decided

The Coca-Cola recipe seemed untouchable. Until Europe first and Mexico later have decided to touch it

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For decades, the Coca-Cola recipe has been treated almost like a state secret, guarded in a vault in Atlanta and protected by an aura of mystery. However, in the real world, governments have discovered that they do not need to infiltrate that vault to alter the world’s most famous drink, but can do so through legislative texts. Modifying, for example, the fiscal or regulatory framework can push any company to change its composition, its prices or its supply. The case of Mexico. Without a doubt, it is one of the most solid in the world to understand how large-scale industrial change can be forced. And it is no wonder, because the driving force behind this change was not a direct order to rewrite the formula, but rather the entry into force of a new tax on sugary drinks. in 2014. Here the effect it had was commented on by different studies which showed that, one year after the tax, purchases of sugary drinks fell by 6%, while purchases of water they rose 4%. He had an answer. The fiscal scenario and the drop in sales logically generated strong pressure for the company to change its ingredients, causing great pressure on the mix of the company’s sweeteners. This opened an intense debate about the use of cane sugar versus high fructose corn syrup, and now the national government has put on the table the possibility of forcing Coca-Cola to stop using imported corn syrup and transition towards national cane sugar by selling it much cheaper. In Europe. While Mexico uses fiscal pressure on consumption, the European Union is the perfect example of structural market regulation. And for those who have traveled to North America, you will have realized that the taste of Coca-Cola is different from what is drunk here in Europe. And a very important bureaucratic tangle is also to blame. The culprit was none other than the strong intervention that the sugar market had in the European Union for 50 years through a complex quota system that came to an end on September 30, 2017. Its consequences. Here European regulations historically limited the production of isoglucose, which is the European equivalent of American corn syrup, through strict quotas. This structural restriction forced its use in the soft drink industry to be much more contained than in the United States. Although the European Commission continued to manage certain quantitative limits in the final phase of this legal regime, the regulation acted as a containment dam. Furthermore, several Member States have implemented their own taxes on soft drinks, separating the strategy of “market regulation” from “public health” policies against sugar consumption. In India. To understand how far the fight between a State and the Atlanta giant can go, you have to travel to India in 1977. Here, unlike Mexico or Europe, the debate was not about cane sugar or sweeteners, but about sovereignty and corporate control due to the ‘fault’ of a currency control law that forced multinationals to dilute and reduce their foreign participation. Here Coca-Cola reacted quickly to prevent any government from controlling its operations and therefore sharing its secret formula, and that is why it decided to leave the country in 1977 before submitting and revealing the secrets it had. Images | Unsplash In Xataka | Researchers have analyzed the impact of sugary drinks on global health. They have put their hands on their heads

In 2013, Amazon created a Kindle so good it has proven to last forever. And now he has decided that it must end

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Amazon has announced that, starting May 20, 2026, Kindle devices released in 2012 will no longer have access to the Kindle Store. You will still be able to access the books downloaded on the devices, taking into account that we should not factory reset the Kindle. If we do, we will not be able to register it in our Amazon account. Goodbye to old Kindles. If you have an early Kindle, starting in May you won’t be able to download books from the official Amazon store or register them as new devices when you restore them. Specifically, these are the affected models. Kindle 1st Gen (2007) Kindle DX and DX Graphite (2009 and 2010) Kindle Keyboard (2010) Kindle 4 (2011) Kindle Touch (2011) Kindle 5 (2012) Kindle Paperwhite 1st Gen (2012) Kindle Fire 1st Gen (2011) Kindle Fire 2nd Gen (2012) Kindle Fire HD 7 (2012) Kindle Fire HD 8.9 (2012) Amazon is sending an email to affected users, offering a 20% discount on new Kindle devices and credit compensation for purchasing new books. Likewise, all the purchases we have made on the old device will be available if we log in to the new one with the same account. It’s not the first time. Amazon has long wanted to have tight control over the installation of books on its Kindles. One of its most recent updates ended with a star function: being able to send books to the device via USB. In the same way, Users were required to keep their Kindle updated to access the store. In practice, this meant limiting features—such as downloading books outside of the Kindle Store—to push users to install those more restrictive versions if they wanted to retain access. Almost a paperweight. A book reader to which we cannot download more books is not very useful. A questionable decision considering that this type of device is born to have a useful life only limited by its hardware – that the screen ends up saying enough, which is difficult with electronic ink or that we are left without a battery replacement. Amazon has decided to end the life cycle of a product that still had a war left to fight. Not because the hardware has stopped working, but because maintaining its compatibility no longer fits with your business model or your current ecosystem. In Xataka | We enter book month with sales on Kindle: you can now buy the eReader for less than 100 euros

