clear

SpaceX wants to reach a capitalization of 1.75 trillion dollars. Analysts are clear that it is worth less than half

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SpaceX’s is the first of the record-breaking IPOs that are expected this year: it will take place on June 12, 2026 under the symbol SPCX. This operation promises to be the most important public offering of shares in history, and the company has already indicated that its objective is to obtain funds worth $75 billion to achieve an astronomical valuation of 1.75 billion euros. But how SpaceX is valued is one thing, and how analysts value it is quite another. Overrated. The financial analysis firm Morningstar has carried out an analysis of SpaceX’s financial accounts and have reached a striking conclusion: “We believe the company has been significantly overvalued and investors will have the opportunity to buy the shares at more attractive levels after the IPO.” Or what is the same: they advise not participating in that initial IPO, and waiting because they anticipate that the stock will fall in the first days on Wall Street. It’s only worth half. In these conclusions, Morningstar establishes that the valuation discounting SpaceX’s cash flow is $780 billion. That represents 48% than the valuation of the private market, which is 1.5 trillion dollars, and 44.5% less than the valuation attributed to the company itself, which amounts to 1.75 trillion dollars. Is it really more promising than Nvidia? Dan Coatsworh is one of the main analysts at the firm AJ Bell, and he commented on CNBC how that theoretical internal valuation of $1.75 trillion would mean that the value of SpaceX (P/E, Price to Earnings ratio) is 67 times its sales, two times more than, for example, happens at Nvidiathe most valuable company on the planet today. Beware of xAI. One of SpaceX’s theoretical strengths is its artificial intelligence division, xAIbut analysts explain that in reality its theoretical advantage is “undetermined”, and in fact they pose it as “a material threat of value destruction” for the parent company, SpaceX. Morningstar believes that the AI ​​division is worth $170 billion, and that what really matters is something else. The Starlink engine. SpaceX’s real argument for going public and its real strength is not the reusable Falcon 9 rockets, but the profitability of Starlink. The company’s satellite constellation has achieved sustained cash flow in recent months, and its global customer base is growing at an enviable pace. It is undoubtedly SpaceX’s great recurring revenue generation machine. Morningstar values ​​it at $611 billion. The double class trick. SpaceX plans to sell shares at a fixed price of $135 per share, but they will only list 3% of the total shares. In addition, Elon Musk will continue to maintain tight control of the vote with 85% of the total through a dual-class share system. Class A shares, those that go public, allow the right to one vote per share. Class B shares go to the founder and the first key investors. They are not sold on the open market, and each one usually gives 10, 20 or more votes. Institutional dependency. The value of the company, however, is supported by the contracts it has with the US government. Specifically with NASA and with the Department of Defensewhich depend entirely on SpaceX systems for their critical missions. That not only guarantees long-term income, but is a compelling argument to attract more conservative investment funds. Either you believe Elon, or you don’t. We are facing an operation that will test Elon Musk’s real power over the markets. Although SpaceX is an extraordinary company, it is overvalued due to its founder’s habit of selling hype. The tactic of coming out as an indivisible package (Starlink + xAI + Image | Xataka with Magnific In Xataka | Elon Musk knows that TSMC is overwhelmed: Terafab is his idea to completely change the global chip industry

The cryptocurrency bubble is crashing again. The problem is that it is not at all clear that this time they will survive.

