Aragon

We know that the inhabitants of a Roman site in Aragon loved wine and games. A mystery remains: why they vanished

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When we think of ancient Rome, the first image that comes to mind is that of patricians in togas, the Colosseum, legionnaires and heroes gathered in the Senate. That however is only one part of the Empire. The “Rome of marble”, as the archaeologist Ángel A. Jordán recently summarized it in an interview with The Newspaper. Another, equally important and much less known, is the “Rome of clay”, that formed by people who lived far from the metropolis and dedicated their days to working, drinking and playing, went hungry, loved and mourned their dead. That last Rome is the one that Jordan and his companions are discovering little by little in Barker Heada deposit of Five Villasprovince of Zaragoza. In a place in Aragon… It may not be the best-known site in Spain, but Barker Head has proven to be a box of surprises for archaeologists interested in the history of Aragon. Located in the pre-Pyrenean foothills, near Sofuentes, its land was occupied for centuries and played a key role in the road which Augustus ordered to be built and toured the area. Hence since 2016 Researchers have carried out several campaigns to peer into the secrets of a population that, it is estimated, covered 19 hectares and extended from the late bronze age until late antiquity, between the centuries VI and IX AD., a period that has left a good handful of vestiges. Last year, for example, was announced the discovery of a Roman road. Why is it news? Because after eight campaigns, a new excavation has just been launched at the site. He revealed it a few days ago The Aragon Newspaperwho in the process chatted with the project director, Angel A. Jordanabout the objective that the team has set for this year: to clarify why the population declined, something difficult to understand with the data they have collected so far. “It is a city that a priori has water because it is located in a place where there are many springs, it is a privileged area with very good agricultural land… It is a great mystery why the city stopped being inhabited. In the 7th century it no longer exists,” details the expert The chronicle of Cabeza Ladrero can therefore extend from the IX or VIII BC until late in our era, although it is believed that it reached its period of splendor during the Roman era. One unknown, two theories. Although the excavations will (hopefully) clarify the mystery, Jordán and his team already start with some theories on the table. One is that the settlement succumbed to external attacks. “Last year the excavation began to give us curious elements. Small remains are appearing that indicate the presence of fire, ashes are appearing in different parts of the street and that makes us think that it could have been abandoned due to some violent event,” admits in The Newspaper. “Taking into account that the city does not reach the 7th century and that there are signs of destruction, we could still be facing some type of attack, especially from the Bagaudas, rebel groups that acted in the Ebro valley during the 5th and 6th centuries and that looted several cities in the region,” apostille the expert The other suspect. The second hypothesis is that it was the disease that killed the locals. As remember Jordanit is known that in the 6th century there was “a brutal epidemic of the Black Death” that had devastating consequences. “It is estimated that in many parts of the empire up to 25% died,” says the director of the archaeological project before remembering that there is evidence of another phenomenon: a transfer of population to The Bañalesa Roman settlement located not far from Cabeza Ladrero and which became a prosperous town. The “Rome of clay”. Beyond its geopolitical relevance, its role in the road system or the details of its chronicle, there is another reason why Cabeza Ladrero is so special: it offers us a window into the “Rome of clay”which completes the image of “marble Rome” that cinema usually conveys and has formed the cliché of the empire. After all, at the Aragonese site archaeologists have found much more than vials and ancient milestones. Pitchers and board games. During their excavations, researchers have found jugs that tell us about his love of drinking and several tokens that, experts believe, could have been part of an ancient board game. “They were people who lived, got drunk and robbed each other; but they also loved and we have been able to see that very well in the necropolis,” Jordan says in The Newspaper. “Indeed, they played because they had to have fun and, if not, they were bored out of their minds. They organized tournaments and the kids had their toys.” Images | Wikipedia 1 and 2 Via | The Aragon Newspaper In Xataka | Under an institute, Rome has found something impressive: a perfectly preserved “domus” from the 2nd century

Spain has so many reservoirs that it practically cannot build more. So in Aragon they are expanding them