Claude Mythos is an AI model so powerful it’s scary. So Anthropic has decided that you won’t be able to use it

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Claude Mythos Preview it’s already here and it’s so good it’s scary. Literally. Anthropic has just introduced it to the public, but it has been done so cautiously that we won’t even be able to test it and it will only be available for certain technology partners. That’s frustrating and disturbing at the same time, but also reasonable. So powerful that it scares. On February 24, 2026, Anthropic engineers were able to test their new artificial intelligence model for the first time, which they called Claude Mythos Preview. As soon as they did they realized one thing: “demonstrated a dramatic leap in its cyber capabilities over previous models, including the ability to autonomously discover and exploit vulnerabilities zero-day in the main operating systems and web browsers on the market. Threat to global cybersecurity. This finding made it clear to Anthropic officials that although this capability makes it very valuable for defensive purposes, it also poses clear risks if the model were offered globally. Thus, a cybercriminal could take advantage of it to find vulnerabilities in all types of systems and exploit them. A few hours ago the company developed this analysis of Mythos as a threat to cybersecurity in a post on his blogand for example highlighted how Mythos found a vulnerability (now corrected) that had been present in OpenBSD for 27 years, an operating system precisely recognized for its very strong security. There were more examples, and all of them made the conclusion clear: Mythos is too powerful for ordinary mortals to use. Superior in all benchmarks, and in some cases such as USAMO (mathematics), the jump is simply incredible. Source: Anthropic. The best in history according to benchmarks. Anthropic has published a very in-depth report about this model with its “system card”. Among the data present is, for example, its performance in benchmarks, where it has swept GPT 5.4, Gemini 3.1 Pro and also Claude Ous 4.6, which until now was the best model in the world in almost all performance tests. Although in some cases the jump is not spectacular, in others such as USAMO —mathematical problem solving—Mythos practically achieves perfection. He barely hallucinates… That system card also talks in detail about how Claude Mythos Preview has a drastically lower hallucination rate than Claude Opus 4.6 and earlier models. He is also capable of saying “I don’t know” if he does not have enough information to answer, something that reduces hallucinations due to overconfidence. …but when it does, be careful. The paper warns of a new phenomenon: when the model fails in some complex tasks, the “hallucinations” are not obvious errors, but rather extremely subtle and well-argued technical failures. This is dangerous because the answer seems totally correct to experts, requiring very deep verification. Glasswing Project. That power and capacity has meant that the model will only be available through a “defensive” program that they have called Glasswing Project and which will be exclusive to some Anthropic technology partners. Specifically AWS, Apple, Broadcom, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Google, JPMorganChase, the Linux Foundation, Microsoft, NVIDIA and Palo Alto Networks. All of them will have the privilege (and responsibility) of having access to Claude Mythos Preview to identify vulnerabilities and exploits and correct them before bad actors can do so. Mythos Preview “it’s just the beginning”. Although this model is the most capable that has been seen so far, at least according to the benchmarks and data presented by Anthropic, the company assures that “we see no reason to think that Mythos Preview is the point at which the cybersecurity capabilities of language models reach their peak.” They assure that they expect the models to continue improving in the coming months and years, although this new model is certainly on another level. In Xataka | OpenAI and Anthropic have proposed the impossible: lose $85 billion in one year and survive

