Barcelona

In Barcelona they did not drop below 19°C on an April night. And that’s more important than all the heat waves

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It’s one piece of information, just one. But he alone weighs more than all the daytime maxims combined. Barcelona-Fabra just broke the record of a century with a nighttime minimum in April above 19 degrees. And yes, 19 degrees seems little compared to the 33-35 that the Guadalquivir Valley experienced that same day in the morning; But if climate change has been teaching us something for decades, it is that appearances can be deceiving. That anomaly called ‘April’. Although it is not being as scandalous as January, April is breaking all historical records. The fact that has been repeated the most is that AEMET has recorded more than 70 records temperature only in the first time of the month. In aggregate terms, we are talking about a sustained thermal anomaly of between 5 and 10 degrees. And it is interesting because, although it is evident that we are not talking about a ‘heat wave’, experiencing an anomaly of this size in this context is something tremendously revealing. Not only because they are the temperatures that most affect the population’s rest, but because they are the ones that rise the most due to the effect of climate change and the ones that best explain where the country’s climate is going. But what has happened? On April 10, at the Fabra Observatory in Barcelona, ​​at the foot of Tibidabo, the minimum it did not drop below 19 degrees. That is, it is the warmest night in at least a century. And it was not an isolated event: the ALmería airport registered a minimum of 23.3 degrees that same night. That’s two degrees higher than the previous record. The month, as I said, has had more than 70 temperature records. AND, according to Duncan Winger of Tiempo.comwhat awaits us between the 18th and the 24th looks to be much worse. The explanation is simple… because it arises from two combined elements: a subtropical ridge installed on the peninsular vertical that blocks the arrival of Atlantic storms and a very warm air mass from the south that causes little relief at night. …but the fact that it is ‘explainable’ doesn’t reassure anyone. Above all, because we come from 9th warmest winter on record and an especially hot February with an anomaly of more than 2.4 degrees above average. Everything seems to indicate that the meteorological data show the structural warming that the models indicated. But… what can we expect from all this? First of all, be clear that nights are becoming a problem. Without leaving Barcelona, We know that mortality from natural causes in the city it increases up to 9.2% on nights when the temperature does not drop below 23 degrees. There are more consequences, of course: a good part of the country’s agriculture is in critical phases and the Mediterranean is getting so hot which is going to cause innumerable problems. But warm nights before HVAC systems are turned on are a public health risk that is difficult to control. Image | BenBaso | Xataka In Xataka | In two days, AEMET is clear that spring is suspended: an “early summer” arrives in Spain

Touristification has made Mercadona find itself with a rival in Barcelona: 24-hour supermarkets

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Mercadona maybe is taking over of the retail at a national level, but in Barcelona there is another phenomenon that seems to advance even faster than it grows the business fee of the Valencian chain: 24-hour supermarkets. They grow. A lot. Lot. So much so that according to the latest data of the County Council during the second half of 2025, almost a hundred were put into operation, which translates more or less into one opening every two days. There are so many that even they have sneaked in in public debate. Super 24 hour drip. The data has disclosed them The Vanguard and they are to say the least surprising. During the first half of 2025, 92 24-hour supermarkets opened in Barcelona. If we go back further, to the period between October 2020 and the end of last year, the number of activated businesses is even more significant: the total amounts to 643. The Catalan newspaper speaks of “openings” or “start-ups”, not of net growth in supply (it is likely that there are also stores that close), but even so the data is striking. It shows that on average they are activated 3.5 business every week. Is it that striking? Yes. And not only because of the figure itself. Data from the City Council confirm that, far from showing signs of saturation, the sector continues to expand with the sixth production. In autumn 2025 it was already spoken that between 2020 and 2024, 686 licenses had been granted for these premises, which translated into three openings a week. Now the rhythm has increased. The records The City Council also reflects that this expansion has not been uniform nor is it affecting the entire city equally: although openings have been noted in Sant Andreu or Nou Barris, the majority are concentrated in El Eixample and Sant Martí. Between them they have close to 140 openings in just a few years. Two suspects: tourists and expats. At this point, the question is obvious… What is the reason for this super 24-hour boom? Why does the phenomenon seem to be affecting the Catalan capital above all? To answer these questions, you just have to visit one of these places. In most of them there are two characteristics that attract attention, as mentioned recently Luis Benvenuty, reporter for The Vanguard. The first is the prices. The second, the assortment they offer. Customers find drinks, sausages, sweets, pasta… but also items that are more difficult to buy in traditional supermarkets, such as souvenirs clearly focused on tourists. As for rates, the prices are also significantly higher than those found in conventional stores. For example, a can of Coca Cola can cost €1.5, the same as a bottle of water. It is not strange that the prices in this type of business are above those applied by the rest of the sector, but also there are those who see in these rates an offer aimed primarily at tourists and expats with high purchasing power. And the controversy broke out. The problem is not the proliferation of this type of establishments itself, but how it is developing. In September The Catalan Newspaper revealed that in just two years the inspection of 209 premises had revealed 2,700 violations. The majority (more than 1,400) were by activity, although many were motivated by the impact on the landscape (600), public health issues (243), waste (157) or non-compliance with the Treasury (113) or in the workplace (118). In total they resulted in more than 500 files. Commercial fabric earrings. Although there are dozens of stores in which inspectors found no anomalies, the violations pose a problem for the group. The SER specifies that on average each of these supermarkets commits around 13which explains why there are professional groups in Barcelona that already warn of the risk of degradation of the commercial fabric. “Betting on public-private collaboration and promotion to attract certain demand would bring us much closer to a solution. In this way we would transform our commercial hubs,” advocate Barcelona Open. From the streets to local politics. Proof of the extent to which 24-hour supers are expanding in Barcelona is that they have already entered the political debate, covering the entire ideological spectrum. The PP for example has claimed greater control and the application of “exemplary” sanctions to those who break the law. Meanwhile, ERC warns of “the substitution” of native businesses. The Consistory already has been proposed improve the regulation and control of this type of business. In fact they claim that since mid-2024 its inspectors have opened almost 300 sanctioning files and more than 450 restitution files, but the doubt remains as to what extent it will affect the expansion of a business model that (as suggested by the municipal records) generates more and more interest. Images | Sandor SAmkuti (Flickr) and Google Earth In Xataka | After decades committed to being a tourist power, Barcelona already surpasses Paris or New York in something: overcrowding