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Cryptos are not raising their heads. In the last 11 months the value has fallen from those $124,000 in July 2025 to the $67,000 where it is moving today. This 46% drop has spread to the rest of a market that He has already cracked other times and then recover. It is not at all clear that this time he will succeed.. Crypto winter. yesterday bitcoin fell 7% in a single day and both its value and that of the rest of the cryptocurrencies have been in free fall for months. What differentiates this crash from previous ones is the breaking of a trend. Until not long ago, large and small investors seemed to see a great opportunity in cryptocurrencies, but we are facing a “crypto winter” in which the stampede of these digital assets is colossal. Record settlements. The apparent panic over that bubble burst seems to be behind a streak of massive withdrawals from investments in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. On Bloomberg indicate that the current perception of bitcoin as a value asset in free fall has caused 1.5 billion dollars to be liquidated in just 24 hours. Even Strategy betrays itself. The company Strategy had become the staunch defender of bitcoin, but for the first time since 2022 it has sold bitcoins. The amount has been anecdotal, because they have sold 32 BTC (about 2.2 million dollars at current value) and they own 843,706 BTC in these moments. However, it is a sale with a lot of symbolism, because it betrays that HOLD spirit of crypto believers. Curiously, the analysts they fully trust in the future of Strategy, which they see reaching a value of $400 per share, 185% more than the current value. The failure of ETFs. It was assumed that the exchange traded funds with bitcoin as the main asset, they were going to result in stability and massive attraction of institutional capitalbut they are becoming a burden for investors, who have been withdrawing from their positions for 11 days: in less than two weeks 3.5 billion dollars have been liquidated, confirming that in the face of uncertainty, professional investors are the first to abandon ship. How was that safe haven value? for a long time bitcoin has been compared to gold in terms of its ability to become a refuge value in the face of potential crises. What is happening leaves that argument in a very bad place, although it is true that we have experienced other notable falls in bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in the past. Contagion effect. The collapse of bitcoin has spread to the rest of the cryptocurrency market. Ethereum, Solana and Dogecoin suffer combined losses of $1.6 billion, and once again it is confirmed that the interdependence of “altcoins” with bitcoin is too important. AI as savior. While cryptos bleed, Wall Street is experiencing a paradoxical sweet moment thanks to artificial intelligence. This technology is what is causing all the bullish momentum in the market, and we are seeing how the money that previously flowed into digital assets now rotates to tangible technologies (or at least that are being used). Loss of identity. Some experts they point out that bitcoin is losing precisely what made it different. It is behaving like an asset vulnerable to interest rates and global politics. It has stopped becoming an alternative and has become just another piece on a game board that is now rewarding those who have dedicated themselves to AI. It is paradoxical that bitcoin is being so punished when we have also been talking about the AI ​​bubble. In Xataka | Predicting bitcoin’s growth seems impossible: these charts prove it

China is very clear about how to win the technology race over the rest of the world: with tons of public money

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China has insisted on be the first world power. This declaration of intentions can be as empty as every January 1st when I say that this year I will begin to wake up at six in the morning to go out for a run, or the opposite can happen: they put all the means at their disposal to achieve it. In the case of the Asian giant, what is happening is the second. The Five-Year Plan is the roadmap that the Government sets every five years and that indicates the direction they should follow both public institutions and private companies to achieve the country’s objective. And with a defined objective, there is only one pending issue: the question of financing. And, in the case of China, that translates into a government impulse that other countries do not have. A competition at two speeds OECD stands for Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. It is made up of 38 States, including North Americans, some South Americans, many Europeans, Australia and Japan.

AEMET is clear that it does not end here

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The calendar and the thermometer are fighting loudly in Spain. And the thing is that (little by little) we are getting used to it, but what we are experiencing it’s not normal. From May 26 and 29 the interior of the Peninsula will live about five degrees above usual. And, sincerely, the words of AEMET they leave no room for doubt “extraordinarily warm for the time.” We thought that 2026 was going to be different, but no. After a completely anomalous January, many expected that this anomaly would continue with us. But the tentacles of summer are already here. And as AEMET says, none of this is “a flash”. It is one more installment of a recurring pattern: the hot season is getting longer and warmer. The records that They are marking all the thermometers of the Cantabrian coast make it clear. What is happening right now? The week will be dominated by a powerful subtropical anticyclone extended over Western Europe that will generate what It is often referred to as a “heat dome”. That is, a situation in which the air we have above the peninsula is not renewed and is warming little by little. In this sense, in this week’s episode there is no clear influence of the warm African air. Have one of the first “Iberian ovens” of the year: The country is generating its own heat through stagnation and compression (the descent of warm ridge air over warm surface air). While mainland Spain is on the verge of 40 degrees (and many parts exceed it), countries like France They are experiencing completely unprecedented heat. “It doesn’t end here.” What AEMET says is clear: The next few days will be extraordinarily warm and the seasonal prediction for May-June-July places all of Spain in the upper tertile of temperatures. However, these are only “participations” in a “weather lottery” whose result, as always, is yet to be decided. However, the Agency has explained ad nauseam that, in the last 50 years, the heat has only gotten earlier and longer. June 2025, without going any further, It was the warmest June in the historical series Spanish, with an average temperature 3.5 °C above the average and 0.8 °C above the previous maximum (that of 2017). The entire summer of 2025 closed 2.1°C above average. However, 2026 is not a normal year. In fact, there is an interesting paradox that should be highlighted. All this happens with reservoirs at 84% (one of the Mays with the most reserves in the last 35 years): this rules out the drought scenario, but opens an unexpected flank: the fires have grown by 218% so far this year and we still have summer ahead of us. Image | BenBaso In Xataka | Oviedo is at 34º C in the middle of May and AEMET knows that it is the beginning of something more: a brutal heat ridge