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The town hall of Fraga (Huesca) has started the necessary works to raise the dam of the 190,000 m³ reservoir that supplies the city by two meters. It may seem like a detail, something almost anecdotal in a country with 1,200 reservoirs and more than 56,000 hm³. And it is. However, it is also the perfect metaphor for the enormous problem that is brewing at the bottom of our swamps. The end of the Spanish miracle. For practical purposes, Spain does not build new dams because it already has 1,200. It is, in fact, one of the countries in the world with the most dams and, although there are some areas that could be ‘usable’, these are increasingly scarce, smaller and most unsustainable at an environmental level. That is to say, even if we wanted to, we could not grow our reservoir capacity much. And there is no shortage of examples of this: Mularroya, in Zaragoza, has the dam completed, but with a nullity sentence for failing to comply with the Water Framework Directive; Biscarrués, in Huesca, is still under studybut the controversy over its environmental impact is enormous; Almudévar, although it has been completed for years, cannot be filled due to lack of pumping capacity. Building a dam in the 80s was already almost impossible and the situation has only gotten worse. In fact, in the last 15 years, Only 20 reservoirs have been inaugurated, totaling 803.6 hm³ A problem that is little talked about. The country loses about 100 hm³/year due to clogging while the CEDEX projected falls runoff of -11%/-14% in the next 40 years. In other words, the real problem with Spanish reservoirs is not that we cannot build more, it is that the mud and sediments are robbing us of storage capacity. Mequinenza has already lost 10% of its capacity And what do we do? That is the big question and it is where the example of the Fraga town hall is most interesting. Because many engineers have been arguing for years that, if we cannot create new dams on virgin valleys, we can still grow existing dams. In Yesa, between Navarra and Aragón, the work (the most emblematic of this approach) would allow up to 1,079 hm³ to be added. More than the 803 of the other approach. Right now, as far as we know, the work is stopped due to some allegations. Where it has been carried out is in Santolea, Teruel, adding 81.75 hm³ to the original reservoir. And why isn’t the process accelerated? Largely because many people believe that the dam model has reached its peak and believe that we must kill the culture of the reservoir: The storage capacity already exceeds the available water and adding more empty glasses does not create the water on its own. The water war is one of the fiercest battles in the Spain of the future. And I don’t think anyone knows how to sign a peace treaty. Imagwn | Yoann Laheurte In Xataka | Our reservoirs have a serious structural problem. And experts have been warning us for years.

Aragon has the cure for the abandoned lands of the Pyrenees: cultivate medicinal herbs

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If he rural abandonment In Spain it is a reality that has existed for decades, in high mountain areas even more so: if it is already difficult to live in a small town, when it is in the middle of nowhere and to get there there is only one road full of curves, staying there means spending your life in difficult mode. Leaving means abandoning everything, including those lands that were once more or less productive and that now become pasture for bushes, soil degradation and fires. The Aragonese Pyrenees has extensions of abandoned cultivated land and a solution to give way to that wasted land: cultivate aromatic and medicinal plants. Goodbye to the wastelands. This initiative of the Aragon Agri-Food Research and Technology Center is part of the project Pyrenees4Climate. The pilot plot is in Espierre (Biescas, Huesca), it has been abandoned for 60 years and is located between 1,250 and 1,600 meters of altitude. The crop for these first tests is fine lavender, which is used to obtain essential oils for the pharmaceutical and perfumery industries. Why choose such inhospitable terrain to plant lavender? Precisely because the altitude and type of soil, unfavorable for other plants, are ideal for lavender, according to two decades of CITA research. But growing crops in high mountain terrain is not an easy task: as explains researcher Juliana Navarrothe conditioning of these farms has posed a technical and logistical challenge: steep slope, deep-rooted weeds, intensive stone clearing and even old stone walls for retaining land on plots that had never been mechanized. Why is it important. Because rural areas have been losing population and agricultural activity for decades and this project wants to recover vacant lands with crops that have a real market. This project seeks to regenerate high-value products, establish a young population in rural areas, preserve traditional knowledge about local plants and improve biodiversity, since aromatic plants attract bees and other pollinators. On the other hand, and as we mentioned previously, lavender and lavender are plants that are especially resistant to cold and drought, which makes them ideal for a Pyrenees that increasingly has drier summers and more irregular winters. Context. If the rural exodus in Spain has been a reality since the mid-20th century, in the case of high mountain areas the phenomenon is even more intense and documented: The abandonment of farmland in the Central Pyrenees has accelerated especially since the 1960s. The forest area has gained ground at the expense of traditional agricultural and livestock uses, which offers ambivalent results: there is more vegetation coverbut also increased risk of fire and loss of biodiversity associated with grasslands and open habitats. The LIFE program is the main financial instrument of the European Union for the environment and climate action since its inception in 1992. European funds provide 60% of the financing of the total budget, which guarantees its materialization and monitoring. Aragon is the territory where they will run more pilot tests: 14 of the 33 designed for the next seven years. How are they going to do it?. The operation model combines CITA’s institutional research with local entrepreneurs such as Ignacio Guallart Balet, promoter of the project and businessman from Zaragoza, originally from the Tena Valley and with experience in ecological mobility and circular economy. This point is important because it solves one of the great problems of agricultural research: the application of its research. The project also includes the development of a manual of good practices for mountain crops adapted to climate change and has a European scope: the Alps or the Carpathians are potential candidates for its application. Yes, but. While it is true that these medicinal plants can be sold dry, for the distillation of essential oils or for cosmetics, the reality is that the European market already has consolidated producers. in the south of France and the center of europe. Without a seal indicating protected origin or organic certification, competing in the market will be an arduous task. Bottom line: the profitability of the project is unclear. On the other hand, growing lavender also has its difficulties: it is true that it tolerates drought well, but in its first years it needs irrigation and the Pyrenees are already experiencing worrying changes in their rainfall regime. And there is another actor to take into account: wildlife, whose pressure on crops in high mountains can be significant. In Xataka | There is a corner of Spain where global warming is wreaking havoc: the Pyrenees are becoming “Mediterraneanized” In Xataka | If we want to know how climate change will affect the Pyrenees, we do not have to look at the heat or the snow. You have to study the caves Cover | Dina Spencer and Luise and Nic