Lace Lithography is Europe’s opportunity to surpass the US and Asia in chip manufacturing. From Barcelona

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Lace Lithography is not just another startup. And it is not because it is developing a new photolithography technique that seeks to break down all the barriers that limit the performance of ultraviolet light technology used by the machines manufactured by the Dutch company ASML. And they are used by TSMC, Intel, Samsung, SK Hynix or SMIC, among other semiconductor manufacturers. A priori, the most prudent thing to do when faced with news like this is to adopt a skeptical stance, but Lace’s work deserves to be taken very seriously. Otherwise it would not have the support of Microsoft nor would it have raised $40 million in financing. The founders of this company are the Norwegian physicist Bodil Holst and the Spanish physicist and engineer Adrià Salvador Palau. These two scientists created Lace Lithography in 2023, and although their headquarters reside in Bergen (Norway), an important part of their research and development team operates from Barcelona. Be that as it may, the most important thing is that the strategy that this company has devised to solve the lithography of the next generation of integrated circuits does not resemble nor to ASML technology nor to any other innovation we have heard of so far. The first prototypes are already ready and the test plant will be ready in 2029 The itinerary that Lace Lithography seeks to follow is very ambitious. Its first prototypes, according to Reutersare already prepared, and intends to develop a test tool and a cutting-edge semiconductor manufacturing pilot plant in 2029. In any case, in addition to their plans, we know some details about their technology that are worth investigating. In the integrated circuit manufacturing equipment that ASML designs and produces, ultraviolet light is responsible for transporting the geometric pattern described by the mask so that it can be transferred with great precision to the surface of the silicon wafer. Lace Lithography uses a beam of helium atoms to transfer the pattern described by the chip to the silicon wafer The light used by high-aperture extreme ultraviolet lithography equipment, which is the most advanced machine that ASML has Currently, it belongs to the most energetic portion of the ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum. In fact, its wavelength extends in the range that goes from 10 to 100 nanometers (nm). The problem is that it is not easy to generate and deal with this form of electromagnetic radiation. And it is not, among other reasons, because it is so energetic that it alters the structure of the physical elements with which it interacts inside the lithography machine. Lace’s technology solves this and other problems that are closely linked to the use of ultraviolet radiation to manufacture chips. And instead of using light, the engineers at this company use a beam of helium atoms to transfer the pattern described by the chip to the silicon wafer. However, the most striking thing is that this beam has the width of a single hydrogen atom (around 0.1 nm), so on paper this solution will make it possible to produce semiconductors ten times smaller than the smallest ones that TSMC, Samsung or Intel are currently manufacturing. “Our technology opens a path that potentially has the ability to expand (chip makers’) agenda, as well as make things possible that otherwise would not have been viable,” Bodil Holst declared. John Petersen, scientific director of lithography at IMEC (Interuniversity Microelectronics Center), the most experienced laboratory in developing new integration and nanotechnology technologies that we have in Europe, maintains that the main advantage of using the helium atom beam is that it allows creating much smaller transistors than the current ones. “They are almost unimaginable,” Petersen pointed out. It sounds really good. Image | Generated by Xataka with Gemini More information | Reuters | Lace Lithography In Xataka | China needs to develop a new type of chips immune to US sanctions. And your scientists have just achieved it

