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Spain is full of cables that “don’t belong to anyone”

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The Los Gallardos fire, in Almería, is already the deadliest of the century in Spain: a dozen dead, some 6,600 hectares and 1,405 evicted. Many of the victims They appeared inside their carstrapped on a dead end road. And while the Civil Guard works to identify everyone and the INFOCA teams work to completely put out the fire, the public debate becomes increasingly intense. There will be many topics to analyze, but there is one in particular whose importance will be capital: the one that started it all, the cable that could have turned it all on. The cable theory. Almost from the first moment, the theory that a broken electricity cable could be the cause of the tragedy spread like wildfire. At dawn on Friday, Endesa sent a technical team and concluded that the cable was not its own. RedEléctrica was quick to add that it was not part of its transportation network either. As they explained, it would be a private low voltage connection which served an abandoned restaurant (bar Anita) decommissioned since 2009. According to the technicians, in fact, the cable should not have tension. And, of course, without tension there are no sparks. That The judicial experts have already made it clear: If there is no electrical charge circulating through the copper, it is physically impossible for the fires to originate there as described. This has opened the debate: was it really “without tension” as it appears in Endesa’s files or was it being used (“underhand”) to supply scattered farmhouses? We still don’t know, but (beyond the specific case of Los Gallardos) the interesting thing is the question it raises: how many cables like these are loose in Spain? What exactly happens with the cables? The first thing is to realize that we are facing a serious problem. And not exactly because the fraction of fires caused by cables are many, but because they tend to be very destructive. In California, for example, the cables are behind approximately half of the most destructive fires in its history despite causing less than 10% of ignitions. In Spain we do not have clear statistics, but some studies say that the figures are around the same percentages: in Aragon the power lines caused this year around 10% of accidental firesand WWF reports already place them among the causes of large fires. And no one does anything? Well, after the Guadalajara fires of 2005, the State forced the network owners to keep the margins of your lines clear and review them from time to time. However, the case of Los Gallardos highlights something about which we have reflected little: there are many lines that, on a practical level, belong to no one. That is the big problem: An old connection to a ruin, without maintenance and perhaps with informal current, can be a huge source of problems. And now what? Once responsibilities are resolved, there will be more pressure to monitor private power lines in forest areas (something that is frequently debated in California). But the solutions are always the same: finance prevention It is boring and, for this reason, we are spending 400 million a year in Spain when it would take ten or fifteen times more. Image | Dina Lydia In Xataka | The fire in Los Gallardos (Almería) reminds us of the car trap: it is not a shelter, it is a lethal oven

In 1611 Brueghel the Elder painted a baroque painting full of birds and bats. Without knowing it, he was 400 years ahead of modern science

