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Lorca wants to improve his appearance. So he will fine those who hang clothes on their balconies with up to 1,500 euros.

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It doesn’t matter where you live, whether it’s a big city or a town with a few thousand inhabitants, chances are that if you take a walk through the streets of the center and look at the facades, you’ll come across a neighbor who uses their balcony to dry their laundry. Perhaps with a clothesline or perhaps by hanging clothes directly over railings or window frames. In Lorca (Region of Murcia, 99,000 neighbors) that is about to change. There the City Council has decided that practices like this tarnish the image of the town, so they want to punish them with fines of up to 1,500 euros. They are not the first in declaring war on such customs, although their fines are especially large. What has happened? That in Lorca they want to put an end to a relatively common image in the cities and towns of Spain: balconies and facades with clothes hanging. A few days ago, its City Council agreed (with the votes of the PP and Vox) to modify the ordinance which since 2010 has been combating “antisocial actions” in the town. The idea is to add a new section to “protect the image of buildings, facades and spaces visible” from the street. And that involves, among other things, ending the indiscriminate use of clotheslines. What exactly have you decided? The idea, clarify from the City Council, is to prohibit “all kinds of acts or behaviors that negatively affect” the image of buildings and the urban environment, “causing their degradation.” It sounds somewhat vague, but the truth is that its promoters distinguish between two types of very specific infractions: minor ones, which will be punished with fines of between 151 and 750 euros, and serious ones, whose penalty can go up to 1,500. Do we know anything else? Yes. Although the update of the ordinance has not yet been published in the Official Gazette of the Region of Murcia (BORM), the City Council has launched a statement in which it details what behaviors it will sanction from now on. If we talk about “minor infractions”, which can lead to fines of up to 750 euros, mention three: a) Hang all kinds of clothes on the balcony railings and on the lower lintels of the windows. b) Accumulate belongings on the balconies such as mattresses, bed bases, butane cylinders, as well as any other element unrelated to the proper use of this space in the home. c) Do not remove signage, awnings, plaques and banners from businesses once their activity has ceased. And serious infractions? Those are the ones that will cost the most to the residents of Lorca, who may face fines of between 751 and 1,500 euros. While waiting for the new restrictions to be officially reflected in the 2010 ordinance, the City Council has advanced in your statement What practices will be considered “serious violations” from now on: a) The installation of clotheslines on the main façade of buildings unless they are located in spaces provided for this purpose or protected by screens or lattices that are aesthetically integrated into the environment. b) Failure to remove air conditioning units or smoke vents on the facades of buildings that are in poor condition. Is it that important? If we ask the Lorca City Council, the answer is yes. Its mayor, Fulgencio Gil, claims that “the objective is to raise awareness, order and improve coexistence”, and insists: “The state of facades, balconies and elements visible from the public street is part of the general perception of Lorca, so this ordinance supports exemplary behavior.” And although the City Council argues that the change will adapt the 2010 ordinance to the “new needs”, it also assures that it has been promoted largely because the local residents themselves demanded it. “It responds to a growing demand from neighbors, social groups and citizen associations, who have been demanding more specific regulation in the face of situations that deteriorate the urban image and generate a feeling of abandonment in different neighborhoods and areas of the urban area,” remark. Is it a unique case? Not quite. Lorca is not the first city council in Spain to clarify what can be done (and what cannot) on the balconies of buildings. Vigo Lighthouse remember For example, in the Galician city, local regulations also restrict hanging clothes on balconies in such a way that they are visible from the street, in addition to shaking clothes, emptying washing buckets on the sidewalks or hanging decorations on balconies that may pose a danger to pedestrians. In other parts of Spain, like Andalusiathere are also localities that regulate the hanging of clothes on terraces. The same thing happens in big cities, like Barcelonawhere in 2025 a rumor circulated that a new measure was going to be adopted to tighten control, when in reality the issue has been regulated since the 90s. In Madrid, the issue is addressed in the Urban Planning Standardswhich clarify that clotheslines must have “a protection system that makes it difficult to see the clothes from public roads” and “they cannot be integrated into balconies.” Image | Fernando (Flickr) In Xataka | If there are elderly people in your building, an elevator can be installed without the board’s approval. The key: the Horizontal Property Law