Marta Ortega prepares the move of the offices of four Inditex brands, but not to Galicia: to Barcelona

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The price of land within large cities makes it impossible for companies to develop their corporate infrastructure in them, and they are forced to look for that space at a more reasonable price. on the periphery. Inditex has decided to do exactly the opposite. The textile giant founded by Amancio Ortega has opted to take the opposite path and bring Barcelona closer to its next big corporate campus and build it next to the iconic Three Chimneys, in one of the enclaves of the metropolitan area What else is changing? in recent years. The project plans to move the offices that four of its brands currently have in Tordera (Maresme) to this new space, converting an old industrial land into the new business heart from an area that has been waiting for its opportunity for decades. An industrial floor that is reinvented. The land chosen for this project is the old site of the Schott Ibérica factory, in Sant Adrià de Besòs, which Inditex acquired in 2018. The local town council has approved initially an Urban Improvement Plan that covers nearly 90,000 square meters of land, where the new brand campus and a hypermarket Alcampo relocated to a new building. The new business proposal establishes a clear separation between the commercial use area, to the north, and the Inditex corporate campus, which will occupy most of the complex in the southern area, with 67,243 square meters intended entirely to house different offices of the Inditex brands. Four brands, one campus. The facilities that Inditex has in Tordera and Palafolls (Maresme) today house the headquarters of Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Oysho and Lefties. With the move to Sant Adrià, these Maresme facilities will be able to dedicate themselves exclusively to logisticsstrengthening the group’s distribution capacity for those four chains in all its markets. The Zara and Zara Home offices are the only ones that do not change their location on the Arteixo campus, in its headquarters in La Coruñawho has also experienced a significant expansion with a complex of about 170,000 square meters. In Sant Adrià, the new Inditex campus will add a total of 164,098 m2 built distributed in four buildings with a ground floor and four floors, organized around three interior patios connected on the ground floor. These buildings will house offices, pattern-making workshops, pilot stores, audiovisual production and technology spaces. The locomotive that the neighborhood is waiting for. However, the importance of this move lies in the impact on the local economic fabric that the presence of an industrial giant like Inditex provides. The mayor of Sant Adrià, Filo Cañete, considered that the arrival of Inditex represents an exceptional opportunity to position the municipality as a benchmark for innovation and business activity in the metropolitan area, and highlighted that among the reasons that the company has valued most are the location and “good connectivity in public transport with metro, tram and train.” The campus will bring with it the arrival of around a million workers to a municipality that aspires to become one of the new economic districts of the Barcelona metropolitan area. To this end, the promoters undertake to pay the Sant Adrià City Council some nine million euros to finance two bridges that will connect the campus with the future audiovisual hub of Catalunya Media Citytransfer 10% of the urban use generated and restore the chimney of the old CELO factory, cataloged as Cultural Asset of Local Interest. Our sights set on 2030. The project still has to overcome some steps before becoming a reality. As and how I collected The Newspaperthe town councils of Sant Adrià and Badalona must consolidate the urban plan for the area, necessary by Catalan legislation to authorize large commercial areas of more than 2,500 square meters in municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants. With the municipal decree approved on February 27, 2026, a one-month public information period was opened to present allegations. If the deadlines are met, the partial opening of the campus is planned for 2028, with complete completion of the set towards 2030. Inditex has more than 8,500 employees and more than 170 stores in Catalonia, and this new campus will reinforce the axis between Galicia and Catalonia as the backbone of its global activity. In Xataka | Amancio Ortega is the landlord of Amazon, Primark and Zara: he has charged them almost 1,000 million euros in rent Image | Wikimedia Commons (Margavela), GTRES

There is an outbreak of swine fever in Barcelona and the most worrying thing is that no one is able to explain where it came from.