China is very clear that the future of education involves AI, so it is going to require its teachers to have knowledge

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China has one objective between its eyebrows: become the first world power. It is clearly an ambitious objective, but in the latest Five-Year Plan they detail the roadmap that must be followed to achieve that goal in the period 2026-2030. That of the five year plans is a very communist tradition which was not born in China, but in the Soviet Union, but which the Asian giant began to implement in 1953. It consists of setting guidelines to achieve certain objectives in all the main areas of the country. And one of those objectives is to be sovereign in artificial intelligence. This does not happen have models either chips to train those models: goes through an industrial renewal of all the legs of the system ranging from how it is designed, how it is applied, how it is powered and, above all, how AI is taught. And, to comply with it, China is clear that this is not just a matter for students: teachers must be on the hook. Teachers, learn AI to teach AI In April of this year, China’s Ministry of Education launchedwith the support of other government agencies, the “AI+ Education Action Plan” program. This is a national plan to integrate AI throughout the educational system with the aim of building “an AI literacy system for all levels of schooling and throughout life.” The Ministry exposes We are entering a new era in which teaching and learning must be reconfigured to ensure that all students acquire basic knowledge of AI. That is, it is clear that AI is important and that it is being used in classrooms around the world, but China is aiming for a profound update of the educational program. With this, they show that They consider AI a pillar of the future of education And, if students must obtain knowledge in AI and then be able to apply it in a world in which they will coexist with these systems, someone must transmit that knowledge to them. That will be the new job of the teaching staff. All primary and secondary school students in Beijing receive at least eight class hours of AI courses per academic year – Li Yi, director of the Beijing Education Commission This revision of the educational plan specifies that the program will incorporate AI exams into teacher qualification exams. In fact, this is not something that starts now. In 2025, the Ministry of Education published two guides about the use of AI and generative artificial intelligence to primary and secondary schools. That same year, the Administration organized specific training sessions in AI for directors of primary and secondary schools in which he emphasized the need to reinforce the digital and AI skills of teachers so that they can take advantage of their functions. In the end, everything is framed in that desire to have a world-class educational system by 2035 because this extends beyond primary and secondary school. That “AI literacy” order incorporate AI also in extracurricular services, as well as in vocational training and university, becoming in these cycles a general basic course with programs and degrees aligned with the industrial transformation driven by AI. “We teach children to use LLMs to solve problems and most importantly: think critically, question whether the AI’s answers are correct, and verify information from multiple sources” – Yao Xiaoying, principal of a primary school in Shenzhen And you may be wondering what teachers should apply to comply with this “AI literacy.” Here things are a bit fuzzy because speaks to promote the use of teaching systems throughout the educational process to automate tasks (such as tutoring, questions and answers and corrections), as well as analyze teaching practices so that their workload is reduced and they can spend more time training young people. For the adult population there is also a plan: carry out learning courses so that they adapt and are not left behind. Difficulties The truth is that there has been a debate about this situation for some time. Given the commotion caused by this, the Minister of Education came out lecture to prohibit students from using AI to complete their assignments. As we said before, AI should only be a supervised support tool. Because basically there is a question of class and resources, and there are already those who warn that AI can widen the social gap. While in large cities where parents may have more resources and educational level, families and the center can do a good job in training in AI so that children know how to use it and question the answers. However, in more rural areas where there may be less education, families have lower incomes, and parents must work longer hours, students run the risk of being “locked in” in some cubicles that have begun to bloom by several locations in which there is a tablet, it proposes tests and supervises the children’s responses, but does not teach or explain the subject. There are also those who point Almost as interesting as knowing the Government’s plans for teaching AI to both teachers and students is checking the speed at which all this goes from a political document to the reality of the classroom. In Xataka | China continues to draw up five-year plans in the old communist way. Objective: tech self-sufficiency