968 euros of savings per year for tenants

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In July 2019, almost on the brink of the pandemic, Paris decided to use a measure that the new law French housing: limit climbing of their rents. The idea was very simple. For a few years a pilot program would be applied to prevent the law of the most from prevailing in the market. strong wealthy Almost seven years later and with the future of the initiative surrounded by doubts, France already knows how the experiment has gone: it calculates that rent control has allowed Paris to reduce its rents 5%with a average savings of €85 per month. The experience is interesting for France… and for Spain, which has also opted for control formulas income. Back to rent. Spain is not the only European country that in recent years have tried to regulate (to a greater or lesser extent, with more or less successful) residential rental prices. In 2019, relying on a new law of the real estate sector (ELAN), Paris requested to launch an experimental program to apply certain limits to the escalation of rents. Price control came into force in July of that same year and the idea was that it would be applied for five years, a period during which work would be done with the reference values from the Rental Observatory of the Paris Metropolitan Area (OLAP). To calculate them, aspects such as the location of the homes, their age, whether they are rented with or without furniture or how many rooms they have were taken into account. The measure was extended to both contracts signed from 2019 onwards and those renewed. And how has it been? That is the question that Atelier Parisien d’Urbanisme wants to solve (APUR), an urban agency that a few years ago began to evaluate the effects of price controls in the French capital. His first conclusions came two years ago. Now he has updated them with a new report that reveals a couple of interesting data. The main one is that in six years (between 2019 and 2025) the measure has achieved contain rents by 5%which is equivalent to an annual saving of hundreds of euros for tenants. “The econometric analysis shows that, during the period from July 2019 to June 2025, Parisian rents were, on average, 5% lower than they would have been without the regulation,” notes APUR in your report. “For this period, the average monthly rent observed was 1,519 euros. Without the regulation, it would have reached 1,600, which represents an average saving of 81 euros per month (968 per year) for tenants in Paris.” Another key data: 1,019 euros. He new report APUR uses data from 2025, which allows us to have a more up-to-date ‘photo’ of the impact of the measure. For example, its technicians calculate that in the last year analyzed (July 2024-June 2025) the average income was around 1,632 euros85 euros less than what Paris tenants would be paying if almost seven years ago the city had not opted for price caps. Per year that translates into about 1,019 euros more in the tenants’ pockets. The Parisian agency has detected another curious fact. The moderating effect of prices seems to be felt especially in smaller homes. If on average rents have been contained by 5%, in the case of smaller accommodation (less than 18 m2) the reduction is around 12.4%. The effect softens as the surface area of ​​the home increases, until it is “no longer significant” in the largest ones. It’s no surprise. The ALUR and ELAN laws, from which the Parisian measure draws, made it a priority to moderate the rents of smaller homes. Does it affect the offer? one of the criticism What those who oppose regulation often argue is that, by controlling rents, owners are discouraged from putting their homes on the market. That is to say, the measure may serve to contain the rise in prices, but it does so at the cost of suffocating supply and reducing the available apartments. After studying the sector, APUR technicians have concluded that this is not true. “No lasting deterioration in the supply of rental housing can be attributed to the rent control system,” collect the report. In fact the clearer oscillations The number of apartments announced is not explained by regulation, but by factors outside the market, such as the pandemic or the 2024 Olympic Games. Is everything positive? No. The study also reveals that, although the program has been in force for almost seven years, its scope is still limited and there is a considerable part of the market that manages to avoid price controls. “With 48.6% of ads exceeding the regulatory threshold in the last period analyzed (July 2024-June 2025), the untapped potential remains considerable,” slide APUR. What’s more, those responsible estimate that if all landlords complied with the regulations, the moderating effect on prices would not be 5%, but almost double, around 10%. Beyond France. APUR’s analysis is important for France, where Paris (and the rest of 70 municipalities who have opted for rent control) risks the measure ending next novemberbut also for other EU countries that have considered regulating their markets. In Spain, without going any further, the Government promoted a system of ‘stressed market areas’ which allows restrictions to be applied to rent increases. Although it is estimated that the measure already reaches more than nine million of tenants, does not extend to the entire country. The law states that it is the autonomous communities that must request the declaration of a ‘tensioned zone’, something that Catalonia has donebut what regions such as Madrid either Balearics. Images | Alexander Kagan (Unsplash) and John Towner (Unsplash) In Xataka | A silent phenomenon is brewing in Madrid: people who go to live in Valladolid and return to work by train