In Aragon, farms are starting to do something with their slurry ponds: cover them with solar panels

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only in Aragon there is more than 4,000 farms of pigs, farms from which every year thousands and thousands of tons of meat that later is marketed in the rest of the world. In the pigsties where the cattle are raised, however, something else is generated: an enormous amount of slurry that represents a real challenge environmental. At the end of the day, these wastes end up stored in ponds that emit harmful gasessuch as methane, ammonia or nitrous oxide. In Aragon they have had an idea: cover them with solar panels. From farms and slurry. Spain is one of the big producers of pork in the European Union, something that is possible thanks to a vast network made up of thousands of farms. The problem is that not only cattle come out of them. The industry generates millions of tons of slurry, a manure that can be used as fertilizerbut whose management poses some challenges. Although the composition varies depending on its source, farm manure generally generates greenhouse gases and pollutants, including methane and ammonia. It is not a minor issue if we take into account that some calculations They estimate that the Spanish pig sector produces just over 60 million tons of slurry each year. A challenge, an opportunity. Manure management takes time under the magnifying glass of the environmentalists and is regulated in the lawwhich includes measures such as cover at least part of the ponds or the use of systems that reduce their emissions. With this backdrop, a few years ago a consortium formed by the Aragonese firm Intergia Energía Sostenible and two other entities became a question: What if necessity were made a virtue and the space occupied by the slurry ponds was used to generate energy? What if, at the same time that manure deposits are covered to reduce their emissions, photovoltaics could be expanded? A “win-win”. The result was a project developed between 2020 and 2023 which, with the support of the European EAFRD fund and the Government of Aragon, dedicated itself to investigating this path. His idea was very simple: cover the slurry ponds with floating solar panels to achieve a win-win manual. Polluting emissions remain at the levels established by regulations and, at the same time, the farms improve the performance of their ponds, converting them into sources of solar energy production. Instead of covering rooftops or acres of fields with solar panels, they are deployed directly over manure deposits. Rethinking floating systems. From Intergia they explain that the project developed between 2020 and 2023 let some interesting lessons. For example, the ammonia in slurry ends up oxidizing and degrading some elements of photovoltaic installations. Specifically, certain parts of the module fastening system and wiring. Now the company wanted to go one step further and open the way. “While floating photovoltaics are already widely used in bodies of water, such as irrigation ponds or lakes, their use in other liquid bodies is in the study phase,” claims. Hence, the firm (along with other allies, such as the University of Zaragoza) is promoted Fotopura project that wants to help the pork sector reduce its emissions while generating energy. One project, two bets. To move in this direction, the company has set up two facilities pilot with which he hopes to learn more about the potential of photovoltaic panels to cover slurry ponds. In fact, both are designed to “maximize” reducing polluting emissions and resisting ammonia corrosion, although they differ in a key aspect: one of them uses standard commercial parts, designed for floating photovoltaics; the other has been designed specifically for ponds in which livestock manure is stored. A Zamora farm. That is the place where Fotopur has assembled its first prototype. In November They installed their photovoltaic cover on an 880 m2 slurry pond located on a breeding farm in Calzada de Tera, Zamora. To be more precise, Intergia deployed a 13.5 x 25 m floating platform with 56 panels and a peak power of 33.04 kWp. In total, the entire installation covers 90% of the pond and those responsible hope that it will help cover up to 22% of the farm’s electricity bill. The interesting thing is its components. The company used a commercial floating photovoltaic system used in water ponds. That is, it was not created specifically for slurry ponds. What Intergia and the rest of Fotopur’s partners have done is apply small changes. For example, to avoid corrosion, they replaced the steel parts that came from the factory with aluminum and stainless steel parts. To reduce friction they also incorporated a plastic sheet. …And a Zaragoza farm. He another prototype It was assembled weeks later at a bait farm in Tauste, in Zaragoza, and unlike the Castilla y León version, it was designed specifically for use in slurry ponds. For example, its creators devised a system that “minimizes the air-slurry contact surface between the floating elements and that will facilitate the support of the photovoltaic panels.” Another of the tasks they have had to face is “design a specific structure”formed by a matrix of anodized aluminum beams anchored to the platform and with brackets that allow the panels to have an inclination of 15º. In total they house 16 panels with a power of 9.44 kWp. The screws are made of aluminum and stainless steel to prevent corrosion. If its authors’ plans are fulfilled, the floating platform will “effectively” cover 10% of the pond’s surface and its photovoltaic production will reach 15.2 Mwh/year, enough to cover up to 53% of the farm’s electrical demand. That plus, claims Intergiawill allow the Aragonese exploitation to reduce its fuel consumption, “expensive and polluting.” And now what? With its prototypes Fotopur aims to continue advancing on the path that was already opened in 2020, solve the problems that were identified then and demonstrate the advantages of covering the slurry ponds with solar panels. Now, once the Zamora and Zaragoza facilities have been set up, the experts will dedicate themselves to controlling … Read more