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In November 2025 in Catalonia all the alarms went off due to an outbreak of African swine fever that forced the slaughter of a large number of animals and the application of very restrictive measures. At that moment everyone was wondering where this pathogen could have emerged from, and all eyes were on the IRTA-CReSAa high security center that worked with these pathogens. A failed hypothesis. On the table it seemed perfect, since everything matched. But the reality is that the latest report of the committee of experts, endorsed by the Ministry of Agriculturehas completely dismissed this theory. In this way, we already know that It was not a leak from this laboratory that works with this type of pathogens, but then… Where did a virus come from that has already infected more than a hundred wild boars and that has the scientific community crying out for more data? DNA doesn’t lie. The suspicion about this laboratory was completely legitimate, since in November a technical incident occurred in a laboratory digester which coincided with the appearance of dead wild boars in the area. a team fundamentalsince it converts the bodies of infected animals into sterile waste without the presence of their infection, but its failure could have triggered this. But genomics has come into play to dismantle itsince, according to the preliminary reportthe analyzes carried out by the Central Veterinary Laboratory of Algete and experts from IRB Barcelona are categorical. Specifically, 81 samples have been analyzed and compared with the viral strains that were manipulated within CReSA and the result is that there is no genetic match. The virus was already there. This is where the plot thickens. If the virus did not leave the laboratory during the November incident… when did it arrive? The experts and the ministerial report suggest we have been looking at the wrong timetable. All this because, according to analysis of the corpses and the dispersion of the 23 initial outbreaks, which have already escalated to more than 100 positive wild boars According to the latest updates, they indicate that the virus had been circulating “under the radar” for much longer. It is estimated that infections could have started up to four months before the official outbreak was detected. This almost definitively eliminates the connection with the failure of the CReSA digester in November, since the virus was already completely free in the mountains of Barcelona when that occurred. There is a hypothesis. If we rule out the involvement of the laboratory and also the natural arrival by wildlife, we are only left with the most mundane and worrying option: humans. And the current consensus points to the introduction of this virus through contaminated meat products into our environment. A simple piece of infected foodas a sausage sandwich made with meat from an infected pig in another country dumped in a peri-urban area accessible to wild boar is enough to start an epidemic. Something that is on the table right now, with the theory of “passive poisoning” with the human vector that brings the virus in the suitcase and the local fauna does the rest by scavenging through the trash. What science demands. Although the “accidental” origin is reassuring in terms of biological safety, the management of information has opened another front. International experts such as Edward Holmes, famous for his work on the origin of COVID-19, They have raised their voices about the lack of transparency in the information. Although the ministry and the expert committee claim that there is no match between the virus DNA found in those infected and in the laboratory, the global scientific community is calling for the complete sequenced genomes to be published for independent analysis. In the era of Open Sciencesaying “trust us” is no longer enough, as researchers want to see the raw data to understand the unique mutations of this “Barcelona virus” and trace its true family tree. And now what? The outbreak is currently active with more than 100 wild boars affected and the Civil Guard investigating the origin. It is true that the priority has gone from looking for culprits in white coats to contain an expansion that threatens the Spanish pork industry by quarantining those possibly exposed to prevent it from continuing to spread. What we know today is that technology has saved a laboratory’s reputation, but it has left us with a more disturbing reality: biosecurity depends not only on high-tech facilities, but on what we throw in the trash on a field day. Images | Kemal Berkay Dogan In Xataka | The Argentine sea hid one of the most disturbing animals in the world: an 11-meter-long “ghost jellyfish”

In 2010, a student from Barcelona was looking for an easy way to edit PDFs. 16 years later, it is one of the most viewed websites on the internet