The result is clear, alarming and there is no turning back

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There is an unquestionable reality with the data in hand: In Spain it rains less now than 30 years ago. In fact, the climate has changed since the 90s: temperatures have risen, summers are longer and those rain patterns essential for activities such as agriculture or aquifer recharge are no longer what they used to be. The Spanish state is one of the regions of the planet where climate change is being seen more and better worse. In this climatic context, precipitation data tells a crystal clear story. Meteorologist Roberto Granda from Eltiempo.es has used AEMET Opendata records to draw maps that compare the average annual rainfall between the periods 1961–1990 and 1996–2025 in 71 stations with continuous data for more than 60 years. The first of these periods is not chosen at random: it is the reference climate norm fixed by the World Meteorological Organization, the global standard for detecting anomalies and trends. To distribute the values ​​between stations, Granda applied a geostatistical interpolation technique that incorporates the relief of the terrain, which makes it the most reliable method for mapping precipitation in a geography as irregular as the peninsula. The result is unequivocal: it rains less in Spain, and it is not something specific or local, but structural and widespread throughout almost the entire peninsula. In this climatic context, precipitation data tells a crystal clear story: meteorologist Roberto Granda of Eltiempo.es has used the records of the Spanish Meteorological Agency AEMET Opendata to draw maps that compare the average annual rainfall between the periods 1961 – 1990 and 1996 – 2025 in 71 stations, that is, with continuous data and for more than 60 years. It rains less in Spain and it is not something specific or local: but something structural and that affects almost the entire peninsula. Evolution of average annual precipitation in Spain. Roberto Granda with data from AEMET These first two maps collect the amount of precipitation in both time frames where it can be seen that he rain pattern continues: The north and northwest (Galicia, the Cantabrian coast and the Pyrenees) continue to concentrate the highest rainfall, above 1,500–2,500 millimeters annually, while on the other side of the scale is the southeast of Almería and Murcia, which does not reach 200 mm. But within that known pattern, absolute values ​​have fallen in practically all regions. With the data in hand, it rains less in Spain than it did 60 years ago Difference in precipitation from 1961 to 2025. Roberto Granda The most impressive map is exactly the one above these lines: the difference in rainfall between 1961 and 2025. At a glance it is clear that in almost the entire State the rain is in the red compared to 60 years ago, since the cartography is colored by beige and brown tones on almost the entire peninsular surface. The steepest falls, between 100 and 200 mm per year, are concentrated in inland Galicia, Extremadura and the central-western area. In this last area is Mediterranean aridification at its maximum splendor: the Mediterranean is one of the hot spots of climate change. Fortunately, there are some exceptionsbut they are localized: areas where the variation is practically zero or slightly positive. One of the most obvious is in the extreme northwest of Galicia, especially the Costa da Morte and the province of A Coruña, which maintains or slightly exceeds its historical records thanks to its direct exposure to Atlantic storms. Neutral or slightly greenish tones are also seen in some areas of the Navarrese and Aragonese Pyrenees, and in the corridor of southern Navarra and northern La Rioja, at the transition between the western Pyrenees and the Ebro valley. The meteorologist has also published year-by-year rainfall since the 1990s, allowing for a closer and more detailed analysis. Something that stands out considering the colors is that the variability has skyrocketed. The CSIC has an explanation: Oscillations between dry and humid extremes are precisely a characteristic of the Mediterranean climate under global warming. Precipitation per year. Roberto Granda Although the general trend is less rain, there is years that define the extremes. On the dry side, there are four years that stand out above the rest: the 94-95 biennium, devastating in the south and center of the peninsula, 2005 on the plateau or that 2012 that left reservoirs below minimum levels in half of Spain. At a quick glance, the 2017 orange draws attention: AEMET he rated it as one of the driest years since instrumental records exist. On the wet side, 96 – 97 stand out from what they had before and after, especially in the northwest and central. Also 2010 and 2013 show green and blue coverage well above the average. 2024 deserves special mention: it breaks a long streak and is the wettest year of the last decade in several basins. Of course, a wet year does not work miracles. The AEMET projections are not encouraging: this reduction in rainfall will worsen throughout the 20th century, with decreases of more than 20% in the south and southeast of the peninsula. With longer and more frequent rain events, the rain will be concentrated in more intense, concentrated and tragic events throughout the year. Because paradoxically, this pattern has consequences in both droughts and floods. In Xataka | The temperature your city will have in 2080, simulated on this disturbing interactive map In Xataka | How to see air quality and temperature with Google Maps Cover | Roberto Granda