After deploying its data centers in Aragon, Amazon wants to protect Zaragoza from floods

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On July 6, 2023, a torrential storm collapsed the Barranco de la Muerte in Zaragoza, leaving the Z-30 under two meters of water and causing damage valued at 125 million euros, as collects The Herald. Among the affected structures, the high-speed train between Madrid and Barcelona and the capital’s main ring road. This natural disaster made it clear that Zaragoza lacked hydraulic infrastructure capable of absorbing extreme weather events, increasingly frequent with climate change, such as explains AEMET. In response, the City Council made a plan structured in three phases and began conversations with Amazon Web Services, the hyperscaler that Aragón has chosen for its data centers in Spain: the result is a public-private alliance that combines hydraulic infrastructure and real-time monitoring technology with the aim of turning Zaragoza into a European benchmark for urban resilience. Zaragoza, flood-proof. The Zaragoza City Council and AWS with the collaboration of the Government of Aragon and the Ebro Hydrographic Confederation have agreed implement a global technological and hydraulic strategy for environmental risk management. Amazon will contribute 13.8 million euros, distributed in three annual installments. The collaboration has two legs: a physical one, with the construction of hydraulic infrastructure in the Barranco de la Muerte; and another technological, with the deployment of an intelligent early warning platform based on the AWS cloud. Why is it important. This system will benefit more than 700,000 people who live in the Aragonese capital, in addition to protecting critical infrastructure for the city such as the Z-30, the train and entire neighborhoods such as Parque Venecia, today exposed to intense storms. Beyond the scope of the work, this is one of the few cases in Spain where a large technology company directly finances public civil protection infrastructure as a condition of its installation in the territory, which puts a question on the table: what the companies that consume the most resources can and should contribute to the cities that host them. Context. AWS maintains one of the largest investment plans in digital infrastructure in Spain: in 2024 announced an investment of 15.7 billion euros in Aragon over the next decade to expand its cloud infrastructure and new data center campuses in Villanueva de Gállego, El Burgo de Ebro and Huesca. This expansion has a B side: enormous pressure on the territory’s electrical, water and transportation networks. The Barranco de la Muerte is not an isolated case: the Valencia DANA of October 2024 left more than 220 dead and politically accelerated the demand for drainage infrastructure in vulnerable urban areas. Zaragoza, with active ravines and a climate prone to intense convective storms, is one of them. How are they going to do it?. From the point of view of hydraulic works, it is a lamination of avenues combined with sustainable urban drainage enhanced with real-time monitoring. The plan is divided into three technical phases. The first, financed by the council and already underway, consists of a perimeter canal and a retaining wall around the Barranco de la Muerte. The second, financed by AWS, adds a storm tank next to the Torrero Cemetery with a capacity for 20,000 cubic meters, five lamination dams and the improvement of the existing ones upstream of Z-40. The third would bury the ravine as it passes through Z-30 with a collector that would double the current drainage capacity. Added to this is a cloud platform that will combine sensors, artificial intelligence and real-time analysis to monitor flows and launch early warnings. That is to say: the physical infrastructure retains and laminates the water, and the technological infrastructure anticipates when and how much will arrive. AWS support is not only financial: it provides digitalization and predictive hydraulics that multiply the effectiveness of physical infrastructure. Yes, but. The collaboration is a real advance for the city, but it raises uncomfortable questions. The first is obvious: Amazon does not pay for these works out of altruism: its data centers in Aragon are voracious consumers of water and energy, so building water infrastructure in the city is a win-win: it minimizes the risk of supply failures in the event of potential natural disasters and improves its image while strengthening ties with the authorities. Water management is one of the thorny points of data centers and with its proliferation increases scrutiny and protests over the consumption of a scarce good, such as Amazon has already suffered itself in Aragon. On the other hand, for the alert technological platform to be useful, it will be an essential requirement that it be accompanied by proven evacuation and response protocols, which turns an alert into a real solution. How they plan to do it is something that has not been publicly disclosed at the moment. In Xataka | Zaragoza is so full of data centers that Amazon has decided to take one to… a town in Teruel with 900 inhabitants In Xataka | Quietly, Aragón is becoming a data center “powerhouse”: now it has taken a crucial step Cover | David Vives and AWS

