experienced

Spain already experienced it between 1900 and 1912

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Many people in the world have never seen a solar eclipsedespite There are usually between 2 and 5 in a year. The reason is that yes, they are relatively common; But, unlike the lunar eclipse, which is seen in all places where it is night at that time, the solar eclipse is seen in a very small strip of territory. In general, They usually spend between 300 and 400 years for an eclipse to repeat itself in the same place. Therefore, that In 2026, 2027 and 2028 there will be three solar eclipses visible from Spain is most peculiar. It is true that not all of them will be total, since the third will be annular, and that they will not be seen from the same points in the country, but, even so, it is something rare. Now, just because it is rare does not mean that it is impossible, since in mainland Spain we already had another trio of eclipses a little over a century ago. The first was in 1900, the second in 1905 and the third in 1912. They were not three consecutive years, as will happen with this Iberian trio, but they were very close dates for what is usually normal. May 28, 1900: a total solar eclipse that left the railway without tickets The first of these solar eclipses took place on May 28, 1900with the onset of totality at 14:53 UTC. The strip of totality, in which the complete occultation of the Sun could be seen, measured 70 kilometers wide and It extended from the north of Extremadura to Elche. Although there was still a lot of superstition surrounding eclipses, they were already beginning to be seen as something positive and, above all, as a spectacle worth experiencing. For this reason, thousands of people traveled to the locations of the strip of totality to witness it. The strip of totality was from the north of Extremadura to Elche Two of the most visited places were Plasencia and Navalmoral de la Matain Cáceres. This last town was the one that attracted the largest audience, with more than 4,000 railway tickets sold from Madrid. The influx was so great that when the tickets were sold out it was decided to release another edition, with a 25% increase in price. Still, many people bought them. Nobody wanted to miss this event that attracted scientists from Spain, England, France and Ireland. In Spain, the photographs taken by Manuel Gil, a science professor at the Central University of Madrid (the current Complutense University) stood out. There was great media coverage and many anecdoteslike those who said that the bees revolutionized, the sheep bleated uncontrollably and the storks returned to their nests. Night fell shortly after noon and this baffled the animals and fascinated the humans. August 30, 1905, the eclipse that ended religious prejudices Although in 1900 religious prejudices were slowly beginning to be put aside, they were still quite present. However, possibly the fact of seeing a solar eclipse and the world not ending led to the 1905 eclipse being received much more calmly among the general population. Totality, which began at 13:03 UTC on August 30, was observed in a strip from the north of Galicia to the north of the Valencian Community, passing through Castilla y León and Aragón. It lasted more than 3 minutes in some of these locations. Specifically, The center of the strip was in the town of Quintanillain Burgos, although the places where it was best seen were Burgos capital and the Leonese town of Cistierna. Unfortunately, the weather was not the best, so there were many places where the clouds They prevented the viewing of the eclipse. Despite that, this total solar eclipse had great media and scientific coverage, with astronomers from all over Europe meeting mostly in Burgos and León. April 17, 1912, a peculiar eclipse The solar eclipse of April 17, 1912 It was quite peculiarbecause it was a mixed annular-total eclipse. There was a very small strip of totality, just a few meters long, in northwest Spain. Furthermore, that totality lasted only a few seconds, so very few people were able to see it. On the other hand, annularity was seen in a larger area of ​​land, from Porto to Gijón. During an annular eclipse it is not night, but rather the Moon hides the center of the Sun, which is seen as a kind of bright disk. It attracted the attention of many astronomers, both Spanish and French, who gathered mostly in the Leonese town of Cacabelos. However, being so short, it did not attract as much of the general population and much less the press, which was busy with international news such as the sinking of the famous Titanic. October 2, 1959: the Canary Islands It is often said that 1912 was the last total solar eclipse in Spain. However, this is an unfair statement, since in 1959 one took place in the Canary Islandswhich also attracted a lot of national and international press and scientists. Totality occurred from 9:26 UTC and could be seen in La Orotava, Santa Úrsula, La Victoria, La Matanza, Tegueste, La Laguna, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, el Rosario and Arafo in Tenerife, Las Palmas Santa Brígida, Ingenio, Telde and San Bartolomé de Tirajana in Gran Canaria and the Jandía area in Fuerteventura. That was the last total solar eclipse in Spain, but only until now. Soon we will be able to enjoy one more. And then another. And another one. How can we not be excited, releasing one news item after another? It is a very special period. Image | Wikimedia Commons colored with Gemini | Ministry of Defense In Xataka | A third of Spain will be completely dark for a minute or two. The astronomical event of the century is approaching