fines of up to 30,000 euros

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Do you charge 2,320 euros per month? You’re lucky because you can rent an 80 square meter apartment in Ibiza. Of course, you won’t have any money left for anything else. Not even for those small luxuries like eating or showering. These are the data if we take as reference the 29 euros/m2 that, according to Idealista, It is difficult to live on rent in Ibiza city. That is if we take into account that the data is from the month of February, because in summer prices have been exceeded in recent years, reaching 32 euros/m2. Everything indicates that the pressure on rental prices will increase. They point out in The Voice of Ibiza that the Balearic Islands have become the Autonomous Community where the most pressure is expected on rental prices, with an average increase of more than 4,000 euros at the end of the year, as a result of the renewal of contracts that expire this year. The problem recurs every year. The New York Times addressed this problem in 2024 in a report in which voice was given to firefighters, teachers or police destined for Ibiza and who could not pay the rental bill. Entrenched and without solutions, the housing problem has created a series of settlements of workers who spend the night in tents and caravans unable to afford an apartment or rooms for which they have been asking 1,000 euros for years. On an island where tourism and luxury hotels drive the economy, a considerable number of workers do not have a roof over their heads. The solution to some of them went through live in a caravan. Now Ibiza has expelled 200 of them and it is being protected against this type of settlements. Legal, until it isn’t Last January, A post on Tiktok went viral of a woman who worked as a seasonal worker in the Tena Valley (Huesca). “I am a temporary worker and I come to work in the Tena Valley. The rents are 800 euros and I am not going to share a flat. I prefer to live in the van with my cat (…) I don’t understand why they focus on me when I don’t break the regulations,” she noted in the video. The video showed how the police asked him to leave the town where he had parked his motorhomewhere he lived. The truth is that he was right, nothing prevented him from living in his house on wheels as long as it was parked legally and he did not take objects outside, which could be considered camping. But this case cannot be completely extrapolated. to the entire national territory. Municipalities or autonomous communities can apply their own restrictions to prevent camping. This is the case of the Balearic Islands, which has decided to protect itself against the entry of caravans. Since last year, and with the excuse of putting limitations on tourism, Ibiza imposed a maximum number of cars that could enter its islands. Since then, there can be no more than 20,000 non-resident cars driving on its roads. But, of them, 16,000 cars belong to rental fleets. And if you want to move around the island with a caravan you have to prove that you have the camping nights already booked. This last measure included in the Law 5/2024 on vehicle control It is one of the weapons that are being used on the island to evict those living in a caravan. In fact, the third additional provision reads the following: In order to avoid the proliferation of motor vehicles parked in certain places for long periods and that are used, in practice, for camping and overnight stays, the prolonged parking of motor vehicles on the rural land of the island outside of the existing public parking lots specially enabled for this purpose is prohibited. Long-term parking is considered to be staying parked in the same location for more than three days. Camping and overnight stays with motor vehicles on the rustic land of the island of Ibiza outside the legally existing tourist camps are prohibited. Any type of parking of motor vehicles on the rural land of the island of Ibiza is prohibited if they do not have the accreditation of entry and/or permanence on the island regulated by this law. The previous regulations, therefore, aim to the Law of Rustic Land of the Balearic Islands in which exactly what rustic land is is defined. And according to the description we read in article 7 of said law, rustic land is practically any non-urban space on the island. Therefore, the prohibitions described above make any parking illegal in spaces considered “rustic land”, which includes all types of trucks next to the road or towns. They are spaces that tourists with caravans have usually taken advantage of to sleep but that have also been used by the island’s own workers. The problem is not small. And it is that in article 8 of the Vehicle Control Law it is specified that “the Plenary Session of the Ibiza Island Council” may “agree to temporarily limit the influx and/or parking of motor vehicles” where it is considered that there is too much influx of vehicles following a report from the affected city council if they consider that environmental damage may occur in “certain spaces with natural, heritage or landscape values.” This makes it easier for caravan settlements of workers who cannot find housing are dismantled. And the fine is no small thing. In its sanctioning regime, a driver who enters one of the described areas can be punished with a fine of between 300 and 1,000 euros, as it is considered a minor offense. But when it comes to spending the night, things get complicated. And the very serious sanctions include contravening the third additional provision, the one in which it is explained that a person cannot spend the night outside the spaces specifically designed for it. In this case, fines of 10,001 to 30,000 euros and … Read more