twelve countries have just decided that much better with Bizum

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Bizum has not only conquered the Spanish: now it is who leads the construction of the pan-European payment system that aspires to stand up to VISA and Mastercard. That is, who aspires to be the face of European sovereignty in payments against the great American solutions. The new company that will coordinate this alliance of national solutions will have its headquarters in Madrid. Why is it important. Europe moves trillions of euros in daily digital payments and almost all of that infrastructure passes through American hands. That twelve EU countries plus Norway have decided to join, and that they have chosen Spain as their headquarters, is a declaration of geopolitical intentions. “We want to not depend so much on American solutions,” said Fernando Rodríguez, deputy general director of International Expansion at Bizum. Difficult to explain it more clearly. The context. The project starts from a previous alliance between Bizum, the Italian Bancomat Pay and the Portuguese SIBS, which was later joined by Blik (Poland and Slovakia) and Vipps MobilePay (Nordic countries). In parallel, the scheme werodriven by the European Payments Initiativealready operates in Germany, France and Belgium. All of them now converge under a common architecture: a central infrastructure that acts as a “bridge” and guarantees that a user in Oslo can pay a user in Lisbon without any American intervening. Between the lines. The choice of Madrid has not been automatic. It has been, according to the protagonists themselves, “the first compromise solution” reached between the partners, which says a lot about the difficulty of what is to come. Choosing a venue is the easy part. The shareholder agreement that will determine the governance and distribution of power, the selection of the CEO and the negotiation of a legal process that the parties describe as “long and complex.” There is an obvious risk: that national interests will strain the alliance. Coordinating 13 countries with different banking cultures and different market sizes is something we have not yet seen in Europe. Main winner? Bizum. With difference. Their 31 million users They are almost 20% of the total clients of all the allied systems, and that weight has been enough to convert Madrid into its headquarters and place Spain at the center of an initiative that no one would have imagined led from here ten years ago. We did not see the leap from national payment application to European sovereignty lever. The big question. Whether this consortium will be able to challenge Visa and Mastercard for real ground depends on whether it manages to go beyond payments between individuals. Electronic commerce and point-of-sale payments, planned for 2027-2028 and what has been achieved so far we have only seen the tip of the icebergoften with walk-around approaches; They are the litmus test of truth: that is where the American networks have their most profitable business and where Europe has been down for decades. Go deeper. The president of the Spanish Banking Association, Alejandra Kindelán, also has been clear about this: Europe needs to gain autonomy at a time of rising geopolitical upheaval. Payments, in this context, have ceased to be the usual infrastructure and have become a matter of sovereignty. And dependence on American networks is increasingly seen in Europe as a problem to be solved. Featured image | Xataka with Mockuuups Studio In Xataka | Europe seeks its sovereignty in rare earths and knows how to achieve it the fast way: with a supermine in Sweden

Saudi Arabia had billions to build the future in the desert. He has decided to sacrifice them to destroy Iran

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The cranes have stopped roaring in the Tabuk desert. There where it should rise a colossal artificial lake at 2,600 meters high and a science fiction metropolis valued in billionsToday the priority is to look at the sky looking for the trail of ballistic missiles and kamikaze drones. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) had promised the world a glass and petrodollar utopia called NEOM, a monument to his own ego designed to whitewash the regime’s image. However, the harsh reality of the Middle East has ended up imposing itself on the renders in 3D. A crossroads in the gulf. We are looking at what is now, for all intents and purposes, a Third Gulf War, and Saudi Arabia has reached a historic crossroads. Caught in the war waged by the United States and Israel against Iran, the Saudi monarchy faces an existential dilemma: save its economy and its megalomaniac pharaonic project, or take advantage of the chaos to dismantle, once and for all, the regime in Tehran. And judging by the shadow movements of its leaders, Riyadh seems willing to let its economic utopia bleed if it means it can win this war. Facing the gallery. Behind closed doors, Saudi Arabia’s message is one of absolute containment. In recent communicationsthe Saudi government has insisted that it has “always supported a peaceful resolution” and that its only priority is defending its population and infrastructure from daily attacks. This is what an analysis by Dr. Turki Faisal Al-Rasheed has defined as “strategic patience”: a tactic in which Riyadh avoids direct confrontation to protect its investments, while subtly encouraging the weakening of its regional rival. The reality is more complex. However, the leaks tell a very different story. As revealed The New York TimesBased on sources informed by US officials, MBS has been privately pressuring US President Donald Trump not to stop the war. The crown prince sees the current US-Israeli military campaign as a “historic opportunity” to destroy Iran’s hardline government. The talks have reached the point where MBS would have advocated for ground operations and even the military takeover of Kharg Island, the Iranian oil heart. The diplomatic board is abuzz. Mohamed bin Salmán’s phone does not stop ringing, as he urgently needs to shield his vital infrastructure from attacks and, to do so, he relies on the Western umbrella. As detailed ReutersBritish Prime Minister Keir Starmer personally telephoned MBS to condemn the Iranian offensive and confirm the deployment of more British defensive military equipment. London’s goal is to protect the kingdom and try to ensure that the sea trade route does not completely collapse. But while MBS is piling up shields and secretly pressuring Trump not to relax the blow against Iran, other regional allies are desperately trying to put out the fire before it devastates the entire Gulf. As revealed by the agency AnadoluPakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif contacted the crown prince to underline the “urgent need” for a de-escalation. Islamabad’s move is not a toast to the sun: Pakistan has emerged as the great shadow mediator, to the point of offering to host direct talks between the United States and Iran based on a 15-point American peace plan. The sacrifice of Vision 2030. “It’s the last thing he wanted. He wants stability and order, he doesn’t want missiles or drones flying.” This is how forceful an expert seemed consulted by him Financial Times. The diplomatic “detente” that Saudi Arabia had signed with Iran in 2023 has been shattered. Iranian retaliatory attacks have hit the giant Ras Tanura refinery, the Shaybah field and the Prince Sultan air base. The cost of this war for MBS’s dreams is already incalculable. Formula 1 had to cancel its April races. In the entertainment sector, the CEO of Savvy Games Group recognized that the war escalation It will “cool the perception” of Saudi Arabia as a safe destination for investment of 38 billion in eSports. The biggest collateral victim: NEOM. The artificial lake project Trojenaawarded for $4.7 billion to an Italian construction company, is already facing leaks about delays of between three and four years. The 2029 Winter Games have been postponed indefinitely and the extra costs suffocate an already deficient budget. The war and instability in the Red Sea discourage foreign investment, vital for these science fiction cities to go from render to reality. The reality of the Saudi coffers is critical. As revealed The New York TimesEven before the conflict broke out, the crown prince was already facing serious financial challenges. The 2030 deadline is approaching and the government assumes budget deficit forecasts for the coming years, suffocated by excessive spending on megaprojects and vast investments in artificial intelligence that are straining the country’s resources to the limit. And a prolonged war threatens to blow everything up, since MBS’s success depends on a single factor that is currently non-existent: a safe environment for investors and tourists. Holding the pulse. To withstand the challenge, Saudi Arabia has had to resort to an engineering work born of fear in the 80s. With the Strait of Hormuz strangled by the Iranian threat, Riyadh has activated its logistical “antidote.” State oil company Aramco is pumping against the clock through the East-West Pipeline, a 1,200 kilometer pipeline that crosses the desert to the Red Sea port of Yanbu. The objective is to move up to 7 million barrels a day by land, avoiding Tehran’s missiles. The landscape in Yanbu is like something out of a movie: an “army” of at least 25 supertankers (VLCC) crowds on the coast to evacuate some 50 million barrels. However, there are no magic solutions. The port has a physical funnel (it can only load between 4 and 4.5 million barrels per day) and, in addition, ships must cross the Bab al-Mandab Strait, exposing themselves to the Houthi rebels. Added to this is that the pipeline only moves crude oil, leaving markets such as Europe without their vital supplies of refined products such as diesel, exacerbating the global energy … Read more