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The god Apollo crosses the firmament aboard his chariot drawn by steeds, the muse Urania shows us an armillary sphere while resting on a cloud and, in the distance, we see a cloudy sky full of birds. The painting ‘Air’, painted in the 17th century by Jan Brueghel the Elder It shows a mythological scene that served the artist to make clear his ability with brushes and colors. Now a group of Spanish researchers has confirmed which is something more: a treatise on zoology that was 400 years ahead of modern science. It turns out that Brueghel the Elder was also a skilled chiropterologist. The value of details. Beyond its composition or technical quality, something must be recognized in ‘Aire’, a allegorical painting painted around 1611 by Jan Brueghel the Elder and preserved in the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon: it is full of details. It is something that is verified with the naked eye but is (re)confirmed by observing the study of detail published by the French institution. In it we see, in addition to Urania, the central figure of the painting, an enormous number of birds. The experts have counted 60 different species. There are specimens of ostrich, turkeys, swans, flamingos, cranes, owls, chickens… and a vast etcetera of winged creatures that either rest perched on the ground or branches or cross the sky. The latter also include three species of bats, including at least one Nyctalus lasiopterus or “giant noctule”, a large bat that can reach 46 cm wingspan. Much more than art. For the vast majority of people, pieces like ‘Aire’ are basically works of art. There are, however, those who have seen something more in them: valuable (and above all graphic) clues to study the fauna of centuries ago. That is the case of Pedro Romero-Vidalan ecologist at the Doñana Biological Station (EBD), who embarked on a project to identify animals in historical paintings. When he came to Brueghel the Elder’s 1611 work, he noticed a detail that activated his instinct: “I had never seen a similar scene in any of the many paintings I had examined.” admits to ScienceNews. But what the hell is that? What caught Romero-Vidal’s attention was a detail located in the upper right margin of the painting, almost at the edge of the composition. There the artist depicted a large bat flying away from the rest of the figures. The creature that came out of the brushes of Brueghel the Elder has been there, clearly visible, since the 17th century, but when the CSIC experts analyzed it they realized something: It doesn’t fly alone. In its jaws it carries a small bird. “Pedro saw the bats and it seemed that one of them was a noctule carrying a bird in its mouth,” explains to elDiario Miguel Clavero, researcher at the Doñana Biological Station and one of the authors who sign the article (just published in PNAS) in which they report their discovery. To understand its scope, one fact must be taken into account: science did not document until well into the 21st century how noctules hunt passerine birds and are able to devour them while they fly, which makes Brueghel the Elder ahead of his time. four centuries before. As recognize EBD-CSIC itself, the painting by Brueghel the Elder reveals that “the hunting of passerine birds by nocturnal bats was already known in the 17th century, 400 years before science was able to demonstrate it.” Zoologists obtained the first “solid evidence” that Nyctalus lasiopterus They fed on small passing birds several decades ago, observing their feces. However, we had to wait until 2025 to obtain a definitive study on its behavior. That confirmation did not arrive until October and it also did so at the hands of a scientific team led by the EBD-CSCI. “He managed to demonstrate that the great noctule, the largest bat in Europe, could hunt and consume birds in mid-flight,” points out the CSICwhich recalls that researchers captured for the first time the sound of a specimen preying on a European robin during flight in Doñana. “The first direct evidence of this behavior.” Or so they believed until someone noticed a painting from 1611. Pioneering scientist… with nuances. Of course, it is one thing to capture a scene observed in nature with brushes and another, very different, to document animal behavior with 100% scientific criteria. In fact, the CSIC itself clarifies that what Brueghel the Elder shows in his painting “does not exactly coincide” with what we know today about these animals and their strategies. “Carrying it in its mouth like a raptor is unfeasible. Bats at night are guided by sound and make calls,” Elena Tena clarifies to elDiarioone of the scientists who studied this habit. “To be realistic, the bat would be holding the bird with its hind legs and bringing them forward toward its mouth.” In any case, this does not detract from the painter’s merit or from the fact (confirmed by the CSIC) that art galleries can be valuable sources for zoologists. Images | Wikipedia and EBD-CSIC In Xataka | The mere existence of donkeys has been a mystery of natural history for decades. One we have solved

Spain promised them happiness with its airports increasingly full of tourists. Until someone calculated how it affects rents