Its price drops to 1.78 euros per month

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If we take a look at the best VPNs on the marketthere is a feature that not all of them include. They all work great, but most tend to have a limited number of devices per account. One of the exceptions to this is Surfshark, which allows, with a single account, have a quality VPN on all your devices. The best? He is now celebrating his birthday and we can get this VPN for only 1.78 euros per month. Surfshark Starter Subscription – monthly The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Surfshark has its best price of 2026 right now Why go for a paid VPN? Although there are free options that can be useful to us at a specific time, the reality is that these free VPNs They are not recommended in the long run.. They tend to be full of advertising and offer a slow connection, although that is not their biggest flaw. When we use a VPN, we want to protect our Internet traffic and, precisely, free VPNs are not as secure as they promise to be. The ideal is to go for a paid one and, if we can do it for one that is also very cheap, even better. Surfshark is a VPN that stands out for being very easy to install and useit doesn’t matter if it is on a PC, a mobile phone or a tablet, for example. Furthermore, as it has more than 4,500 servers, we will always have a connection option. Let’s now go to the prices of this promo. As we have told you a little above, its most economical plan, called Surfshark Starter, is available 1.78 euros per month if we go for their two-year plan. Doing the numbers, that implies that 24 months of this service cost 48.06 euros and, furthermore, you get three extra months (so there will be 27 months in total). Now, their other two plans are also included in this birthday promo. If you are looking for more security for your computers, Surfshark One may suit you. In addition to VPN, it includes other tools such as antivirus or a system that alerts you if your data has been leaked on the Internetamong others. Sale, if we go for his two-year plan, for 2.08 euros per month and includes three extra months (so 27 months cost 56.16 euros). The latest, Surfshark One+ includes everything the previous one has and adds Incogni to the formula. What is it for? It is a tool that will help you delete your data from different databases. It also includes three extra months and costs right now 4.18 euros per month if you opt for its two-year subscription (so, in total, it costs 112.86 euros). Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Images | surfshark In Xataka | Best VPNs 2026: guide with the 17 best services to protect your online privacy In Xataka | Why it is dangerous to connect to public Wi-Fi and what you should do to protect yourself

Every year Renfe dedicates millions and millions of euros to something that has little to do with transportation: cleaning graffiti