OpenAI seemed unstoppable. Now he has decided to leave Sora behind and change course

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There was a time when OpenAI seemed to move forward without looking back, adding release after release while the rest of the industry tried to keep up. On that stage it appeared sorapresented in February 2024 as a model capable of generating video from text and, shortly after, as an application with broader aspirations. The idea was not only to create clips, but also to give them a place to circulate, share them and turn them into a more social experience. It was, in a way, the natural extension of a company that never stopped exploring new formats. The closure. What fit as one more step within that expansion has ended in a twist that is difficult to ignore. OpenAI has confirmed the end of the Sora app, a decision that the team itself has communicated with a direct message to those who used it: “We say goodbye to the Sora app.” According to The Wall Street Journalthe withdrawal would not be limited to the app: it would also affect the API and video support within ChatGPT. For now there are no specific dates or complete technical details, although the company has announced that it will offer more information shortly. What was Sora and why did it matter?. To understand what this closure means, it is worth clarifying what Sora was. It was a system capable of generating videos from text and expanding existing clips. Over time, that capability became a broader product, with functions for sharing content generated within the platform itself. It was not just another tool, but one of the proposals with which OpenAI sought to bring AI to the field of audiovisual creation. The change of prioritys. Less video, more code and agents. The closure of Sora is not an isolated move, but part of a broader change within OpenAI. According to the aforementioned newspaper, the company is reorienting computing capacity and part of its equipment towards productivity tools, programming and systems capable of acting autonomously on the user’s computer. In that same line, The company recently announced the integration of its ChatGPT app, its Codex code tool and its browser into a kind of “super app.”. The idea, as conveyed by management to employees, is to concentrate efforts on a clearer product vision. During his journey, Sora symbolized a stage in which OpenAI was exploring how far it could take its models beyond text. Its closure, however, points to a different reading of the current moment. The company seems to be leaving this stage of expansion behind to focus on products with more immediate applications in the professional field. It is not so much a resignation as a rearrangement of priorities. In that setting, video loses weight compared to tools that fit better into your current strategy. Images | OpenAI In Xataka | Terence Tao is the best mathematician in the world: he has recognized that he is using AI to solve one of the Millennium Problems

The world is desperately asking Ukraine for its antidote to the Shahed. And Ukraine has decided to keep them for its war