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From a form to a receipt to an invoice: PDF is the quintessential extension for sharing documents, regardless of whether you do it from a Windows computer to an iPhone or an Android tablet. It doesn’t matter: you’re going to see the original format no matter what. But, oh my friend, if you have to get your hands on a PDF. Marco Grossi also found himself in trouble with a PDF. One, who is already in her years, had to make a living to avoid paying for the Adobe Acrobat license (in the past it was not a subscription and the price was not exactly cheap) to edit a PDF for a cent by the wind: from printing and scanning to wasting time reconstructing with a word processor. In that first decade of the 2000s I was a student who struggled with documents and Marco Grossi, too. Back in 2010, this Barcelonan, who has studied Multimedia and Photography and also programming, found himself faced with a task as mundane as having to copy and paste a PDF: it was not an easy task. How does it count himself for La Vanguardia“I’m a programmer, and I’m good at computer issues, so it took me about 15 minutes to figure it out.” And then came iLovePDF. As the founder and CEO confesses for El Paísat that moment he discovered that there was a need: “I realized that it was very simple and that I could create it myself.” It was not the first (the ancient but reliable PDFSam It had an interface that was backwards), but it was the one that managed to establish itself as the software to manage PDF for normal and ordinary users (although also for companies reluctant to pay, because it solves the basics quickly and well). A meteoric rise. What started as a personal project that he combined with freelance web design, in 2014 became his 100% occupation. Until 2017 he worked alone from home, but at that moment he took a step forward: He rented an office and hired an old college classmate. Now there are 43 people. At that time, his website was already receiving between 200,000 and 300,000 daily visits from organic traffic. In 2025 Grossi counted which were around 150 million unique users per month. The portal ahrefs listed it in 2024 in 34th place on a global scale, above Amazon in India and just below Wikipedia in Russia. Screenshot of iLovePDF from 2018. via Archive.today Good, nice and cheap free. Your philosophy From the beginning it has been to be a free, accessible, high-quality and easy-to-use service. A quick visit to their website gives us a mosaic with icons and clear messages “Join PDFs”, “Split PDFs” and an agile and intuitive step by step to obtain documents with good quality, without limitations or watermarks. We are using iLovePDF in Spanish, but the website is translated into 25 languages ​​so that language is not an obstacle. In 2018 (the oldest capture saved on Archive.today) also. They also do not market with the data: Marco Grossi details that as a European firm they are governed by the GDPR and that all PDFs are deleted within two hours, without anyone being able to access them. In addition, he explains that they have ISO 27001 certification. In the beginning they financed themselves by advertising, but according to their CEO that is very risky. How iLovePDF Makes Money. So since 2014, in addition to the free options, they offer subscription services, so that advertising generates residual income. They are a small company, but they provide service to those people who visit their website, which we have already seen are many. That is why the Barcelona native explains that “we only need a very small percentage of users who pay to finance us.” 80 – 90% of your income they come precisely from its premium subscriptions, aimed at companies. The rest comes from an advertising banner that, my servant who has been using the service for so many years that she does not remember, nor did she remember it. The cost of being premium It is 5 euros per month and access to extras such as digital signatures or getting rid of ads, but it is totally dispensable: its founder details that the free version is enough for 99.9% of those who use us. They are not for sale. Marco Grossi is not a wolf of Wall Street: he himself admits that he never had an entrepreneurial spirit and that he does not open purchase proposals, something similar to the VLC project and that has turned both platforms into memes of saints or heroes on social networks like X/Twitter. Being a self-financed company allows Marco and his team to maintain their philosophy and reject offers. Although its history is meteoric considering its 15 years of life, the CEO speaks of sustained business growth and that they will never hire 200 people in a year to have to close. Their staff turnover is very low, but solid: they want to replicate their model with their counterpart for images, iLoveIMG. In Xataka | In 1990, a company in Barcelona came up with a crazy and visionary idea: talking on your cell phone while you’re stuck in traffic. In Xataka | In 1901, a Spanish man had one of the ideas of the century: invent the remote control before television

Madrid and Barcelona have built an entire social and business life with the AVE. They are finding out what happens when it fails