Athletics has just experienced its own “moon landing.” And Adidas has defeated Nike in its particular space race

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May 6, 2017. Eliud Kipchoge appears on the finish line of the Monza circuit, northern Italy. This time the sound of the engines is provided by the crash against the asphalt of the athletes who accompany the Kenyan in the breaking 2the first attempt to go under two hours in marathon distance. But it is the tires that attract attention. The feet fit the Nike Vaporfly Elite. A very high profile, a foam with an absorption capacity unlike anything seen before. And the most striking thing: a carbon plate. The promise is that the shoe saves energy when running. That is, fatigue comes later and/or the athlete can run faster with the same feeling of effort. Almost a decade ago, Eliud Kipchoge was a handful of seconds away from breaking the two-hour marathon distance. He breaking 2 It did not break the desired 120-minute barrier, but Nike had just opened a new page in the history of athletics. A space race began that has ended almost nine years after that challenge. On April 26, 2026, the moon was reached. But Adidas has put the flag. A photo for history Since 2017 we have been wondering who would be the first man to break under two hours in a conventional marathon. Eliud Kipchoge himself achieved it the following year, becoming the first to complete the 42,195 meters in less than 120 minutes. But the event, surrounded by hares, with a car making a screen to block the wind and with mobile supplies, could not be validated as a world record. In 2018, in the Berlin marathon, considered one of the circuits faster of the world, Eliud Kipchoge amazed by stopping the clock at 2:01’39”. The following year, the legendary Kenenisa Bekele was just two seconds away from that same record in one of the cruelest final stretches in history. At that time, records were already falling in pairs with the new Nike carbon plate. Athletes were breaking records at the same rate as complaints of technological doping were rising. Some, in fact, They broke contracts when they understood that they were playing at a disadvantage. With the world’s fastest man in the long distance 99 seconds away from breaking the two-hour barrier, the question of whether we would ever see this milestone was more than repeated. In 2022, Kipchoge managed to get closer and made us dream. He finally exceeded it by one minute and nine seconds. On April 26, 2026, Sabastian Sawe put the flag on the Moon. And Yomif Kejelcha propped it up. Adidas had won the space race with a photo that will go down in history. Since Nike revolutionized the market with the launch of the first Vaporfly, athletics brands went into combustion. Sneakers with carbon plates multiplied, foams softened and became more reactive. The competition arrived and Nike seemed to have fallen behind. Kelvin Kiptum in 2023 proved that we were wrong, that he was the main candidate to break the mythical barrier. He was 35 seconds away from achieving it in the Chicago Marathon but a car accident ended his life a few months later. A few months earlier, Tigst Assefa stopped the clock in a historic 2:11’53” in the Berlin Marathon. He had just shaved almost two minutes off the world record. On his feet, the Adidas Adizero Adios Pro EVO 1. The Nike-Adidas battle is on fire and in 2024 Ruth Chepngetich, dressed by Nike, becomes the first woman in history to beat 2 hours and 10 minutes. The following year, Chepngetich is sanctioned for doping but it does not affect this record. This same year in Barcelona, Fotyen Tesfay manages to go under two hours and 11 minutes and Adidas also already has the second fastest mark in the history of the women’s marathon. But the final blow was given yesterday. Only two men have gone under two hours in a conventional marathon. They both wear Adidas. From the Vaporfly to the Adizero Adios Pro EVO 3 When Nike first released the Vaporfly, all hell broke loose. Not only among the more or less amateur public, athletes verified on the spot that their shoes were not up to par with those of the Oregon brand. Until its arrival, competition shoes had been standardized in minimal profiles and low drop (the difference in height between the front and rear area). The Vaporfly blew up what was known until then. Impossible heights for the time, very soft foams and zero “feel” of the asphalt for feet accustomed to always being close to the ground. However, for some reason, they worked. The improvement was quickly attributed to the carbon plate but the plate is only one of the pieces that make the whole work. Although it was directly attributed to the plate, the truth is that that sensation of “catapult” and extreme rebound of the foot was the result of using a supercritical foam with a lot of return. In fact, the carbon served to structure the shoe and give stability to the foot. Javi Moro, head of material at the magazine Corridorexplains that these foams “are very light and have a great capacity to retain and return energy” but emphasizes that they really have not changed much in general. “They have changed the curvatures of the plate and the midsoles to generate more rocker effect,” he explains, although he emphasizes that it is more as a means to adapt to all types of audiences “because not all runners tolerate the same type of plate in the same way.” This swing is more pronounced as brands have sought the limits of the regulations. World Athletic, which organizes major events and certifies the tests and the validity of the results, prevents competition with shoes whose height between the ground and the support of the insole exceeds 40 mm. But brands play with “where” those measurements are taken (at two specific points, heel and midfoot) to play with the geometries and try to put more foam … Read more

