source: NBER Boomer retirement will drive change. According to the researchers, as managers boomers and generation they retire Over the next decade, millennials and Generation Z will take over. This will make teleworking once again the norm, not the exception, despite the fact that the current policies of large technology companies such as Amazon or JPMorgan require going to the office five days a week. ​The NBER study concludes that this trend can mark a turning point when changing jobs for those who do not want to wait for their bosses to retire to work more days from home: if you want to telework more days, prioritize young companies with young bosses. Bosses who were trained remotely. As and how they stand out in Fortuneyounger CEOs are not only more aware of the importance of flexible hours and teleworking in the well-being of employees, but they have trained and developed their companies with tools such as Slack, Zoom or AI from the beginning. This generates companies that are digitally native by nature, where remote and in-person work use the same tools and processes. Mark Dixon, CEO of the coworking platform International Workplace Group (IWG), stated in an interview for Fortune that “embrace comprehensive technology, which includes flexible working, remote location, high levels of technology and using technology to get the most out of your people. Those will be the winning companies, because it is people-centric.” In Xataka | Neither tax incentives nor free daycare have managed to improve birth rates: teleworking has Image | Unsplash (Redmind Studio)

Microsoft has a billion-dollar plan to end inequality in Latin America. And it is to expand AI, of course

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50 billion dollars. This figure that seems so impossible to contextualize is the amount of money that Microsoft is going to invest in what they have dubbed the ‘plan’Global South by 2030‘. And like almost everything that has to do with Microsoft for a few months now, it is focused on one thing: improving access to AI in the countries of the ‘Global South‘. In short. This week, during the AI ​​Impact Summit in New Delhi, Microsoft president presented a plan to invest $50 billion by the end of the decade to improve access to artificial intelligence in developing countries and emerging markets. Brad Smith said they want to sustain the long-term growth of those countries as part of his company’s effort to address a problem they have detected: the growing digital divide between developed and developing nations. There may be many other gaps beyond access to AI, but Smith is convinced that what is urgent is to accelerate the adoption of AI in regions of India, Africa and Latin America. This ‘Global North’ and ‘Global South’ thing is not a geographical issue. It is an economic division The plan. The intention of Microsoft is “to make the dissemination of AI real and at scale, so that communities have what they need to access that tool, that they trust it and can apply it to local priorities.” The legs of that plan are: Empower schools and nonprofit organizations through technology and digital skills. Strengthen multilingual and multicultural artificial intelligence capabilities. Enable local AI innovations to meet community needs. Measure the spread of AI to guide future policies and investment. Let it be used more. With this, Microsoft hopes that AI will penetrate more into these territories because, according to an internal report on the spread of artificial intelligence, while 24.7% of the working-age population in the Global North uses generative AI tools, in the Global South only 14.1% use it. According to Smith, developing economies cannot miss out on those productivity advantages that come with AI. AI and hunger in Africa. But it is not the only thing that Microsoft has recently presented that seeks to position AI as a catalyst for change. With the ambitious title of ‘Stop malnutrition with AI’, the American company has presented a project to improve food security in sub-Saharan Africa. Starting in Kenya, the idea is that institutions have access to tools that offer information to predict and prevent food shortages and predict, with AI, the risks that this implies for health. If you are raising an eyebrow like “thank goodness we now have AI to give us the solution to a problem that we already know”, here at least there is no talk of Generative AIbut rather a model that collects all the data and reflects it on a map so that organizations have more detailed information. Data centers. These 50,000 million are added to other previous billion-dollar investments that Microsoft had already done in countries like BrazilIndia or South Africa, but there is something more than “digital empowerment”. The initiative includes building AI infrastructure, and that means one thing: building data centers. This infrastructure requires an immense amount of energy to satisfy the needs of the digital infrastructure, but they also need water and Mexico and South American countries are directly mentioned as home to some of the new data centers. Microsoft has been testing for some time more sustainable data center designsbut precisely in developing places, energy and water are resources that, perhaps, are not abundant. Images | Specialgst, Microsoft In Xataka | What is happening in the US is a warning for Spain: data centers driving up electricity bills in homes

The US was convinced that China was testing nuclear weapons, and now it has proof