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In March 2023 Renfe did something very rare in the world of communication: he sent a press release full of graffiti to newsrooms across the country. Literally. The text was so smudged that you could barely read its content, beyond the headline, in which the operator lamented that “the graffiti vandalism” that occurs on trains generated a cost of 25 million of euros, in addition to affecting the flow of traffic with delays and cancellations of services. That marketing campaign served to arouse curiosity and raise awareness about the issue, but it does not seem to have solved the problem. In fact, the bill for graffiti removal just came a considerable jumpjoining others related to vandalism, such as wiring theft. What has happened? That despite all your attempts to tackle the problem, the campaigns awareness, the control of the authorities and the complaints launched by the workers, Renfe has not managed to free itself from a very special type of vandalism: that which is perpetrated with sprays and that attacks its wagons and locomotives. The operator already had warned in several occasions that graffiti on trains cost him 25 million euros annually, but the bill seems to have increased in recent years. at least like this has advanced it elEconomista.eswhich ensures that in 2025 spending will skyrocket to exceed 32.2 million euros. Has it increased that much? The economic newspaper assures that the railway operator has had to increase the efforts it dedicates to keeping its trains clean, going from around 25 million annually invested in recent years (the sum includes direct and indirect costs) to just over 32 million in 2025. The largest expense would be located in Catalonia, where recently The socialists presented a bill to increase fines for acts of vandalism that affect public transportation. According to The NewspaperIn 2023, cleaning trains in the region cost 11.6 million, about 32,000 euros per day. Is it something new? No. And that is precisely one of the keys to the problem. Three years ago, in his famous statement defaced, Renfe already denounced that “graffiti vandalism” on the trains was generating a cost of more than 25 million euros per year, a bill that, it warned, falls directly on citizens. It may seem like an exorbitant figure, but Renfe recalled that graffiti not only requires cleaning machinery, it also has less visible consequences that are equally (or even more) burdensome. “This figure includes, in addition to the cleaning itself, the indirect expenses derived from this scourge, such as investment in security, both for personnel and other technological systems,” scored Renfe in 2024. Graffiti also affects railway operations, so passengers suffer directly. Click on the image to go to the tweet. Does it affect that much? Yes. In her day the operator already warned that sometimes graffiti directly affects the service they provide, causing delays and leaving trains unusable. The reason? The company spoke of “lack of visibility or graffiti on safety elements that impede circulation”, in addition to “emergency braking to paint in the middle of a journey” or even the smell generated by aerosol paints. “It is very annoying to travelers.” The truth is that Renfe has not been the only one to report the problem. He has also done it by example the Government in Catalonia or the CGT union in Galicia, which in February regretted in X that the graffiti on a train was preventing Renfe from using it to resolve the saturation of the service between Vigo and A Coruña. How much is vandalized? Renfe calculates that if the entire area of ​​vandalized wagons and locomotives is added, in 2023 there will be around 80,000 m2. And not because that was a particularly bad year. It is an estimate very similar to that of 2022 and theEconomist points out that one year the 90,000 m2. To give a clearer idea of ​​what these levels of vandalism mean, in 2023 the operator I remembered that cleaning such a quantity of paint had required 15,000 hours of work and that the railway network had also been affected to the same extent. “The trains were stopped for 15,000 hours unscheduled due to graffiti removal,” insisted the company, which reminds that the damage could be even greater if surveillance were relaxed: in 2023 alone its security personnel thwarted almost 1,200 incursions by vandals to create graffiti. Is there no way to avoid it? If there is, in Spain we have not yet managed to find the key. And not for lack of efforts. In addition to toughen sanctions and carry out controls that not long ago allowed ‘hunting’ in Catalonia about a dozen of those involved in 115 graffiti on FGC, Renfe and Barcelona Metro machinery, Renfe has resorted to new forms of surveillance. Renfe already employs for example, drones to hunt down vandals who paint wagons or break into their facilities, which has led to a notable investment. Images | Renfe 1, 2 and Alvaro Galve (Flickr) Via | elEconomista.es In Xataka | Japan has a secret weapon to end vandalism in its streets that only affects teenagers: “The Mosquito”

This European alternative gives you 1 TB of storage for 15 euros per year

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I say it a lot lately: the 256 GB of storage on my phone is no longer enough. If it happens to you like it did to me, it is very likely because you have it full of photos and videos. There, cloud storage can be a good relief, but, which one to choose? For anyone looking an alternative to the main US cloudsInternxt presents itself as a great option: it is a European cloud that now, with its 87% discountleaves us 1 TB of storage per 15 euros per year. Of course, you only have a few days left to take advantage of this promo. 1 TB of cloud storage (annual subscription) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Good capacity, security and even includes a VPN Without the current offer, this Internxt plan has a price of 120 euros per year. That’s a huge discount for secure cloud storage that also comes with VPN and antivirus. The ‘Lifetime’ option also has the same discount, that is, that you pay only once and forget. This is great because it eliminates a monthly subscription and avoids possible future price increases. It has a price of 247 euros. Internxt is a company of Spanish origin that offers, as we say, a good European alternative to services like Google Drive or Dropbox. This cloud has a very high level of security and uses, in addition to end-to-end encryption, what is known as ‘Zero-Knowledge’. That implies two things: that your data is encrypted before uploading (which prevents anyone from intercepting them along the way) and that not even Internxt itself can access them. Another highlight of the Internxt cloud is that it is open source. This means that any person or entity can audit it and verify that there is no type of security hole or way for our files to be extracted. It should be noted that this cloud has a two-factor authentication service, which increases its security even further. Are you short on 1TB of storage? Internxt also has its other two plans with the same 87% discount. Below we leave you what they include and their price, both in its annual and ‘Lifetime’ modality: Premium Plan: 3 TB of storage, VPN, antivirus and cleaner per 31 euros per year (or 377 euros lifelong). Ultimate Plan: 5 TB of storage, VPN, antivirus, cleaner and meet per 46 euros per year (or 507 euros lifelong). Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Images | Internxt In Xataka | 61 European alternatives to Google, X, Gmail, Chrome, Maps, DropBox, Google Drive, WhatsApp and other popular services In Xataka | Google Drive alternatives: the best cloud storage services for your files