Germany is experiencing a new “industrial miracle” that it already experienced 90 years ago: that of weapons

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Germany has been living a transformation silent but very deep. The country that saw the birth of the industrial miracle of the automobile is seeing something similar again, but from a perspective completely different: rearmament, which until recently was a political taboo and a social discomfort, has become a great industrial and labor accelerator. War as a driving force. The country, pushed by the russian invasion of Ukraine and the feeling that the American umbrella is already It’s not so automatic As before, it has been shifting its center of gravity towards defense with a mix of strategic urgency and productive ambition. And that mutation is measured in something very specific: employment, factories, supply chains and a demand that is no longer described as temporary, but as a new normal that promises to last for years, with orders that come in like a wave and companies that prepare to produce at scale, with war economy rhythms without the need to call it that. Mass hiring. German defense contractors have entered into a veritable hiring feverincreasing its workforce by nearly a third in just four years. The data provided by a representative group of large companies and start-ups shows a jump from around 63,000 workers in 2021 to almost 83,000 today Within its defense-focused divisions, a 30% growth which reflects the extent to which the industry is expanding at real speed. I remembered the financial times that, although these figures do not cover the entire sector and there are large companies that did not participate, the portrait is enough to understand the direction of the country: Germany not only buys more weapons, but is rearming its industrial muscle to manufacture, sustain and modernize them, with a labor market that is beginning to reorganize itself around this new priority. Rheinmetall Panther KF51 The budget turn. The great fuel for this expansion is public money converted into contracts. Since 2022, the German Ministry of Defense has signed arms deals worth of 207,000 million eurosand last year alone it concentrated 83,000 million, a figure that contrasts with the 23,000 million in 2021 and that summarizes the break with the previous stage. The most significant thing is that the trend does not aim to stop: Chancellor Merz, in office since May, has relaxed the strict debt rules to allow the level of spending needed in defense, a message that, beyond politics, works as an industrial signal: there will be stable demand, continuity and visibility, just what companies need to invest, expand capacity, hire and plan for the long term without fear that everything will freeze with the next electoral cycle. The real size of the sector. Even with this boom, the German defense industry remains a relatively modest player in terms of employment when compared to the country’s historical giant: the automobile. The Ministry of Economy itself cited around 105,000 jobs direct in defense in 2022, and although the figure will have risen since then, it remains far from the approximately 700,000 workers in the automotive sector, today hit by layoffscompetitive pressure and technological transition. This comparison is important because it cuts to the root a repeated idea: that rearmament can “replace” the car as a great work cushion. Defense can grow a lot, even draw on industry and attract talent, but due to volume it does not seem capable of absorbing the size in the short term. of the engine crisisat least not quickly or massively. Airbus and Reinmetall. Within the employment map, Airbus stands out as the largest employer, with around 38,000 people working in defense worldwide and just over half in Germany, manufacturing key pieces of European military architecture such as the Eurofighter Typhoon and the transport plane A400M. right behind Rheinmetall appearswhich has become the most visible symbol of the boom: the producer of tanks, artillery and ammunition has grown from about 15,400 employees in 2021 at 23,500 todaythe greatest absolute leap among the companies analyzed, and its CEO, Armin Papperger, has even projected a target of 70,000 employees in three years. In parallel, Rheinmetall has begun to experience something that in Germany is a cultural indicator: social attractiveness. He speaks of hundreds of thousands of applications in a single year, as if defense had stopped being a dark or secondary sector to suddenly become a bet for the future for engineers, technicians and industrial profiles. Military startups. The big relative surprise is in the new scene of military start-upsyoung companies focused on surveillance systems or weapons not always publicly detailed, that are raising hundreds of millions in financing and growing at a rate almost unthinkable a decade ago. The most striking case It’s Helsing.which makes armed drones and whose workforce has grown 18-fold in four years after evolving from an artificial intelligence software approach to hardware productiona leap that involves going from selling algorithms to build real objects with parts, assembly lines, logistics and maintenance. This movement is, in itself, a statement: European defense no longer wants to depend only on digital innovation, it wants to convert innovation in physical and deployable systemsand for that you need companies capable of manufacturing and scaling, not just programming. The State accelerates. From within the sector, the discourse is one of sustained takeoff. The BDSV employers’ association, in the voice of Hans Christoph Atzpodien, insists that growth will accelerate because Germany has streamlined processes purchase and has given more visibility on future demand, which allows capacity planning with less uncertainty. The phrase is almost industrially literal: now everything is placed so that large orders “arrive at the doors” of manufacturers. If you want and how do we countthe scenario describes a change of era: for years Europe talked about spending more on defense, but it did so with administrative slowness, political doubts and eternal programs; now the feeling is that the system is being reconfigured to buy and produce urgently, because the threat is perceived to be close and the margin for improvisation has been exhausted. The great temptation: “steal” the car. … Read more