7,000 employees move to AI while 8,000 clear their desks

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Thousands of Meta employees will go to sleep tonight without knowing if tomorrow they will have work. Mark Zuckerberg’s company has set a date and time to put end to the long agony that their employees were suffering in one of the further staff cuts that Meta has done in its recent history. According to advanced Reuters, the company has asked its US employees to telework tomorrow while layoff notices are rolled out. A measure that, beyond logistics, reflects the enormous tension that the company knew would be generated that day. Layoffs at 4 in the morning and without relief. According to an internal document to which the news agency has had access, the layoffs will be carried out in three waves that will begin at 4 a.m. on Wednesday, local time, in each region. This was detailed by Janelle Gale, director of Human Resources at Meta, in an internal memo shared with employees. “Many leaders will announce organizational changes,” the directive wrote. According to that document, the set of layoffs will affect about 10% of the entire workforce of the 77,986 employees that Meta had at the end of March. Furthermore, the company has withdrawn 6,000 offers of work to fill vacancies that were open. More than 7,000 employees relocated to AI. The layoffs are just one part of the restructuring movement that Mark Zuckerberg is carrying out. Meta has already reassigned more than 7,000 employees to new positions in new projects linked to AIaccording to the same Gale memo. Some transfers have already become effective before May 20, but in other cases employees will be notified throughout the same Wednesday. In that internal communication, Gale explained the goal of the changes: “We are now at a stage where many organizations can operate with a more horizontal structure, with smaller teams of groups or cohorts that can move more quickly and with greater autonomy.” The company also will eliminate middle management to flatten your hierarchy and speed up decision making. Weeks of anguish before the cut. The last few weeks at Meta have been especially hard for workers after the news of the layoffs leaked, and the hasty confirmation by the company. Meta employees rated the experience as “a hell of 28 days.” During these days a group of employees protested against the use of mouse tracking technology to monitor productivity, in a tension scenario in which many workers questioned their permanence in the company. The price of betting everything on AI. These changes are part of a profound renewal at Meta this year, which many are already calling Meta’s “second Year of Efficiency”, in reference to the first major restructuring that Mark Zuckerberg applied between 2023 and 2024. According to pointed Business Insider, several company leaders did not rule out further cuts beyond this initial 10%which makes May 20 the beginning of a process of thinning the Mera structure that is more intense than anticipated in the initial figures. In Xataka | Technology companies have laid off 92,000 employees to invest in AI. The problem is that the layoffs are costing them a fortune. Image | Unsplash (Mariia Shalabaieva), Goal

Science is very clear why (and no, it does not mean that we are dumber)