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In September 2023, a swarm of cheap drones managed to get through some of the most advanced air defenses in the world and paralyzing strategic infrastructure in the Middle East for hours. That left a conclusion for many armies: the air war of the 21st century no longer depends only on fighters or missiles that cost real fortunes, but also on small machines that can be manufactured in workshops and change the balance of the battlefield. The “antidote” that everyone is looking for. After four years of war against Russia and thousands of Shahed drone attacks, Ukraine has ended up becoming the most advanced laboratory of the world to combat this type of weapons. What began as a desperate need to defend their cities has ended up generating a complete ecosystem defense: detection networks with radars and acoustic sensors, command software that coordinates cheap interceptors and specialized pilots who have learned to confront swarms of drones in real combat conditions. That experience has awakened a enormous international interest because it solves the big problem of modern defenses: destroying cheap drones with missiles that cost millions is an unsustainable equation. Changes the economics of air defense. It we have counted other times. The Ukrainian success is explained above all by cost. While a Patriot missile can exceed four million dollars and a THAAD interceptor is around twelve million, many kamikaze drones cost between 20,000 and 50,000 dollars. Ukraine has broken that logic using tiny interceptors that can cost between $1,000 and $2,500 and that, guided by human operators and thermal sensors or radar, pursue the enemy drone until it is destroyed. Systems like the Sting interceptor (small 3D printed devices capable of reaching speeds close to 280 kilometers per hour) have demonstrated surprising effectiveness in real combat, taking down a large part of the Shahed that attack cities like kyiv. From battlefield to global product. That performance has made Ukraine the center of a new technological career. Gulf countries, European countries and allies of the United States have started calling kyiv in search of solutions to confront the same Iranian drones that Russia has been using for years on the Ukrainian front. Middle Eastern governments, concerned about attacks on oil facilities or military bases, negotiate agreements to acquire interceptors, detection systems and operational training. They not only want to buy the drones, but learn the method Ukrainian: a distributed defense model based on thousands of cheap sensors and small weapons capable of quickly responding to massive attacks. A system to copy. The demand, furthermore, is not limited to hardware. Ukraine too export knowledge. Teams of Ukrainian specialists have already been sent to several countries to explain how to detect, track and shoot down drones in large numbers. In total, at least eleven governments have requested direct assistance to replicate this low-cost air defense model. For many Western militaries, the war in Ukraine has shown that defense against drone swarms is not won with large strategic systems, but with distributed networks of sensors, software and small weapons that operate in a coordinated manner. The great paradox. However, there is a fundamental problem. Despite international interest, Ukrainian companies can’t export their interceptors. The reason? The government has prohibited the sale of defense drones because it considers that all available systems should remain in the country. Manufacturers like Wild Hornets o SkyFall constantly receive purchase requests from the Middle East and Europe, but the official response is always the same: The absolute priority is to defend Ukrainian territory itself. Like the United States. The position reflects a very clear strategic logic. Ukraine faces massive drone attacks every night and needs every interceptor it produces. Selling them in the middle of the war would mean weakening their own defense. The decision, in fact, is reminiscent of what the United States has been doing repeatedly with key weaponry during intense conflicts (the latest: in South Korea): reserve or directly move the most necessary technologies for your own operations before exporting them. In this case, kyiv is applying exactly the same logic. War laboratory. Meanwhile, the war continues to turn Ukraine into the biggest testing ground of the new era of drone combat. The country has even created a specific branch of its armed forces dedicated to unmanned systems and is developing everything from robotic submarines to long-range attack drones. In cities like kyiv, national interceptors are already they demolish more than 70% of the Shahed that fly over the region. That experience, accumulated under constant attacks, is generating innovations that many Western armies have not yet managed to replicate. Pressure of a new war. The reason international interest is growing so quickly is easy to understand: the problem that Ukraine has been facing for years starts to spread to other regions. Iranian drones are now appearing in conflicts and attacks in the Middle Eastwhere the United States and its allies have discovered that their traditional air defense systems are too expensive to confront swarms of cheap drones. Each attack forces interceptors that cost millions to be fired against devices that are worth only a few thousand. Therefore, from US military bases to oil facilities in the Gulf, half the world andis looking towards Ukraine in search of answers. Its engineers, pilots and programmers have accumulated experience that no other army has. They have learned to fight swarms of drones with limited resources and to design cheap weapons that They break economic logic of modern air warfare. An antidote that stays at home. As they counted on TWZthe scenario is summarized in governments around the world calling to kyiv and asking for the “antidote” against the Shahed, while Ukraine has made a pragmatic decision: to keep it to itself. The companies receive offersallies ask questions and specialists travel to share experience. But the weapons that really make a difference right now, those cheap interceptors that have changed air defense, continue to stay at home, because for Ukraine the war is still it’s very far determine. Image … Read more

What do the kids who have decided to believe in something believe in in the middle of 2026?