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Washington and Moscow maintained an unwritten rule which has now been broken: if a test was carried out, the world had to find out. For decades, the global strategic balance was sustained by fragile agreements, mutual distrust and red lines that no one wanted to openly cross. When those limits have started to fadeeven the slightest hint can alter the stability that seemed guaranteed. This is how the accusations begin nuclear. A tremor reopens the ghost. The story we tell it last week, but now, a priori, there is more data to support Washington’s rhetoric. The United States has toughened its accusation that China conducted an underground nuclear test low-yield on June 22, 2020 near Lop Nur, Xinjiang, supporting in detected seismic data by a station in Kazakhstan that recorded an event of approximate magnitude 2.75. Washington maintains something that for them is evidence: that the signal cannot fit with an earthquake or mining explosions, and that Beijing would have used “decoupling” techniques to dampen the seismic signal and make detection more difficult, although it admits that it cannot precisely determine the performance of the supposed detonation. The treaty that does not bind. The background of everything is the Treaty of the Complete Ban on Nuclear Tests of 1996, the same one that prohibits nuclear explosions but has never fully come into force due to lack of ratifications, despite the fact that the great powers claim to respect its initial spirit. For its part, the international supervisory body detected two small seismic events separated by 12 seconds on the indicated date, but also recognized that They were too weak to attribute them with complete certainty to a nuclear explosion, which leaves the dispute in a technical field where the public evidence is, to say the least, ambiguous. Strategic pressure without New START. The accusation comes after expiration of the last treaty that limited the strategic arsenals of the United States and Russia, and at a time when the Trump administration seeks to promote a new agreement that also include China. From that perspective, publicly detailing the alleged test can function as diplomatic leverage to force Beijing to sit down to negotiate. At the same time, it serves to Washington to open another perhaps more disturbing scenario: to warn that it will not accept to sit idly by what it has called an “intolerable disadvantage” if others carry out low-yield tests while the United States maintains its moratorium in force since 1992. In other words, whether it was a real nuclear test or not, the powers seem be taking positions now that there are no pacts involved. The debate about pressing the button. In fact, Trump has hinted that the United States could resume tests “on equal terms” if China and Russia are also carrying them out, a possibility that worries arms control experts who fear breaking the post-Cold War taboo and trigger a new test race. The discussion, therefore, is not only technical, but political: if Washington responds with its own detonations, it could legitimize other powers to do the same, eroding decades of informal containment. Nuclear balance in transformation. Although the Chinese arsenal (estimated around 600 warheads) is still lower than that of Russia and the United States, its rapid expansion It worries Washington, which interprets any low-yield tests as part of a strategy to modernize and perfect its nuclear force. Beijing denies having crossed the line and defends that it respects its moratorium. And, meanwhile, the debate over clandestine testing reveals an increasingly fragile international system, one where distrust and opacity technology weigh almost as much as the weapons themselves. Image | Planet Labs, Google Earth In Xataka | Satellite images leave no room for doubt: China’s nuclear renaissance is already visible from space In Xataka | The United States is convinced that China is conducting nuclear tests. The problem is that you can’t prove it.