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For millions of years, the evolution of hominids was marked by a constant increase in the size of the skull and, therefore, of the brain itself, which marked a super important point in cognitive development that has led us to where we are until now. However, the current fossil and archaeological record indicates that Our brain is smaller than that of our ancestors. Many questions. Far from being a simple anatomical curiosity, this phenomenon has unleashed an intense debate in the scientific community. When did our brain start to lose mass and, above all, why? And the question that bothers us most: does this mean that we are becoming less intelligent than our ancestors? What we know. One of the most controversial recent milestones in this debate was the publication of an analysis of 985 human skullsboth fossils and modern. Through a statistical change point analysis, the researchers proposed that the human brain experienced a reduction in size only about 3,000 years ago, coinciding with the transition to the late Holocene. And to explain this loss of brain mass, the authors looked to evolution itself, since the fact of now living in increasingly larger, cooperative and complex societies meant that humans began to depend on collective intelligence and social specialization. In other words: we no longer needed as much vital information to survive, so the brain could afford to save energy in this way. There are doubts. In science there is no absolute truth, and we see it quite clearly when a new team decided to analyze this same data in order to verify if the 3,000-year theory was true. And their conclusion was that the brain did not shrink then of history and that the original study had serious statistical deficiencies. These deficiencies would focus on the sampling of the skulls analyzed, the critical failures when controlling brain volume in proportion to the body size of the time, and inaccuracies in chronological dating. That is why, despite agreeing that the size of the brain is reducing, the reality is that they suggest that it could be much older or gradual than estimated. Size or intelligence. Regardless of the exact chronology of when brain size began to be lost, the big question here is whether it affects our intellect. Here the logic states that we are now more intelligent than in ancient times and that is why it does not quite fit with our brain being smaller, which is a sign of ‘inferiority’. Here science suggests that there is a positive correlation between these two variables, but surprisingly small between absolute brain volume and cognitive performance or IQ. The important thing inside. In this way, experts point out that the raw size of the brain does not mark the intelligence of the human being in a significant way. Here what is truly important is the internal organization of the brain and how the different neurons are connected to achieve greater intelligence. In this way, having a smaller brain is not equivalent to being less clever, but rather it is equivalent to having a much more optimized organization. And this is precisely what we have been experiencing over the years. There are several theories. If collective intelligence is not the only answer there is, scientific reviews they point out an amalgam of environmental, social and biological factors. One theory suggests, for example, that, just as wolves reduced their aggression when they evolved into domestic dogs, humans had undergone self-domestication driven by the need to be more sociable and tolerant. Another theory suggests that, because the brain is an extremely energy-demanding organ, climate scarcity or high pathogen load has caused the body to prioritize resources to maintain the immune system instead of supporting very large brains. Images | freepik In Xataka | We had always believed that evolution had been arrested for thousands of years. The redheads were telling us the opposite

Renfe makes its position in the workshop war clear to Iryo and the CNMC

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The Iryo-Renfe soap opera continues. Every day that passes we have a new chapter, a new exchange of statements, new figures on the table. And with each passing day, Iryo continues to find the door to the workshops closed. Although the CNMC obliges them, Renfe is clear: “they have no obligation.” The (pen)last chapter. It is the one that brings us the response from Renfe. And it is that, to questions from Xatakathe company tells us that the obligation imposed by the CNMC to open its workshops to Iryo has a “disproportionate impact” and there is a “technical impossibility.” The company assures that “adapting the workshops to the regime that the CNMC wants to impose” would take them a year. For now, the company has kept the Italian company’s workshops closed. And although Renfe clearly feels harmed, the company assures us that “we are studying how to do it (open the workshops) to carry out the CNMC’s decision, as it could not be otherwise.” Heavy or light. That’s the question. And since the liberalization of Spanish roads began, Renfe already knew that it would have to leave its workshops to Ouigo and Iryo to carry out light maintenance work. That is, routine checks of little significance. The problem is that these “light maintenance” operations are not clearly specified even in the Directive 2012/34/EU nor in the standard EN 15380-4:2021. This friction is what has led Renfe to deny passage to Iryo since it considers that in the proposed operations part of the train must be dismantled and that falls into the category of heavy maintenance. It must be remembered that Renfe already encountered this problem a few months ago. The Spanish company reported that Ouigo was carrying out heavy maintenance work at its facilities and that it had not previously reported this. Something that was proven, according to the company itself, by documents provided by the French company. The CNMC, on that occasion, also sided with Ouigo, forcing Renfe to lend its facilities for unforeseen interventions. Is it that big of a deal? Well, obviously, the versions differ here. No, it’s not that big a deal: Iryo is clear that the operations to be carried out in the Renfe workshops would not involve many problems. They assure that they would only occupy 7% of the infrastructure and that, since maintenance is scheduled weeks in advance, it is all a matter of organization. Yes, of course it is a big deal: Renfe, on the contrary, assures that these maintenance tasks seriously affect its schedule. They say that space is already operating at almost full capacity, that the impact of Iryo would be 10% of the infrastructure and that it would force them to withdraw 1.2 million seats from the offer because there would be no room to maintain their own trains. More than one million of these seats correspond to the lines in which it is handled as a Public Service Obligation (OSP) and this would result in a drop of 60 million euros in income. The CNMC is clear. The problem for Renfe is that the CNMC is clear about it and is on Iryo’s side. The regulator has already received a complaint that Renfe did not allow the Italian company to enter its workshops and issued a resolution forcing Renfe. This resolution was appealed before the National Court, which has decided to force Renfe to make way for Iryo in their workshops as a precautionary measure but with the notice that it will study the case in particular. The sticking point is that Iryo would need to send its trains to Rome for scheduled maintenance. That would force them, they say, to stop providing service with the trains involved for two months, a compelling reason for the CNMC despite the fact that In France Iryo was forced to take its trains to Italy despite the cessation of activity and despite the fact that the company announced that I would set up some workshops in Spain for these cases but nothing is known about them. Those are the cards that, for the moment, are on the table. Photo | Sergioorozco96 and Renfe In Xataka | There is a fight between the railway operators to get the best drivers and Renfe is winning it