The best tech deals on Amazon for less than 50 euros today, April 28

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April is coming to an end and if you are looking to renew or buy new technological devices for your home, Amazon is one of those stores where you can get very good deals. These are the best deals in technology for less than 50 euros that we found today, April 28, in this store. Tenda RX2L Pro – AX1500 WiFi 6 Router The price could vary. We earn commission from these links speaker system Logitech Z207 Bluetooth by 46.45 euros: with 3.5 mm input and 10 W of power. surveillance camera Reolink E1 Pro by 42.49 euros: Supports dual band WiFi. WiFi 6 router Tenda RX2L Pro by 29.99 euros: with WiFi 6 and five antennas. Smart humidifier Dreo by 49.99 euros– Compatible with Alexa and Google Assistant. wireless mouse Logitech Ergo M575S by 34.99 euros: with customizable buttons and trackball. Logitech Z207 Bluetooth Speaker System If you want to give your computer better sound, this Logitech Z207 Bluetooth speaker system is perfect now that it’s on sale. It has gone from costing 71.99 euros to 46.45 eurossince it has applied a 35% discount. This is a speaker system that you can pair to two Bluetooth devices or connect a device via the 3.5mm input. It pairs easily using the Bluetooth button and has an integrated headphone jack. The total power it offers is 10 W. Logitech Z207 Bluetooth PC Speaker System The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Reolink E1 Pro surveillance camera The time is approaching when getaways and departures from home are more continuous. If you are looking for a good option for have your home under control when you are awaythis Reolink surveillance camera is a good option. Its usual price is 49.99 euros, but now you can get it for 42.49 euros. This surveillance camera for indoors it offers a resolution of 2,880 x 1,616 pixels and is supports dual band WiFi. It has detection assisted by Artificial Intelligence and multiple storage options. Reolink E1 Pro 3K PT Indoor Camera The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Tenda RX2L Pro WiFi 6 Router If you want to have a good Internet connection at home, this Tenda RX2L Pro is a WiFi router that will come in handy. Its recommended price is 49.99 euros, but now it has a 40% discountbeing able to buy it for 29.99 euros. This router is equipped with WiFi 6 technology and offers dual-band speeds of up to 1,501 Mbps. It is equipped with five non-detachable antennas and technology beamformingwhich effectively improves signal transmission. Tenda RX2L Pro – AX1500 WiFi 6 Router The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Dreo Smart Humidifier It’s allergy time and maintain the best environment at home It is ideal to be able to cope with allergic rhinitis, for example, better at home. This one from Dreo has a recommended RRP of 59.99 euros, but now you can get it for 49.99 euros. This is a humidifier that you can control via app and voice commands, as it is compatible with Google Assistant and Alexa. It creates a mist three times larger than most humidifiers on the market and its four-liter tank offers up to 32 hours of mist. Dreo Smart Humidifier The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Logitech Ergo M575S Wireless Mouse With a 41% discountthis Logitech ergonomic mouse has gone from costing 58.99 euros (recommended RRP) to 34.99 euros. If there is something it stands out for, it is its cut shape, which keeps your hand relaxed for hours. From the firm they guarantee a 25% less muscle tension on the forearm using this mouse. In addition, it has three customizable buttons, so you can establish shortcuts that will save you time. Additionally, it comes with a wireless trackball. Logitech Ergo M575S wireless trackball mouse The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Images | Logitech, Reolink, Dreame and Tenda In Xataka | The best mobile phones, we have tested them and here are their analyzes In Xataka | Best wireless headphones. Which one to buy and 21 models from 15 euros to 470 euros