Aragón unlocks the construction of new Amazon data centers after months of previous work

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Aragon is one of the renewable batteries from Spain. That ability to generate energy has put it in the sights of Big Tech that want to establish themselves in Europe with a clear objective: create more data centers. The shark here is an Amazon that has been operating in the region for a few years, but for which the panorama has just opened to achieve what it has been pursuing for some time. Turn Aragon into the “Spanish Virginia”. In short. This is not a simple comparison, since the US state is one of those with the largest concentration of data centers in the world. In Aragon we are about to see something similar. Amazon, via AWShas been operating since November 2022 in the region with data centers in Zaragoza and Huesca. However, the fever for data centers is more recent and the American giant has been behind permits for some time to be able to build more. As they point from El Periódico de Aragón, after the authorizations that the project has been obtaining in the last two years, Amazon will be able to start building. This is an operation that, until now, had been limited to preparing the ground, but with the unblocking of the operation carried out this past Monday by the Government Council, Amazon will be able to begin building the facilities. Extension. This falls into the PIGAthe General Interest Plan of Aragon, will not be limited to the data centers planned in Villanueva de Gállego and Huesca. The idea is that AWS occupies about 800 hectares with around thirty data centers, 10 electrical substations and 12 buildings, and it is something that is being developed in parallel to the plan to deploy data centers in Walqa, San Mateo de Gállego and La Puebla de Híjar. Jobs and money. Landing these plans, during this year’s Mobile World Congress, the American giant advertisement that their plan is to invest 33.7 billion euros in Spain (at the MWC they stated that they were going to double their initial investment) to expand their data center infrastructure in Aragon between 2026 and 2035. The total investment will contribute 31.7 billion euros to Spain’s total GDP until 2035 and will be esteem that the employment impact will be 29,900 full-time employees. Focusing on Aragon, this operation is expected to contribute 18.5 billion to the region’s GDP and provide employment to 13,400 people. These employment calculations include those of local companies, direct, indirect and induced. It’s not that Amazon is going to create 30,000 jobs out of nowhere and long lasting. Energy. Here comes one of the most important questions: whether Aragon, no matter how much renewable energy it has, will be able to face the gluttony of data centers. Because these data centers, in different parts of the computing process, need energy spikes that we are already seeing how they are covered in other countries: gas, nuclear and… coal. In fact, just scaling AWS will add more than 10,800 GWh per year, more than all current electricity consumption of the community. There has been a lot of debate about the water consumed by data centers and, although the figure is not negligible, the energy cost is much higher. And that is where there is some confrontation between the local industry and Amazon’s plans, because there are those who they claim that the concentration of electrical consumption of AWS and green hydrogen macroplants will brake the development of more traditional renewables. Reviews. And then there is the rejection on environmental issues. More and more we see that there are municipalities that They don’t want to live next door of data centers and it is noted that one of the giant’s projects will be based on protected land. The speed at which permissions have been given to Amazon is also criticized. And, then, there are other issues such as the studies that are appearing little by little and that highlight both the acoustic and thermal pollution of these data centers. It is something that is being measured in various parts of the world and, precisely, in some Aragonese towns near centers of data an increase has been observed of 2°C in surface temperature. Not just Amazon. AWS is an example of the ambitious plans in the region, but they are not the only ones. The community is consolidating as one of the ‘lungs’ of hyperclimbers in Europeas well as one of the key regions of Spain for the expansion of data centers and European technological sovereignty Images | amazon In Xataka | The great paradox of Madrid: the region with the largest energy deficit in Spain is losing the data centers