Europe has experienced its cleanest electric Christmas. The problem is what comes next

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Europe has just said goodbye to the “cleanest” Christmas in its recent history in electrical terms, but the sector’s toast has been bittersweet. While families celebrated the holidays with electricity prices at a minimum, in the offices of regulators and analysis centers a very different scenario was already being drawn for the near future. We have the sun, we have the wind and we have broken production records, but the system shows signs of exhaustion. The success of this Christmas is, in reality, a reminder of the paradox that the continent is experiencing: we have never produced so much clean energy and, yet, the specter of gas, the saturation of the networks and an imminent rise in regulated costs threaten to spoil the party from 2026. The milestones of December. The fourth week of December 2025 will be recorded as an oasis of low prices. According to data from AleaSoft Energy Forecastingthe prices of the main European electricity markets fell significantly, with weekly averages below €85/MWh. In the Iberian Peninsula, the MIBEL market led this trend with a drop of 20%, the largest percentage decrease on the continent. This phenomenon, dubbed by analysts as the “Christmas effect”, is due to the combination of lower demand due to the festive break and a massive increase in wind and solar production, which put downward pressure on prices across almost the entire continent. The deployment of clean energies. As the report detailssolar photovoltaic production increased by 48% in Portugal and 21% in Spain during the week of December 22. This push was not exclusive to the peninsula: Germany, Italy and France set new historical highs for photovoltaic production for a day in December (Germany generated 87 GWh on the 25th). For its part, wind production maintained its upward trend, rising by 80% in Italy and 21% in Spain. According to the monthly report of OMIEthis force of the wind had already been brewing since November, the month in which wind energy reached a market share of 39.7% in the Spanish system. Abundance vs. rigidity. Despite these records, the transition faces critical obstacles: the disconnection between generation and the capacity to absorb it. According to AleaSoft forecastsAlthough solar production continues to grow, the European grid shows signs of saturation as demand falls. The technical problem is that, at times of maximum solar production and low demand, the system has nowhere to store the surplus. This forces prices collapse non-structurallywhich in the long term puts the profitability of new investments in check. Furthermore, added to this is a fiscal anomaly since in much of Europe, electricity is still burdened with tolls and taxes that make it up to three times more expensive than gas for the end user, slowing down the adoption of efficient technologies. like heat pumps. The Spanish case: the danger of bottlenecks. In Spain, this situation is especially delicate. The country has converted in a “case study on the dangers of saturation.” The lack of investment in networks (only 30 cents for every euro invested in renewables) has caused the curtailment —clean energy that is wasted because the grid cannot transport it—has tripled. The example most critical is Asturias. The network in the central Asturian area is at the technical limit; No more storage projects or new industry can be connected because the cables and transformers cannot support any more load. Furthermore, to avoid blackouts, Red Eléctrica operates in “reinforced mode”activating expensive gas plants to stabilize the tension, an extra cost that ends up in the citizens’ bill. A structural January slope. This Christmas’s price relief could be temporary. AleaSoft Energy Forecasting warns that future of CO2 have reached their highest closing prices since October 2024 (above €88/t), and TTF gas remains stressed due to low temperatures and European reserves below 65%. And in Spain we have to add the regulatory horizon of 2026. As we have detailedthe largest simultaneous increase in fixed costs in years is expected: transport tolls will rise by 12.1% and government charges by 10.5%. There is a real risk of returning to the tariff deficit if electricity demand does not grow as much as the Government expects, which would generate new structural debt in the system. The challenge of not dying of success. The European energy transition has shown that it can expel fossil fuels in certain days. However, this triumph has collided with an insurmountable physical reality: obsolete networks and a cost structure that still penalizes electricity. Christmas 2025 has given us a green market, but the shadow of 2026 reminds us that it is not enough to fill the landscape with mirrors and windmills. Without a real commitment to batteries, a modernization of cables and a reform of regulated costs, the abundance of clean energy will remain a mirage that fades just before reaching our pockets. Image | freepik Xataka | 2026 has not yet started but it has already managed to produce the first bad news: the light goes up