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The Madrid-Barcelona high-speed line has collapsed. The trains do not arrive on time and no one pays their compensation, Adif has asked the companies to withdraw last-minute services, airlift prices have skyrocketed and there are companies working at half throttle because the goods do not arrive. A social and economic backbone of the country has been fractured. A Russian roulette. Taking a high-speed train between Madrid and Barcelona is, right now, Russian roulette if what you want is to arrive on time for an appointment. The link between the two most important cities in Spain has been broken via train and a round trip in the day is almost impossible. It is the result of a hasty revision of the train tracks, a direct consequence of the fateful Adamuz train accident (Córdoba) and the continuous warnings of the train drivers. Actions that have diluted the “high speed” concept between Madrid and Barcelona. What has happened? Since last January 18 An Iryo train derailed near Adamuz (Córdoba) and collided with another Renfe train that was traveling in the opposite direction, leaving 45 dead, Adif has been facing criticism about the track maintenance. In the case of Madrid-Barcelona, ​​the consequences were soon seen: speed limitations. Between confusing messages, Adif ended up imposing temporary speed restrictions at numerous points on the line, especially between Madrid and Zaragoza. Later, 300 km/h returned. But it didn’t last long because speed was reduced once again. The role of machinists. Since then, travelers between Madrid and Barcelona have been reporting severe delays, with trains taking more than four hours to reach their destination. As they explained to us Xataka From the SEMAF union, train drivers have the power to reduce speed if they consider it essential for the safety and comfort of travelers. They must notify the line controllers and put it in writing in a report. In addition, on each journey a document is filled out specifying the problems that have been found on the line. A train driver, who preferred to remain anonymous, corroborated this version to Xataka and made it clear that for months they have been traveling at a speed lower than the maximum speed allowed on the line and, especially, between Madrid and Zaragoza. Likewise, he pointed out that they have been complaining for months about the vibrations suffered by the trains but that they had not received a response until now. Adif’s role. Although unions and drivers claim to have been complaining about this situation for months, it was not until January when Adif appears to have taken more far-reaching measures. The road manager is doing an exhaustive review of the roads based on the continuous complaints from workers. These inspection and repair works, when necessary, are delaying travel times. The company has asked Renfe, Iryo and Ouigo to assume that trips will be extended to three hours (and they just pointed out that these travel times will extend until December) but has also asked them to eliminate the last services of the day to have more time for their performances. Collapsed by land and air. The result is a collapsed train line. The trains are not arriving on time nor in the three hours indicated by Adif (instead of the usual 150 minutes). And the problem for those passengers, who throw in the towel with punctuality, is that The companies are not responsible for compensation either. for delays, pointing out that they are the result of a problem beyond their control and that, therefore, they do not fall within the refund policies. At the same time, demand on flights has skyrocketed. Without the possibility of getting there and back within the day by train or for fear of doubling the usual travel time, travelers have turned to airlines. And the result is full flights and skyrocketing prices. After some bills will reach 300 euros, Iberia has reached its Air Bridge at 99 euros per trip. Vueling has also increased its frequencies. And the road alternative did not improve the situation either. Only in BlaBlaCar has an increase in demand of 130% been recorded, in data provided to The Newspapercompared to the previous year. Car rental companies do not seem to have been left behind either, since The Ombudsman has asked the CNMC to analyze whether illegalities have been incurred by skyrocketing prices for car rentals and plane tickets. And problems for companies. Companies in both cities have not only had to see meetings canceled or postponed these days. Some of them are having problems having their raw materials. In The Vanguard They include the case of some of them. Inovyn, in Martorell (Barcelona) had to send its 300 employees home earlier this week because they did not have the basic materials to produce plastic. “In normal situations we receive one train a day loaded with dichloromethane, a material with which we manufacture many of our compounds, but in the last ten days we have received only one train,” they explain to the newspaper. They explain that 18% of the goods that arrive at the port of Barcelona are sent to their destination by train. Those that use international gauges are stopped due to works in the Rubí tunnel and those that use the Iberian gauge circulate at night and in dribs and drabs. and in The Country They explain that the city’s port is becoming isolated, with an 80% drop in products coming from Germany, France or Poland by train. The road alternative is not working either. The AP-7 already there is enormous congestion since road tolls were lifted but, furthermore, there are not enough trucks to be a complete alternative given the volume of goods that move along the railways. Added to this are problems derived from the latest storms and the increase in traffic derived from a Rodalies service that has not been back to normal for more than ten days. Photo | Phil Richards In Xataka | Spain wants its AVE trains to travel at 350 … Read more

How euthanasia allowed an “à la carte” face transplant to be planned in 3D in Barcelona

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Spain has once again shown why remains at the top in terms of organ transplants refers to the new milestone that has occurred at the Vall d’Hebron Hospital in Barcelona. It is neither more nor less than first face transplant in history coming from a donor who had requested the euthanasiadying in a controlled manner in a hospital environment. The programming. Until now, face transplants, of which a few have been performed 54 worldwidedepended on the urgency and availability of a donor who died due to an accident or brain death. However, this case introduces a new variable: transplant scheduling. This is thanks to the fact that the donor had requested to benefit from the Euthanasia Law and jointly expressed their willingness to donate all their organs and tissues, specifically their face. This is something that allowed the medical team timewhich is not common in transplants, to find the most suitable candidate and also plan in detail what the procedure was going to be like. What they did. By knowing in advance the availability of the donor, the medical team was able to begin virtual 3D planning. In this case, digital models of both the donor and the recipient were created to be able to design completely personalized cutting and grafting guides to guarantee the success of the intervention. And it is not at all easy to do this type of transplant, since the bone structure and soft tissues must fit together with millimeter precision, reducing the usual uncertainty of these operations. The surgical challenge. The operation was not easy, since It lasted 24 hours and required the coordination of a team of nearly 100 professionals.including plastic surgeons, microsurgeons, anesthetists, nursing and immunology experts. And it was not a simple aesthetic operation by putting the skin on top and that’s it, but rather a complete reconstruction was sought at all times that included muscles, nose, lips, blood vessels and of course nerves. All of this could not be done without microsurgical equipment that allowed arteries, veins or nerves less than a millimeter in diameter to be ‘connected’ in order to have sensitivity, movement or the ability to eat. The recipient. Her name is Carme, and her life changed radically in 2024 while she was on vacation in the Canary Islands when she suffered a bite that caused a serious infection. The bacteria caused sepsis and death of the facial necrosis, causing him to lose part of his face and severely affecting his jaw. In this case the consequences were devastating, since Carme could barely open her mouth and had serious difficulties breathing and feeding. Not to mention his social life, which had been drastically reduced, with the mental impact that this entailed. According to his own statements, the transplant was “the only solution” to try to regain a normal life. Legal context. All this is not a coincidence, since the Vall d’Hebron was already a pioneer in 2010 in performing the first complete facial transplant in the world. Of the six transplants that have been performed in the history of Spain, half have taken place in this center, demonstrating the great experience they have in this regard. The procedure is also framed within the Euthanasia Law that came into force in Spain in 2021, which contemplates the possibility of donating organs. The generosity of the donor, who explicitly offered her face during the authorization process for her assisted death, has opened a new door for regenerative and transplant medicine, demonstrating that advance planning can be key to success in the most extreme surgeries. Images | Vall d’Hebron In Xataka | Elizabeth Hughes’ 42,000 injections and the miraculous discovery of insulin