Data centers are real “heaters”. And they are settling in regions as hot as Aragón

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The data centers They are a black hole in several senses. They are drinking the global NAND chip manufacturing capacity (what affects SSDs, to RAM oa SD cards), the companies that they make batteries they can’t cope and consume wateryes, but much more alarming is energy consumption. In this sense, they are insatiable and, in the end, thousands of pieces of equipment that generate heat are causing another unexpected effect: they are turning the facilities into heat islands. And it is something that has the potential to affect 340 million people. What’s happening. Andrea Marinoni is an associate professor in the Earth Observation group at the University of Cambridge. Also the coordinator of a group of researchers from both the center and the Nanyang Technological University who have published a study called “Heat Island Data: Measuring the Impact of Data Centers on Climate Change.” In it, they present the results of measuring more than 6,000 data centers located far from dense urban areas with the aim of identifying whether these facilities, by themselves, are a notable heat source. The result? “An impact elderly than expected,” according to the researchers. They compared historical temperature measurements from the locations of those data centers over the last 20 years to compare how things have changed recently and identify whether those data centers have had any influence. And, as we said, the impact seems to have been strong: an average of 2°C, with maximums of up to 9°C in some cases. Doesn’t matter the place. This generates a heat island effect, which is when a large amount of heat is concentrated in one area that should not be there. In big cities It’s something that usually happens and that’s why the most efficient urban architecture seeks to combat the phenomenon. And it doesn’t matter where the data center is. In the study they present several examples: Bajío region in Mexico: high data center density, stable climate, but a land surface temperature increase trend of 2 degrees Celsius in the last two decades. It is something that was not identified in nearby areas without data centers. States of Ceará and Piauí in Brazil: increasing trend of 2.8°C with a projection of reaching 3.5°C in the next five years when this is not observed in the rest of the areas. Aragon in Spain: an anomalous increase of 2°C in surface temperature that stands out compared to neighboring provinces. Potential damage. Aragón is a worrying example because heThe region is consolidating as one of the ‘lungs’ of hyperclimbers in Europeas well as one of the regions of Spain key to the expansion of data centers and European technological sovereignty. And the problem is that, according to the study, the impact of this increase in surface temperature reaches up to 10 kilometers away from the hyperscalers. They detail that in the surrounding areas that are about 4.5 kilometers from the data centers, an increase of 1°C can be measured, which seems little, but when we talk about these climatic effects, it is a lot. And, furthermore, they estimate that the impact of increased temperatures due to this broad heat island effect is something with the potential to affect 340 million people. Yes, but. This research has not been the only recent one on the effect of data centers on the land on which they are installed. Researchers at Arizona State University they installed sensors on cars driving near these centers to capture measurements and noticed the same thing as the Cambridge researchers. But one thing to keep in mind: both studies show measurements, but they have not been peer-reviewed. And there are experts, such as Ralph Hintemann, principal investigator at the Borderstep Institute for Innovation and Sustainability, who point out that, although the results are there and are interesting, some figures “seem very high.” In fact, it focuses not so much on the heat that is concentrated around data centers but on the big problem: the amount of energy they need and the return to fossil fuels to meet peak demand. Image | Tedder In Xataka | Data centers in space promise to save the planet. And also ruin the earth’s orbit

The Aragón justice system has shown how expensive it can be for a company to get involved with dismissal letters: 46,665 euros