This MiniLED TV with 144 Hz now costs less than 400 euros

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Until recently, if you wanted to enjoy an authentic cinema experience, you had to prepare your wallet to pay for an OLED or MiniLED panel for more than 1,000 euros. Although this is something that demystifies Hisense with your television 55E8Qwith a combination of MiniLED and Quantum Dot technology and a sound system that exceeds the standard. Now, you can get this TV on Amazon for a discount, for 398 euros. Hisense 55E8Q – Mini LED Smart TV, Quantum Dot The price could vary. We earn commission from these links An economical TV compatible with Dolby Vision & Atmos The screen of this Hisense TV has a 55 inch diagonalalthough one of its main hallmarks is its backlighting system MiniLED. Using thousands of LED bulbs much smaller than conventional ones, the TV manages zoned brightness with surgical precision. One of the points where most flat televisions falter is the bass. Although Hisense has solved this, in this model, integrating a rear subwoofer and top firing speakers. Its sound system offers a power of 40 W, which is double what the vast majority of televisions in that price range offer, or even more money. This TV is compatible with Dolby Vision IQ & Dolby Atmos and the operating system under which it works is VIDAA. It has Filmamaker Mode (which respects the director’s original vision for his film) and if you are going to use it for gaming, it is also a good option, since it has a 144 Hz refresh rate and ports HDMI 2.1. ⚡ IN SUMMARY: offer for the Hisense 55E8Q smart TV today ✅ THE BEST Panel suitable for gamers: With 144 Hz and HDMI 2.1 ports, it is a perfect screen to connect a PS5, Xbox or gaming PC, offering absolute fluidity without latency. Design: almost non-existent frames and a very robust metal central base that allows it to be placed on furniture that is not excessively wide. ❌ THE WORST VIDAA operating system… Although it is very fast and has improved a lot in 2026, it is still one step below Google TV in terms of app catalog and customization. Viewing angles… As is usual with VA type panels, if you sit very far to one side of the TV, you will notice that the colors lose some vibrancy compared to an IPS or OLED panel. 💡 BUY IT IF… You are a gamer and you are looking for maximum performance, since if you have a next-generation console or a powerful PC, the 144 Hz with VRR and HDMI 2.1 ports will be a delight for you. It is an economical TV that can withstand the pace of frenetic games. ⛔ DON’T BUY IT IF… You are a total darkness movie buff and you always watch movies in the dark and you are obsessed with perfect blacks. As good as the MiniLED is, there is still slight blooming (brightness around the white subtitles on a black background) that the OLED does not have. Some sound bars that may interest you for this TV Hisense HS2100 – Sound Bar 2.1, 240W The price could vary. We earn commission from these links TCL Q65H Sound Bar 3.1.2, 340W The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Images | Hisense In Xataka | Best televisions in quality price. Which one to buy and seven recommended 4K smart TVs In Xataka | Best sound bars in quality price. Which one to buy and seven recommended models from 140 euros

Fed up with paying almost 8 euros for a Guinness, someone thought of setting up an index to find cheap beer

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How delicious is that little beer that you drink right after leaving work or after a paddle tennis game and how angry it is when you find out that they have raised the price. Matt Cortland He paid €7.80 for a pint of Guinness in Dublin in March 2026 and didn’t like it one bit (the price, not the beer). So instead of criticizing the waiter or posting a review on Google complaining like some people do, he adopted another strategy that was slightly more laborious but much more effective (judging by its results): a very complete price index where he would know where to drink the best and at what price. Because revenge, like beer, is served cold. The project. Is called Guinndex and is independent of the very famous Irish beer brand. You go to the website, enter a pub, a city, a county or a postcode in the box and it returns pubs and the cost of a pint, as well as useful information such as its location or its score. Or you zoom in on the map to see with a traffic light map which taverns look cheaper than others. A good way to save if you travel to Ireland and fancy a pint of Guinness. In fact, it has very diverse rankings ranging from how long it takes to earn a pint (depending on salary) to pubs named after animals or the best pub names (praise be the “Hairy Lemon”). Today it has almost 6,500 registered pubs in the 32 counties of the country and almost 1,300 prices verified and rising thanks to anonymous contributions from users. The price index for Dublin. Guinndex Why is it important. Because the Irish Central Statistics Office stopped tracking the price of a pint since 2011, leaving a data gap of more than a decade in a country where Guinness is much more than a beer. And although Guinness is almost a religion in Ireland, it is the same everywhere: no one knows for sure if they are overcharging you compared to the standard price or how much extra. The Guinndex fills that gap with real, verified data, not estimates. Furthermore, it does so publicly and for free, so that it allows obtaining an objective reference so that consumers have information and can put pressure on prices. It’s the market, friend. On the other hand, and leaving aside the anecdote of finding where to drink cheaper, what it shows is relevant: that the cost of carrying out a complex idea has plummeted and streamlined so much that a single dev is capable of setting up a project of this magnitude in just 48 hours when before it took weeks of work, a certain budget and a team. Context. Matt Cortland likes AI, data and Guinness, as he himself admits on the project website. He is an American engineer based in London with strong ties to Ireland: his partner is irishlived and trained there with the George Mitchell scholarship and course the Creative Digital Media master’s degree from TU Dublin. He is not just a tourist they are trying to scam. The project came at a critical time: Diageo, the company that owns Guinness, had applied several price rises in a row and some pubs had taken the opportunity to inflate margins. If you’re not careful, you can pay up to €11 for a pint, although the average price in Dublin is €6.94 and €6.06 nationwide. How has he done it. With an AI agent named Rachel who looked human, understood Irish humor, and had a Northern Irish accent (after several tests, she concluded that this worked best), as its author tells. The task was simple and quick: call, ask the price of a pint of Guinness, say thank you and hang up. Few people discovered that it was a chatbot and there were all kinds of responses, even waiters who offered to buy him a round. During the St. Patrick’s weekend he called 3,000 pubs, answered more than 2,000 calls and more than a thousand pubs provided a price: he already had the Guinndex base. The technical stack was jack, knight and king: the Google Maps API, ElevenLabs for the voice and agent logic, Twilio for making the phone calls, and Claude for extracting Guinness prices from the transcripts. Cortland explains What cost him the most was time, since he only invested about 200 euros. The consequences. The most immediate impact is behavioral: Cortland account that the owner of a pub lowered the price of his Guinness by 0.40 euros and then updated the information in the Guinndex himself. When there is price transparency and it is available to everyone, it is capable of changing behaviors. However, the biggest consequence is the technological moment in which we live: three APIs, 200 euros and a weekend are enough to build a project from scratch, with real utility and that is already changing prices. The bottleneck is no longer money or infrastructure: it is knowing what problem is worth solving. In Xataka | Spain can tell itself as many times as it wants that it hates Cruzcampo. The figures say a very different thing In Xataka | We humans like beer. The big question is whether we like it enough to have invented agriculture Cover | Guinndex and Christopher Zapf