Taking an important call in a traffic jam is the order of the day. In 1990, a company in Barcelona already offered this service

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Nowadays, as soon as we have some down time, we turn to our mobile: either to scroll infinitely on Instagram or to catch up on email. Although what defined the basis of today’s smartphones was the first iPhone in 2007, the professional point began before, with the blackberry 5810 and your email in 2002 or we can even go back to Nokia 9000 ’96, which introduced the keyboard and its business approach. The late 90s were the beginning of turning the mobile phone into an everyday object. I’m driving and I need a call now. Of course, back in the 90s, carrying a cell phone in the car and answering a work call was unthinkable. Or not, because someone thought of it an exclusive telephone service for drivers in Barcelona pre-Olympic Games. The target audience was those people who were so busy that they could not afford to be disconnected while traveling through the congested business areas of the city. The operation. As they narrate on the Catalan regional television 3Cat, if in the middle of a traffic jam you were lucky enough to find one of those people in white overalls on a scooter, with a fanny pack and the phone stuffed in a shoulder bag, you could ask them. A uniform as characteristic as the backpacks of today’s delivery drivers, but much less common: at that time there were only five workers moving through the busiest traffic points in Barcelona, ​​although they wanted to increase it to 25. If you are standing, they leave you the headset. And if you move, they lend you the device and follow you until you complete the call. The price of the service was 25 pesetas and the minimum call price is 300 pesetas. Because? To begin with, because in 1990 if you wanted to call on the street what there was were booths and analog technology, in Spain specifically MoviLine: the first mobile operator to deploy the original 1G network, owned by Telefónica. And if we talk about devices, the mythical Motorola MicroTAC It was a status symbol for executives. A symbol measuring 23 centimeters and weighing 350 grams. Yes, there were some mobile phones, but they were heavy, with very long antennas and batteries that barely lasted a couple of hours in conversation. On the other hand, having a phone installed in the car was expensive and niche. But the business was not just the telephone, but mobility and time. As businessman Josep Marí says, his idea was “to create the need to find a mobile phone to be able to call to work, home or wherever.” Ahead of his time. This “Automatic Mobile Telephony” service was ahead of its time in that it had a vision of a future need, but faced a market that was not yet ready. As the 90s progressed, telephone technology became more refined and democratized. 1995 brought GSM to the Spanish state on the one hand and, on the other, the liberalization of the telecommunications market, which inaugurated airtel. The operators began to directly control distribution and technical service with franchises and distributors, leaving little room for local independent companies. Scooters before the scooter craze. And if the service itself is surprising, so is the means of transportation: a scooter with a gasoline engine, more specifically the Sport model. of the Go-Ped brand, but quite similar in design and concept to the electric ones that swarm our streets today. His virtue was exactly the same: moving quickly and agilely through the density of Barcelona’s traffic to be able to get in front of the client. In Xataka | This glorious imaginary version of the Galaxy Fold from the 90s is one of those gems that can only be found on the internet In Xataka | A story of pioneers: they already flirted, argued and liked on the party lines of the 90s Cover | 3Cat via Marc Vidal edited with Gemini

We have always believed that London is very rainy and that Barcelona is not. The only problem is that it’s a lie