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There are mistakes that can be corrected with a simple apology. And then there are errors that, once committedhave legal consequences that no apology can undo. A freight transport company in Huesca discovered this in the worst possible way when it fired one of its employees, regretted it days later, trying to back down, and then fired him again. All of this while the worker was at home on medical leave. What seemed like an internal bureaucratic mess ended up in court and with compensation of more than 46,000 euros. The dismissal letters the devil carries them. Two layoffs, one leave and fifteen days of chaos. As documented in the sentence In the case that reached the Superior Court of Justice of Aragon, the worker had been in the company since 2011, with an indefinite contract, and had accumulated more than a year of medical leave due to a cervical injury when, on December 14, 2023, he received a burofax from his company informing him of the disciplinary dismissal. As indicated in the dismissal letter, the employee had carried out incompatible activities with his low status. The worker did not take long to react and began the process to challenge the dismissal in court. But then something unexpected happened. On December 20, just six days later, a second burofax arrived in which the company declared that the first dismissal was annulled and that an internal disciplinary file was opened in its place. Not satisfied with this, on December 29 they received a third burofax containing another dismissal letter, this time accompanied by the payroll and the corresponding settlement. Within two weeks, the employee had received two dismissal communications and one cancellation while was still convalescing at home. Why the company wanted to back down. As stated in the ruling, the company argued that the first dismissal had been a procedural error and considered that the initial letter had formal defects related to the applicable collective agreement, since the worker had questioned by email whether the merchandise transportation agreement or the chemical industry agreement should apply. The company’s intention was to annul that first dismissal, open the correct disciplinary file and issue a new letter in order. From his point of view, the only real dismissal was that of December 29, which had never been challenged by the worker. The company also tried to demonstrate to the court that the underlying reason for the dismissal was legitimate: a private detective report recorded the worker carrying out physical activity during his medical leave, which he interpreted as a simulation of the disability or, at least, as a behavior incompatible with recovery. A dismissal letter is not a draft. The problem for the company is that the dismissal letter is not a simple administrative communication with the employee, but is a document with key legal value with which an entire dismissal process begins with very well-defined deadlines and procedures to give maximum guarantees to both companies and employees. He article 55.1 of the Workers’ Statute establishes that disciplinary dismissal must be notified in writing, with the facts that motivate it and the effective date. Once that letter is delivered, a legal mechanism is put in place that neither party can stop unilaterally. The law itself contemplates the possibility for the company to retract the dismissal and provides a way out when a company wants to correct a poorly formulated dismissal, but as stated in article 55.2 of the Workers’ Statute, it is subject to very precise conditions and deadlines. Furthermore, it is only admitted if, during that rectification period, the company keeps the worker registered with Social Security and pays them all salaries. In this case, the ruling states that it was not proven that the company had complied with that requirement, which blocked this means of rectification. Without the worker’s acceptance, there is no turning back. On the other hand, and beyond the administrative procedures, there is an additional requirement that the company did not comply with in its process of rectification of the first dismissal: for the employment relationship to be restored, the worker who has been dismissed must expressly accept it. It is not enough for the company to declare on its own that the dismissal is without effect. The Supreme Court already established that a communicated dismissal determines that the worker is not obliged to accept any subsequent retraction from the company, and that claiming before the courts in that situation does not constitute any type of abuse. In this case, the employee did not explicitly accept the annulment of the first dismissal or return to his position. The email he sent to the company questioning the applicable collective agreement was not considered by the court as a tacit acceptance of the withdrawal, but rather as confirmation of his dismissal status. The employment relationship, in the eyes of the law, had been terminated on December 14 and no subsequent communication from the company could change that unilaterally. The outcome: more than 46,000 euros in compensation. The TSJ of Aragón also ruled out the argument about physical activity during sick leave. It was proven that the outputs recorded by detective They were walks or runs of about 40 minutes of moderate duration that, according to the medical assessment, were not contraindicated for the worker’s recovery from the cervical injury. With all these arguments on the table, the court declared the dismissal inadmissible, the first, because the second no longer had any legal value, and established compensation of 46,665.34 euros, calculated based on age of the worker. The company appealed that decision to the Superior Court of Justice of Aragon, which confirmed it in its entirety and also ordered it to pay 800 euros in costs. Dismissal letters, especially if they are not well formulated, are carried by the devil. In Xataka | He had been in the same notary office for 16 years and was fired for not passing the trial period: the Supreme Court ended up seeing the … Read more

After years of absence, Aragón has reintroduced two Iberian lynxes. The question is whether it’s posturing or real help.