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If social media and pop culture are anything to go by, it might seem like religion crosses a second coming among young people. Several signs would point in that direction: the success of ‘The Sundays’Rosalía with her continuous Christian referencesphenomena like Hakuna Group Music capable of fill venues with thousands of people thanks to his Catholic pop… Apparently, all this sends signals: something is happening with religion, the long and inevitable path towards secularization has stopped. However, beyond the headlines and TikTok, it is the data that sheds light on what is really happening and, despite all the noise of full stadiums and online bustle, we come across the loneliness of the chapels. The truth is that the secularization has not slowed down, according to the barometer on religion and beliefs in Spain, carried out by the Pluralism and Coexistence Foundation. Approximately one in three young Spaniards is defined as spiritualbut 61% do not practice any official religion. Among 18-24 year olds, only 15% say that religion gives a lot or quite a bit of meaning to their life, far below factors such as family or friends. And, within the 54% of the population that does identify with a religion, only 17% maintain a regular practice. What is clear in this study is that growing interest in the spiritualbut not institutionally: 31% of young people believe in some type of spiritual reality or vital force, 29% say they believe a lot or quite a lot in astrology and 23% in clairvoyance. So there is not a massive return to faith, but rather a cultural visibility of the religious that is in full effervescence. Religion on demand We can say that the religious identity of Gen Z is a totum revolutum. More than a specific doctrine or religion, what many young people are looking for is that spiritual or even mystical experience. For them, the lines that separate Christian traditions – Protestant, Evangelical, Orthodox or Catholic – are blurred and give way directly to an emotional search and belonging in favor of a common religious experience. As an example, what was possible to experience at the beginning of the year at the Movistar Arena. “Let all of Spain hear it, let the name of Christ be heard!” It could be Nacho Cano opening a show in the middle of 2026 but no, we are talking about the opening of ‘Calls‘, a prayer meeting that brought together about 6000 people mixing music from evangelical groups like Hillsong, talks influencers Catholics and a final ceremony culminated with the prayer of the Lord’s Prayer. And a few days before, Catholic pop triumphed Hakuna Music Group in Vistalegre. There are also trends that are more in communion with what we know as traditional Catholicism adapted to modern times. For example: Eucharistic adoration and the prayer meeting focused on the real presence of Christ, something very Catholic and that distances itself from that evangelical approach where the power of the Bible takes center stage. Likewise, retreats and spiritual camps with renewed music and aesthetics but that follow traditional meditation and confession practices; or the prayer of the rosary that today are also reinterpreted through TikTok, YouTube or apps of prayer. All this clearly shows the hybrid nature of this youthful spirituality and its distance from religious traditions. But if young people do not go en masse to church and the data do not show the rise of Catholicism, how then is this new impulse for a transversal spirituality explained? Full stadiums, music, shared Christian symbols… Signs of a religiosity that moves in the cultural space more than in the parish. We have the answer on our phone One hypothesis is that most young people discover Christianity on TikTok before in church. On platforms like Instagram or YouTube you can follow homilies, songs of faith or prayers. They are the new modern temples, adapted to the pace of digital life. And the imaginary of the sacred has always had great cultural force, although religious practice decreases. Religious aesthetics have not appeared in recent years thanks to Rosalía, Los Javis or Alauda Ruíz de Azúa; Centuries ago it was already used as a tool of the Church to communicate and move. The ultimate end of baroque art It was to materialize the divine in images. It is true that in a dramatic way, with that dark and solemn aura to transmit the transcendent dimension of Catholicism, but in reality it was still pedagogical, a tool to reinforce the Catholic faith. In the Renaissance these Christian symbols were also used, but there they sought to humanize the divine and escape from the dark; or even in Surrealism, artists opted more for the dreamlike nature and the exploration of the subconscious. @juanvy12xd Response to @Erik Pastor MY FAVORITE BIBLE QUOTE ♬ original sound – Juan Manasa And now, in the digital age, the tools are different but the Christian symbology is still present. From Madonna to Lady Gaga, passing through the parade ‘Alta Sartoria’ by Dolce&Gabbana paying homage to ecclesiastical tailoring, Lux or the influencers Christians who circulate on social networks. Screens serve as a meeting place, algorithms determine the psalms, and the spiritual dictates our mood of the day. A generation that wants to believe in something An increasingly dissatisfied and exhausted generation Z finds in those videos of influencers Christians and in Hakuna music something exotic, something that gives them a feeling of togetherness and community. The sacred is the new Valencia filter and when faith is not only commercialized by the Church, phenomena such as Christiancore ―turning Christian symbols, such as robes or crosses, into visual language that seeks to offer meaning― find in this jaded and lonely your perfect niche. In the midst of this saturation of visual stimuli, to some young people it may seem demodé Palm Sunday mass, but his outfit with crucifix and T-shirt ‘God is Dope’ gives them the illusion of a new spirituality heterogeneous and digital. Generation Z tends to … Read more