The most experienced developers hoped to improve their productivity with AI. A study showed just the opposite

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What happens when you give an advanced artificial intelligence platform to a group of expert developers and ask them to work on tasks that they know in detail? The logical thing would be to wait a productivity jump, a great combination between experience human and technological assistance. The tools are there, the flows are learned, the learning curve is not an obstacle. But it was not so. What happened even surprised the authors of the study, according to Reuters: AI did not improve the results. He got them worse. And he did it in such a subtle way that not even the developers themselves realized. The report does not talk about critical failures or serious mistakes, but the effect was clear: the work became slower. Slower than it would have been without artificial intelligence in between. More does not always mean more productivity Before starting, everyone agreed on something: using artificial intelligence was going to save them time. In fact, they estimated that their tasks would finish 24 % faster. It was a reasonable expectation, based on their experience and how these tools were presented. And when they ended, they were still convinced of having achieved it: their estimate was that They had been 20 % faster. In his own words, AI had allowed them to advance without blockages, without interruptions, with a more agile workflow. But not. Actually, they had taken longer. A lot more. The general average of the group was a 19 % increase in total time during the test carried out by Metr. It is not a minor difference. And it is even more striking if one takes into account that we talk about tasks that they themselves had defined as relevant, useful and realistic: bugs correction, new functionalities, refactors. They were not exercises designed to test the AI, but real work, of the one that is done every day in any mature project. The difference was so great that he left even words even to those responsible for the study. The developers were not novice or learning on the fly. They had been working on those same projects for years, They knew the repositories in detailThey knew what was behind each file and each function. They were in their field. And, yet, the tools of AI did not facilitate work. They complicated it. Part of the explanation is how these platforms work. The suggestions they offered were not entirely incorrect, but imprecise. They were often well aimed, but required adjustments. And those adjustments, instead of saving time, elongated it. Check, correct, check. Start over. What promised to be an aid became a more intermediate process: an additional layer between thought and the solution. The feeling of fluidity was misleading. They started with a base, yes, but that base rarely served as is. You had to crumble itunderstand what the model had wanted to say, compare with what already existed and rebuild what is necessary. As if each suggestion came with an invisible asterisk. A non -valid line of default code. The illusion of progress faster was held until the time came to compile, try or make a serious review of the code generated. And yet, many of the participants continue to use those same tools in their day to day. Not because they save them time, but because they do the most bearable job. In the study they mainly used cursor, a platform that integrates advanced language models such as Claude 3.5 and 3.7 Sonnetand that allows writing, completing and reviewing code directly from the development environment. Cursor does not do everything for you, but he accompanies you. That company, even when it is not entirely efficient, can make programming less exhausting. The AI ​​converts the effort to program in something more similar to being an orchestra director that to build everything from scratch with a solid knowledge base. We are already seeing it with the phenomenon Vibe Coding. In the midst of this scenario we have seen companies They cut development equipment for the possibilities offered by AI, although Some have had returned on their steps. AI is a valuable tool, but it doesn’t help everyone equally. Images | Global UI UX Design Agency procreator | Nubelson Fernandes | Cursor In Xataka | Nvidia reached 4 billion dollars of capitalization for one reason: its privileged position in the AI ​​boom

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