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Aragón has become the first autonomous community in the northwest of the peninsula to seek to recover the Iberian lynx. And yes, it is a historical milestone that will go down in the annals of conservation manuals; But the question is another: does it make any sense (on an ecological, social or economic level) to continue putting lynxes where there have not been any for decades or are we in the middle of a political marketing operation that will be expensive? The answer is more complex than it seems. What has happened? On March 17, 2026, Jorge Azcón released the first two copies of Iberian lynx on a farm in Torrecilla de Valmadrid (Zaragoza). They are one year old, the female comes from Portugal and the male from Doñana. “The step taken today is a milestone in the recovery of biodiversity in the community,” explained the acting president. And it is, in a way, the general idea in almost all communities in Spain: the Iberian lynx has become our ‘panda bear’, an animal that we are fond of, a symbol of the country and a social aspiration. Does it make sense to reintroduce the lynx? For the lynx, yes. Although we have come a long way since 2002 (when there were just 94 lynxes confined in Andalusia), we have not yet reached “favorable conservation status.” That is, 3,500 specimens (now there are 2,401) and 750 reproductive females (there are 470). Since it started in 2019, the project LIFE LynxConnect has tried to put into practice a very simple idea: Having many lynxes is of no use if those lynxes are confined to just a couple of places. We needed diverse cores and we needed to connect them together. Above all, because climate change is also affecting the entire national territory. The north of the peninsula is increasingly dry and has larger populations of rabbits: therefore, it has become viable for there to be at least two towns (in Cuenca and Palencia) which are completely outside the recent historical distribution of the lynx. And for the areas where it is released? In the short term, it is also good news. In fact, the Aragon movement cannot be understood without a basic fact: the European funds that help these types of programs (920,000 euros in this case) expired this same year. In the medium or long term, it depends on many factors: fundamentally, because everything depends on the rabbits. Rabbits? What about rabbits? Rabbits represent between 80 and 90% of the lynx’s diet. In fact, these rodents are found in the base of the food chain of more than 30 species. The good news is that, as warned A few weeks ago, the Union of Farmers and Ranchers of Castilla la Mancha “the proliferation of rabbits is a problem that has been going on for ten years, they speak of a ‘plague’ that is threatening olive groves and pistachio and almond trees, and they demand that the populations of these animals be controlled.” The bad thing is that they are not where they should be. The history of Spanish rabbits is complex. Its decline is associated with myxomatosisfirst (mid-20th century); continue with the rabbit hemorrhagic disease in the 80s; and is complicated by the arrival in 2012 of a new variant (RHDV2) that affects populations just when they were beginning to recover. To all these health problems, we must add the changes in the landscape and the disappearance of boundaries, fallow lands and traditional shelters. And the result is that the rabbits have looked for a new home. Thus slopes and roadsides have become tremendously favorable habitats (and even in motion vectors) and areas with constant food (irrigation/crops) are natural attractors of these reduced populations. Farmers fear that the arrival of the lynx will not control the pest and, on the other hand, as it will tighten conservation regulations, it may cause rabbit populations to skyrocket. Are they right? It’s hard to say. But we are going to find out. Image | Jorge Azcón – Government of Aragon In Xataka | Spain, land of (threatened) rabbits: the species has gone from “pest” to being endangered

The great battle of the Ebro is not between Murcia and Aragón, it is between the headwaters of the rivers, the large cities and the delta

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The image is straight out of a movie: a team of divers diving into the cold waters of the Arija reservoir to dredge more than three meters of silt accumulated in front of its floodgates. It’s not a whim, It’s the only way to remove them.: that is, the consequence of having hundreds of infrastructures that have not been thoroughly maintained for decades. But, above all, the most striking symptom of a very deep problem: the sediments are killing, at the same time, the reservoirs and the rivers. Reservoirs due to loss of capacity (Mequinenza has lost since its opening more capacity than the sum of the last three reservoirs put into operation), rivers because deltas need sediment to stay alive. The Ebro, without going any further, needs 1.2 million tons per year. And the authorities know it. In fact, since 2003, the Ebro Hydrographic Confederation has been carrying out controlled floods in the lower section of the river to mobilize sediments towards Tortosa. The problem is that each controlled flood moves about 10,000 tons; that is, two orders of magnitude below what is necessary. It’s like emptying a swimming pool with a coffee spoon. So in the last few months, something has changed. Since November 2024, the CHE began a series of measures to try to fix it. Things like extending the discharge by two days, starting it from much higher up (El Grado in Huesca and Camarasa in Lleida) and draining Ribarroja more than usual to mobilize all the possible sediments. Will it solve the problem? It’s not clear, but it doesn’t seem like it. We have to take into account that, only in the Ebro basin, there are many reservoirs and that is an inevitable brake. Calculations say that of the five million tons that were brought to the Mediterranean before the reservoirs, only between 100,000 and 200,000 now arrive. It would take around 100 floods to reach the appropriate figures. And no, we don’t have enough water for that. So? That is the big problem, seeing what we do. We must not forget that the Ebro delta supports 20,000 hectares of rice fieldstens of thousands of inhabitants and is a biosphere reserve. The loss of wetlands and their salinization have a direct impact on agriculture, fishing and tourism. Come on: the interests are crossed and they confront people hundreds of kilometers away. We are entering a new era of hydrological wars in which we are all against each other. Image | Sinto MQZ In Xataka | The Ebro is filling with brown prawns, an invasive species that we are going to find more and more on our plates.

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