This town in Spain went unnoticed until 1953. Then it decided to carry out the largest tourism experiment in the world

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In the middle of the 20th century the skyscrapers They were still a rarity outside of cities like New York or Chicago. In Europe they predominated the horizontal citieswith low-rise buildings and compact historic centers. However, in the middle of the 1950s, experimentation began with an urban idea that seemed almost futuristic for the time: concentrating thousands of homes and hotels in high towers to free up land, bring people closer to the sea and create cities capable of accommodating crowds without expanding uncontrollably throughout the territory. The town facing the sea. At that time Benidorm it was just a fishing village of the Alicante coast. Its economy revolved around the sea and, in particular, the tuna trap, while many families survived by combining fishing, agriculture and work in the merchant navy. That small town barely had more than a few thousand inhabitants and had the typical appearance of a mediterranean town: low houses, narrow streets and a life marked by the rhythm of the tides. However, the fishing crisis, the economic isolation of post-war Spain and the need to find new sources of income pushed the town to seek a different future. It was then that an almost unthinkable transformation began to take place: a humble enclave destined to become one of the most unique urban and tourist experiments in history. The vision that changed the destiny of the city. The great turning point came in the 1950s when Mayor Pedro Zaragoza perceived the potential tourist of that corner of the Costa Blanca. At a time when the Franco regime was trying to attract foreign currency and timidly open the country to the outside world, Benidorm opted for sun and beach tourism as an economic engine. The decision involved breaking with many conventions of the time, from allowing the use of bikini on the beaches (a scandal for conservative Spain) to designing an urban model specifically designed to accommodate thousands of foreign visitors. The municipality developed in 1956 one of the first general urban planning plans in the country, a tool more typical of large cities than a small coastal town. With that plan the metamorphosis began: the place that had lived off fishing for centuries began to be imagined as an international tourist city. Benidorm before the “plan” Grow towards the sky. The key to the urban model was an unusual decision on the Mediterranean coast: grow vertically. The 1963 planning practically eliminated height limits and allowed increasingly slender towers to be built on relatively small plots. The logic was simple and powerful. If the buildings rose towards the sky, the ground could be kept free for green areas, swimming pools, avenues and services. This approach turned Benidorm into a true laboratory of modern urban planning, indirectly inspired by the theories of architects. like Le Corbusier about vertical cities surrounded by open spaces. He first great symbol of that change came with buildings like the Frontalmar or the Coblanca 1 in the sixties, towers (or moles) that they broke completely the traditional scale of the town. Those constructions inaugurated a model that in a few decades would transform the city’s landscape. The hordes are coming. The airport opening of Alicante in 1967 and the expansion of European tour operators triggered the arrival of visitors. British tourism, especially, found Benidorm a cheap, sunny and accessible destination all year round. To accommodate this avalanche of tourists, dozens of increasingly taller hotels and apartment blocks were built. In a few decades, Benidorm’s skyline went from low houses to a forest of towers facing the sea. Today the city has more than a hundred of skyscrapers or, in other words, it is the second in the world with the highest density of tall buildings per inhabitant, only behind New York. Structures such as the Gran Hotel Bali, the Time or the future TM Tower (which will exceed 230 meters) symbolize that vertical race that turned the city into what many call the “Manhattan of the Mediterranean.” Criticized and admired. There is no doubt, the Benidorm model has been the subject of debate for decades. For some it is the perfect example of mass tourism and aggressive urbanization of the coastline. For others it is, paradoxically, one of the coastal developments more efficient of Europe. The concentration of high-rise buildings allows hundreds of thousands of visitors to be accommodated while occupying a relatively small area and reduces land consumption compared to extensive urbanization models with dispersed chalets and resorts. In addition, the city functions as a practically continuous destination throughout the year, with very high hotel occupancy levels even in winter. This spatial efficiency has led some architects and urban planners to consider Benidorm as an urban experiment so unique that, far from being a mistake, anticipated solutions that are discussed today in the debate on sustainability and urban density. From a town to a world tourist icon. The result of this entire process is a transformation that is difficult to imagine if you look at the starting point. In just a few decades Benidorm went from being a small fishing center to a city capable of receiving millions of visitors a year. Its stable population is around tens of thousands of inhabitants, but during the summer can multiply until approaching half a million people. He skyline of skyscrapersvisible from kilometers out to sea, has become an iconic image of Spanish tourism. What began as a risky bet in the 1950s ended up creating a urban and economic phenomenon unique: a place where an ancient Mediterranean town decided to reinvent itself looking up to the sky and ended up building his own Manhattan facing the sea. Perhaps that is why its story continues to provoke the same uncomfortable question: whether that was a brilliant urban planning intuition… or the experiment that forever changed the way of inhabiting the Mediterranean. Image | Javier Martin Espartosa, Double reed In Xataka | If the question is whether a skyscraper can be erased without demolishing it, … Read more