It is proof that “buying to rent” in Spain is today very profitable

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For years, renting in Spain represented more than just a quick, flexible and (relatively) commitment-free way to find housing. It was also the springboard for those who wanted to take the leap and become owners of their own home, the ‘anteroom’ through which one passed while gathering the stability and sufficient level of savings to buy an apartment. Not anymore. In the crazy market of 2026 rent has become a kind of limbo from which many families are unable to leavetrapped in an apparent contradiction: renting is much more expensive than getting a mortgage, but also more ‘accessible’. And that makes buying to rent increasingly attractive. What has happened? That the roles that until not so long ago seemed established in the Spanish real estate market are becoming blurred. We mentioned it before. For a long time, renting was more than just a quick and flexible way to find housing. It also served as a springboard for those who wanted to become owners. You rented, you saved and (after visiting the bank) you bought. The problem is that after price escalation of recent years and the deep imbalance between supply and demand, right now renting is much more expensive than mortgage. And there are signs that suggest that gap it is becoming entrenchedmaking it increasingly difficult for those who now live as tenants to take the leap, sign a loan and become owners of their own homes. CCAA Mortgage installment (4th Q 2025) Vari. Quarterly % Salary fee/cost Andalusia €709.5 -1.2% 34.6% Aragon €603.4 -7.6% 27% Asturias €632.3 +10.7% 27.9% Balearics €1,298.3 -7.8% 55% Canary Islands €740.8 +8.1% 38.6% Cantabria €660.3 +5.4% 31.5% Castile-La Mancha €554.8 +0.8% 26.9% Castile and León €540.9 +1.3% 25.7% Catalonia €866.5 +1.4% 34.1% Valencian C. €647.2 +4.3% 30.6% Estremadura €452.5 +2.2% 23.4% Galicia €635.7 +5% 30.6% Madrid €1,250.3 +2.7% 43.7% Murcia Region €504.4 -2.2% 24.8% Navarre €701.8 -0.4% 28% the Basque Country €838.4 +3% 31.8% Rioja €523.1 +1.8% 24.2% SPAIN €796.6 +1.3% 33.8% What does the data say? It is not easy to take a general ‘photograph’ of what is happening in Spain because the real estate market varies greatly from one region to another. Even between nearby cities. All in all, there are some interesting clues. In 2018 it was already possible to find ‘top’ areas in which rents exceeded mortgage payments. Today that is the general trend in most of the country. In 2022 an iAhorro study estimated that the monthly cost of a mortgage loan was 394 euros less than that of renting a home. In the middle of last year the same entity published another report which already placed this gap at €430, the difference between the average of rents (1,153) and loans (722). Those responsible for the study they warned at that time that the burdens of those who live on rent and those who do so with mortgages were following opposite directions. Tenants suffered the consequences of a broken market in which prices do not stop growing. In the second case (that of bank loans), iAhorro detected a decrease in payments, favored by the rate drop. Are there more current indicators? Yes. The SER has just published a new comparison which shows that, with ups and downs, that gap remains unchanged. According to the data it manages, the average cost of a mortgage was €796 per month at the end of 2025, while that of rent is around €1,184. That is, the gap between the two is around 400 euros. If we take as a reference the average for all of 2025 for mortgages (€769), the difference is even greater, €415. What does that mean? That on average people who live in a home they own and pay a mortgage to the bank spend about €4,800 less per year (12 monthly payments) than those who live in rented homes. The difference is even greater in highly stressed markets, such as the Balearic Islands or Catalonia. CCAA Average Rental Price 2025 Balearic Islands €1,643 Madrid €1,584 Catalonia €1,439 the Basque Country €1.1331 Canary Islands €1,113 Valencian C. €1,033 Navarre €1,028 Andalusia €933 Cantabria €811 Asturias €789 Aragon €778 Murcia €775 Galicia €766 Castile and León €734 Rioja €730 Castile-La Mancha €707 Estremadura €582 Spain €1,184 Where do the figures come from? The credit information is provided by the College of Registrars, which in its latest real estate statistics provides data on mortgage payments for the last quarter of 2025. What do your tables show? That at the end of last year the monthly payment in Spain stood at 796.6 euros, 1.3% more than the previous quarter. That is the average indicator at the state level, but things change when we analyze each region of Spain. The cheapest is Murcia, where the fee barely exceeds 500 euros. The most expensive are, by far, the Balearic Islands (1,298.3 euros) and Madrid (1,250.3). Lease data is based on Insurance rental observatorywhich indicates that in 2025 the average house price stood at €1,184. Once again, this is a state indicator that hides deep differences between autonomous communities. For example, the 1,643 euros paid on average by tenants in the Balearic Islands, 1,584 by those from Madrid or 1,439 by Catalans have little to do with the 707 in Castilla-La Mancha or 582 in Extremadura. Why this gap? Because although statistics show that both mortgages and rentals have become more expensive in the last year, the latter have done so more quickly. According to the College of Registrars, credit fees have increased 4.2%. In the case of income, Rental Insurance estimates an increase of almost 6%although there are other reports (this one from Idealista) which ensure that the interannual variation has been greater and exceeds 8%. The result is that tenants are forced to spend more time each time most of your income to housing, surpassing even 40%far above what is recommended. Why don’t they mortgage themselves? Because although right now it is more convenient to pay a bank than a landlord, not everyone … Read more