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Few towns exist so troubled by the vicissitudes of time like the British. During my stay in Cambridge, one of my first conversations with a native revolved around its climate. “Actually, the weather is nice in Cambridge,” he told me, “the problem is Londonwhich has a microclimate where it is always raining.” According to his testimony, London, the city with the greatest international projection, gave a bad name to the rest of the country. The British weather wasn’t so horrible. The truth is that it is: Most of the United Kingdom is cold, lives under a perennial blanket of gray clouds and enjoys greater rainfall than the rest of the continent (especially in Scotland). His story, in fact, was inversely true. Despite legend, London is one of the most dry of the United Kingdom, and a European capital with comparatively little rainfall. So why do we universally believe the opposite? First, let’s look at the data. According to Met Office figuresAccording to the British weather agency, London receives between just under 600 and almost 700 millimeters of precipitation annually (depending on the season: London is a gigantic city). The standard chosen by Wikipedia is Heathrow, east of the megalopolis, where in 2014 they fell 601.7 millimeters. Without further reference, it is a neutral number. How does it compare to the rest of England? On a map: London, the black spot… Of the low rainfall in the United Kingdom. The bluest areas are the rainiest in Britain (north east scotland plays in another league). In general, the North Sea coast is drier than the Atlantic. And as we approach the south, to the English Channel, rainfall reduces. This is where we can find London: a city in which it rains comparatively little compared to its island neighbors. My confidant was wrong: it rains more in Cambridge than in London. “Ok, ok, but the United Kingdom is a very rainy country per se. Just because it rains less in London than in other parts of the island does not mean that it rains in London.” bit“. The reasoning is logical, but also incorrect. The truth is that there are few points in continental Europe that have annual rainfall below of 600 millimeters. Unlike supposedly rainy London, Europe below the Channel does live underwater. Raining many days does not mean raining a lot Let’s think about, without going any further, Barcelona. The beautiful city of Barcelona has a reputation for being sunny. It receives millions of tourists a year thanks to its wonderful, mild and friendly climate. Well, its rainfall is very similar to that of London, and in 2014 it was slightly higher. AEMET counted 640 millimeters that yeardistributed throughout 72 days. The surprising record places Barcelona as a rainier city than London. The same thing happens with other quite amazing points of European geography. For example, Croatia. The most recent milestone of European tourism has also built a reputation for “good weather”, but the climatic reality of the Adriatic is stubborn: only in Dubrovnik, the famous citadel popularized for Game of Thrones, more than 1,000 millimeters of precipitation fall per year. 65% more than in London, of tormented fame. With some licenses, places in Europe where it rains less than in London (in yellow). The best way to understand how wrong our intuition is about London’s climate is the map above, shared a few months ago by a Reddit user: Areas in blue (almost all of central and western Europe, including Italy) receive more rainfall per year than London. Only the areas in yellow are drier, and they are few: specific points in Poland, almost the entire Iberian Peninsula (from the Ebro down, so to speak) and Sicily. Let’s think about two antagonistic places: Helsinki and Lecceon the Puglia peninsula, southern Italy. The first is one of the northernmost world capitals and spends most of its time buried under snow amid terrifying temperatures. How much does it rain there? Well, not much more than in London: about 655 millimeters annually. The second is a baroque jewel with a very sunny summer nestled in the heart of the Mediterranean. Its rainfall? Depending on the year, about 590 millimeters. Such geographical disparity does not correspond to very different rainfall. Which shouldn’t be strange, but it does manage to properly contextualize the importance of rain in London. The London chirimiri, the source of prejudice Now, if London is dry, why do we all think it’s always raining? A Basque would have an immediate answer (despite the fact that the Basque Country is very humid, especially Bilbao): chirimiri. In other words, the thin layer of rain that always grips certain cities but is actually very gentle. This is where the scarce 72 days of rain in Barcelona come into play, a city where it rains on just a few days on the calendar. If you want to look for really humid places in Europe, head to the Alps or the Atlantic ledges. In London the opposite happens: it rains more or less the same, but the water is spread over many more days (110a little less than a third of the year). Helsinki is another story: its rainy/snow days range from 180 in 2010 and the more than 200 from last year. Like many other northern European cities (Cambridge included: I barely saw the sun during the month of January I lived there), London often dawns cloudy and with a thin layer of rain that never seems to evaporate. The sun comes and goes, the clouds appear and disappear, the rain stops and starts again regularly. It doesn’t rain much, but the feeling of rain and humidity is almost permanently, inevitable. That’s why fame is so raw. Another factor is the dry reality of most of Europe’s capitals. Berlin, Vienna, Stockholm, Paris, Madrid, Warsaw or even Copenhagen They have less or only slightly more annual rainfall than London (none exceeds 700 millimeters). There are few capitals in Europe where it rains a lot (Amsterdam, … Read more

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