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Of the 96.8 million of foreign tourists that Spain received last year, 80.5 million, something more than 83%they arrived through airports. The plane is not only the main entry route for foreign visitors (well above, for example, the road or ports), it also shows a clear growth trend and has led several terminals to arise its expansion to gain capacity and (simply) do not collapse due to the tourist boom. Against this backdrop, someone has asked themselves a question:What impact does it have? that avalanche of ‘air’ visitors in the Spanish real estate market? Tourists and real estate agencies? That tourism influences the residential market, encouraging the flight from housing to vacation rentals and raising prices is not no news. There are studies that have already thoroughly calibrated the phenomenon. What is curious is what the New Economics Foundation (NEF) has done in a report commissioned by Transport & Environment (T&E), an organization to which it belongs Ecologists in Action: Its technicians have examined how the increase in ‘air tourism’ is influencing housing rentals and, above all, whether we can expect a price increase in the short term. And what have they found out? That there is a direct connection. One, by the way, not at all favorable for the tenants. After analyzing “the effects of air tourism” on the real estate markets of the 12 main economies in Europe and calculating the evolution of prices in the medium term, for the period 2019-2031, NEF technicians have reached a worrying conclusion: the increase in visitors arriving in Europe through airports will affect the pockets of tenants. “We show a transfer of wealth whereby landlords benefit at the expense of tenants, as annual rents in some of Europe’s largest tourist economies are projected to rise by more than €150 a year over the next five years,” points out NEFand warns: “These increases, which represent national average increases, will be concentrated in the main tourist destinations and will mainly affect low-income households.” Can it go further? Yes. That is the general photo. The report commissioned by T&E provides other data that is just as or even more curious. For example, if we focus on the largest European economies dependent on tourism, the impact between now and 2031 will be greater: in Greece the annual increase in rental prices will amount to €163, in Portugal to €193, in Spain to €217 and in Ireland (the worst stop) to €251. In the specific case of Spain, NEF estimates that we will face an “extra increase of 1.6%” annually over the next five years, between 2026 and 2031. If we talk about rents, the average increase is 217 euros. In the case of the average price of housing, the study speaks of 3,500 euros. “Taken together, this would mean an aggregate annual increase in the rental burden of 648 million euros for landlords located in Spain. In the same period, the increase in tourist arrivals by air is projected at 11.8%,” explains. There is another key: these figures show national averages, so the phenomenon may worsen in the most touristy regions. More climbs on the islands? The T&E figures give food for thought. After recalling that there are certain parts of Europe where “local reactions” against tourism are taking place, such as the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, Crete and Madeira, T&E points out that these areas are also the most exposed to the arrival of air travelers. There, in the tourist centers, the report warns“tourism can reduce the supply of residential housing by shifting it towards tourist rentals, directing new promotions to visitors or non-resident buyers and making it difficult for local households to move or access a first home.” “We cannot separate the protests against tourism that occur in the streets from the increase in flights above our heads. Trying to manage tourist overcrowding while expanding the airports of Dublin, Barcelona or Lisbon is a losing battle,” claims Bosco Serrano, from T&E Spain. For reference, in the Balearic Islands there are 9.2 arrivals of foreign tourists per resident, the eighth highest value of the European regions. In the Canary Islands they are 4.9 and in Catalonia 2.0. The average for the EU as a whole is just 0.9. What are the causes? For T&E the key is in the “uncontrolled growth of tourism”, driven by the increase in supply, investment in new infrastructure and (in general) the rebound in airport traffic. It’s no surprise. In 2025 Aena registered a record data of passengers. It is important to take into account in any case that the flow of visitors that move the airports may “exacerbate” the crisis of rent (something to be expected if we take into account that many tourists from northern Europe with greater purchasing power fly to Spain), but the reality is that there are other factors that influence the evolution of housing prices. And not all of them depend on tourism. What else comes into play? The imbalance between supply and demand, the fact that new housing is built at much less speed from which new homes are created, the increase in price of materials, the concentration of demand in certain points or the attractiveness that apartments have gained as an investment asset also explain the increase in rents. None of these factors depend on tourism. In fact, there are those who already appreciate signs of a “prick” in vacation rentals, with a loss of interest on the part of investors. Does it only affect housing? No. The report analyzes the impact of tourism in other areas, such as labor or business investment. Regarding the first point, T&E warns that the arrival of more visitors on board airplanes does not always lead to better salaries for workers in the sector. “Tourism employment does not necessarily equate to an improvement in well-being. In 2023, hospitality represented 10% of all hours worked in Spain, but only 5% of the national gross added value,” warns the organization. That tourist rentals rise can … Read more

The fourth highest-grossing Spanish film in history lands on Netflix full of political incorrectness