It will be cheaper if you use this discount coupon

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Yes, the Google Pixel 10a is now official and, for another year, the phone is set to be one of the best mid-range phones. It will arrive in stores on March 8, leaving from 549 eurosbut we can reserve it now. And, if we do it at MediaMarkt, we can take it cheaper at MediaMarkt using a discount code. We will tell you more about this promo. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Official cases at half price and 130 euros discount on the mobile The Google Pixel 10a comes as the most economical option in this family of phones, although it is always appreciated when we can save even more on our purchase. The savings from this MediaMarkt promo are separated into two parts, both with discount coupons that We must apply when we have the phone in the cart. The first of these two discount codes is ‘30MMPIXEL10A‘, which will give us a direct discount of 30 euros. In this way, we can get the phone in its version with 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage for less than its RRP. What interests you about the model with 256 GB? That’s okay, the code can also be used with it. The discount we have available to get the phone is great, but it doesn’t come alone. MediaMarkt has available original phone cases at half price (as well as chargers), so we can take the opportunity to take one along with the mobile phone and thus have it well protected against scratches or bumps. This promotion will only be active from today until next March 4 at 11 p.m. As for the telephone, it is a direct evolution of the Pixel 9a with changes such as the camera module, which now does not protrude (ideal if you don’t like the phone not resting well on the table). The screen, which is very similar, now has more maximum brightness and has more resistance to shocks and abrasionswhich is great to keep us in good condition for longer. Beyond these changes, the mobile has the same 5,100 mAh battery as the previous model, although with improved fast charging from 30 to 45 Wwhich is perfect if you’re in a hurry and don’t want to wait too long for it to load. All rounded off by a ton of artificial intelligence and seven years of guaranteed updates, so your phone will be up to date for a long time. 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 | Google, MediaMarkt In Xataka | The best mobile phones (2025), we have tested them and here are their analyzes In Xataka | The best quality-price mobiles (2025). Their analyzes and videos are here

Carrefour is going to open 750 stores in Spain in the next four years. But not as we know them

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Carrefour has announced 750 openings in Spain and not because business is going especially well. He has announced them because the model that made him great (the suburban hypermarket) has been losing steam for a while. This strategic plan until 2030 is, above all, an adaptation to the reality of the modern consumer. The background. Carrefour was one of those who popularized a way of shopping that dominated the retail European for a time: the hypermarket. A huge area on the outskirts, with free parking and the idea of ​​having everything under one roof. Saturday shopping as a family ritual. That model worked while life revolved around cars and rigid schedules. But habits have been changing, and with them the business. The contrast. The 750 planned openings are not hypermarkets. They are mainly small-format, urban convenience stores (Carrefour Express), many operated by franchisees. The kind of place where you walk in on the way home, grab what’s missing, and in ten minutes you’re done. Not where you spend much more time filling a car. In Spain, the only format that grew in 2024 was precisely this: 62 new Express stores compared to zero net openings in hypermarkets and large supermarkets. Yes, but. Growing in convenience is easier to announce than to execute. The margin per square meter is lower, the competition is intense, from Dia to the regional chains; and the franchise model involves relying on third parties to maintain standards. Alexandre Bompard, CEO of Carrefour, has admitted that part of the growth will come through acquisitions, because the Spanish market “is fragmented.” In other words: you have to buy to gain scale, and that costs money and time. Meanwhile, Lidl, with almost a 7% share, threatens to take second position from Carrefour in the Spanish market, where the French group has lost 0.7 points in a year and stands at 9%. Very far in any case from Mercadona. The big question. What is done with the 206 hypermarkets that Carrefour has in Spain? The plan talks about converting up to 10% of its surface towards growth categories, such as pets, personal care or financial services. It is a reasonable solution, but it patches the format more than transforms it. Carrefour’s real bet is to build a parallel business to the hypermarket, smaller and more urban, that grows while the large one stabilizes. If you succeed, you will have read the moment correctly. If not, you will have spent a lot of money chasing rivals who already have an advantage. In Xataka | Mercadona has a rival in its absolute dominance of supermarkets: the “ultra low-cost” of PrimaPrix and Sqrups Featured image | Carrefour

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