In the “war of the workshops”, Iryo defends himself. And he has already made it clear to Renfe why he will use its facilities

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The battle for the use of Renfe workshops continues to give us new chapters. From the closed door and the complaint to the CNMC we have moved on to appeals to the latter’s decision and a crossroads of statements in which numbers are beginning to be put on the table. The last to speak was Iryo. What is happening? Iryo and Renfe have an open battle over the use of the latter company’s workshops. To understand all the keys: What does Renfe say? What Renfe says is that the regulations only require them to hand over part of their facilities to their rivals to carry out light maintenance, but that is not the case when the work involves heavy maintenance. Iryo’s actions fall under this last definition and Renfe already reported in October that Ouigo was performing heavy maintenance on their facilities without their permission. In addition, they point out that giving space to these trains from the Italian company will have a direct impact on their offer. If Iryo is occupying a space that Renfe had planned to use, the Spanish company estimates that they will have to withdraw from their offer around 1.2 million seatsof which more than one million fall within its Public Service Obligation (OSP). They estimate 60 million losses in income. What does the CNMC say? The CNMC considers that Renfe would obtain a substantial competitive advantage if Iryo has to send its trains to Italy to carry out heavy maintenance. They consider that, if this happens, it would stop providing service with the affected trains for weeks. (as has happened in France) and that maintaining them without performing said maintenance is a danger to the safety of passengers. For this reason, it forces Renfe to open its facilities and allow the Italian company to carry out these jobs with the employees it considers. In exchange, the Spanish company receives compensation as if it were a rental of the facilities. What does Iryo say? Until now we have known the version and calculations of Renfe but not of Iryo. The Italian company assures that moving its trains to its country would mean a extra cost of 17 million euros and defends that they would only be occupying 7% of all Renfe facilities. To estimate this extra cost, they calculate that if Iryo has to take the trains to Rome, they would stop being operational for about two months each, although, they point out in The Economistwhich on other occasions the company reduced this time horizon to one month. This operational stoppage, Iryo points out, would be key in the market because they compete with 19 trains available in our country, while Renfe has 270 high-speed trains at its disposal. And they culminate their complaints by pointing out that these actions are scheduled based on mileage and that Renfe was aware that they would have to carry out these operations for months. A music that sounds familiar to us. The truth is that railway liberalization in Europe has created a constant fight between operators that, as we are seeing, sometimes goes far beyond the tracks. Renfe has pressed everything it can to prevent Iryo from carrying out these maintenance tasks at its facilities but has also recalled that the company has to work on all high speed lines and not only in the most profitable since, unlike Ouigo and Iryo, they work as a public service operator. Furthermore, remember that upon arrival Iryo committed to building his own workshops but no steps have been taken in that direction. At the same time, it is logical that Iryo tries by all means to carry out its maintenance work in Spain to minimize its impact on the offer. And, as we said before, in France they have already forced the company to take your trains back to Italy to perform this type of maintenance. Country where Renfe has also encountered countless obstacles to deploy your servicesespecially in everything related to his arrival in Pariswhere the most profitable lines start. Photo |Smiley.toerist and Renfe In Xataka | If the question is when Ouigo was going to be profitable, the answer is: now. And that makes Renfe suspicious

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