Renfe wants you to use a folding bike when you ride the train. For this, it has announced a subscription service from 41 euros

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Getting on a train with a scooter or one folding bike It is a situation that we see more and more in our country, especially in more crowded cities and in cases where the situation requires this convenient type of mobility. For this reason, Renfe wanted to take advantage launching a service in collaboration with the bicycle company Brompton, to promote the combo of using a bike and train on daily Cercanías journeys. The idea is to rent a folding bicycle for a monthly subscription and combine it with the train to cover the stretch between home, the station and the final destination, without the need for a car. The problem they want to solve. Using a bicycle to get to the train has the main drawback of needing secure parking for the bike, and of course many prefer to avoid what the stations offer due to the risk of theft. On the other hand, during rush hour, getting a conventional bike onto a crowded car is quite stressful, and anyone who has ever done it knows it perfectly well. A folding bicycle avoids this type of situation, and Renfe wants to take advantage of it. What is included and how much does it cost?. The subscription starts at 41 euros per month with a 12-month commitment, or 49 euros per month if you opt for six months. The package includes a Brompton C Line four-speed (intermediate handlebar), theft and damage insurance, a full annual service and home delivery within three to five working days. At the end of the period, the user can renew, return the bicycle or buy a new one at a discount. The brand also offers a bonus of 200 euros for the purchase of a new bike to those who decide to keep the model, according to they count from El Periódico. why now. Spain is the third market in which Brompton launches this subscription service, after Germany (where it premiered last year) and France, where it launched this same year. The landing in Spain makes sense: the Renfe Cercanías network is one of the densest in southern Europe and last kilometer routes without a practical solution are a widespread problem in large cities. The argument of sustainability. Renfe frame the initiative in its environmental strategy. The company claims to have reduced its emissions to 3.79 grams of CO₂ per transport unit in 2024, a figure that, according to the Spanish Climate Change Office, is up to 35 times lower than that of private cars. Replacing short car trips with bike plus train is, in this context, the natural complement to that narrative. For the end user it is a very convenient option, although in a context of fatigue due to the flood of subscriptions that many of us pay for, it can make a certain dent in the proposal. What remains to be seen. The proposal makes sense on paper, but there are some factors that must be resolved, including the number of bike racks at the stations, the reliability of the service and whether the price is attractive for those looking for an alternative and convenient type of mobility. Buying a Brompton usually means spending more than 1,000 euros, so we will have to see if the economic argument convinces enough travelers for this business model to be successful. Cover image | Renfe In Xataka | Renfe has launched a real-time map to know where your surroundings are in 2025. And it works quite well

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