In Vigo the hoteliers have decided that it is enough to occupy tables to just have a coffee. Solution: minimum consumption

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Friday afternoon. Spring time, you can almost smell summer. The bars in the terrace area of ​​your city are full, but you and your friends are lucky: suddenly you see a free table on the other side of the square. You rush to occupy it, but when the waiter arrives to take your order, it turns out that of the six of you in the group, only three are going to have something. “I’m sorry,” he responds, putting the notebook in his pocket. “You don’t reach the minimum”. The above is an invented scene, but it is becoming easier to find it in bars in Spain. Especially as the rents and the cost of goods makes it difficult for them to reach the coveted threshold of profitability. “Minimum and mandatory” consumption. The news advances it Vigo Lighthouse: Fed up with groups of customers who ‘colonize’ tables for hours and hours and only order a couple of soft drinks, Van Gogh, one of the most popular cafes in Vigo, has decided to require its customers to have a “mandatory minimum consumption.” The rule leaves little room for interpretation. It is announced with a sign hanging on the door of the premises. Their goal is also quite clear: improve the profitability of the business and avoid tourists who just want to use the bathrooms. “Everyone has to consume”. “The intention is that if six kids come to a table, not just two of them order something, but all of them. We had to take these measures because we are talking about an issue of profitability. Everyone who enters the establishment has to consume it,” explains the manager of the cafeteria, Jordi Casado, told the Galician newspaper. It is the waiters themselves who enforce the rule, as well as another one that the establishment applies: only two baby strollers are allowed inside. “Sometimes people are not aware that space costs money. A child in a stroller does not consume and takes the place of a person who would,” they point out from the premises, who also remember that cars can hinder the passage. Van Gogh is not the only business in the industry that applies minimum consumption regulations in Vigo. Lighthouse mentions another cafeteria in Calvario that also imposes certain conditions on days when there are media matches, such as those played by Celta, Madrid or Barça. Those in charge allow table reservations, but only for those who are going to dinner. “And those who come on their own, obviously, cannot spend two hours alone with a coffee, it is not profitable,” warns the person in charge of the bar. Does it only happen in Vigo? No. A quick look at the newspaper archive shows that, although it is not a majority practice, requiring a minimum consumption is beginning to become normal in the sector. In certain tourist spots (such as Barcelona or Ibiza) it dates back years backin some cases with high rates. Just a few months ago the newspaper The Gazette counted how an establishment in the center of Salamanca had adopted a similar rule, requiring its customers to consume at least one drink and a tapa per person at times of greatest demand (basically on Friday and Saturday nights). Click on the image to go to the tweet. A table, 10 euros. “Many people sat on the terrace for two hours with a water or a wine. In the end the bill was five or six euros. Meanwhile, there were lines of people waiting to sit down,” explained the owner of the local charro. “With those numbers it is impossible to keep a bar afloat.” in autumn ABC echoed another case similar: a bar that requires its clientele to spend at least five euros on League matches. Again it is not a unique case. Not long ago the ‘I’m a Waiter’ account sparked controversy by share a poster in which a bar announces its rates to compensate for “the high costs of broadcasting matches”: if you want a chair you have to pay ten euros. If we talk about a table for four it stays at €30, or €45 if it is for six. Pulling imagination. Minimum consumption is just one of the strategies with which hoteliers try to protect their profitability. Others go through adjust the price of the drinks depending on the time the customer occupies the tables (the more minutes, the more expensive the coffee is) or even veto who They go to bars alone, without companions. It is also not strange that in Spanish restaurants reservations are already made with an arrival and departure time. Bead Earrings. The objective is always the same: improve profitability in businesses that are still carrying the hangover of COVID and that in recent years have been marked by the increase in rentthe complications to find qualified labor and the increase in the cost of goods such as the coffee either cocoa. Added to this panorama is the crisis of some of the most successful ‘products’ in the sector, such as the cane either the menu of the dayand the growing competition from other markets. Today, for example, Mercadona already represents a rival to take into account for the bars. Image | Toa Heftiba (Unsplash) In Xataka | The bars promised them happily by filling their terraces with beer merchandising. Now they fear million-dollar losses

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