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28 years ago, Santiago Segura shot the first film in the highest-grossing saga in the history of Spanish cinema in eight weeks and with 1.7 million euros. Now, the sixth part of the series, ‘Torrente President’lands on Netflix with a history of records that speaks for itself: the best first weekend of a Spanish film in the last 15 years, more than 3.7 million spectators in cinemas, the fourth highest grossing of a Spanish film of all time, and a budget that Segura estimated at just under six million euros. Twelve years after ‘Torrente 5: Operation Eurovegas’, José Luis Torrente, the former fascist and Atleti police officer, returns, always convinced that Spain is going through its most critical moment and that only he can save national dignity. This time he discovers that politics may be his best opportunity to thrive and after a series of entanglements he ends up leading the populist NOX party thanks to his unmistakable and demagogic style, so similar to current political reality. It was clear that Spain was thirsty for Torrente, and Segura, who can be accused of many things but not of not having a commercial nose, has been able to take advantage of a very specific social moment to return Torrente to the billboards. Right now, ‘Torrente, Presidente’ has already grossed more than half of all Spanish cinema released in 2026, and will surely become one of the most viewed films of the moment on Netflix, which helped co-finance the production and which has the rest of the saga exclusively in its catalog. The notable thing about all this is that ‘Torrente Presidente’ is not a rarity for Segura’s commercial career. Beyond the fact that the series has already raised more than one hundred million euros, Bowfinger International Pictures is behind the film, the production company directed by Segura together with María Luisa Gutiérrez. The company has more than forty titles and a history that includes ‘The Infiltrator’ (Goya for Best Film) and the sagas ‘Padre no hay más que uno’ and ‘La familia Benetón’. Between 2025 and 2026, its productions accounted for 30% of the Spanish box office. And between its traditional production agreement with Atresmedia and now the entry of Netflix into the company’s finances, the production company has a muscle with little to envy of much larger traditional production companies. In Xataka | Today on Disney+, the film that, despite exceeding one billion at the box office, has left the continuity of its franchise up in the air

While the heat ‘Spanishizes’ Europe at full speed, Spain begins to ask itself a key question: whether it will have to ‘saharize’ itself

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During recent summers, as heat waves have spread their tentacles across the continent, we Spaniards have seen ourselves vindicated. At last, Germany discovered the napFrance would fall in love with the blinds and England would have to admit that dining late has its benefits. It was seen, let’s face it, as a cultural victory. We did not have the other side of the coin: that climate change is a treacherous animal and, while Europe flirts with our habits, customs and solutions, we are being forced to abandon them. The question was not whether we will manage to ‘Spanishize’ Europe; It was whether we are going to have to ‘saharize’ Spain. What we are doing is not enough… In the midst of a heat wave, it becomes evident that many of the things we have been doing no longer work. But the truth is that the heat is no longer “an isolated episode.” According to the State of the Climate of Spain 2025 According to AEMET, the average temperature has risen 1.75 °C since 1961. In 2025, 25 records were broken for warm days and none for cold days (when one would expect five of each) and, as far as we know, summer lengthens by about nine days per decade. The consequences have changed radically and can be seen with a single piece of information: the The need for refrigeration in Spain has multiplied by 2.6 between 1982 and 2022. In this sense, Royal Decree-Law 4/2023 has already certified the obvious: the Spanish working day has to be legally subordinated to the thermometer and to the AEMET notices. In Xataka Experts agree that opening windows at night and closing them during the day is no longer the best strategy against heat. …and, in fact, we are stopping doing many things. The nap is a good example: only 16% do it daily and the 60% of Spaniards never sleep. It is due to the social evolution of the labor market, it is true; but also because at certain temperatures, the nap is no longer restorative and we can only turn on the air conditioning. When talking about ‘Saharanization’ there is a controversial component, of course; but there is also a grain of truth. There is extremely striking thingsfor an average Spaniard (like drinking hot drinks because they help regulate body temperature more efficiently than cold drinks) that make all the sense in the world in a very hot climate. And it is reasonable to think that there are many of those things that we will tend to adopt. It has always been said that Islamic culture tended to conceive houses ‘inwards’ and gave a lot of weight to internal domestic life, but do we really believe that it is a free decision and not a cultural adaptation to a very warm environment? {“videoId”:”x8006fc”,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”How to sleep when it’s very hot and you don’t have air conditioning”, “tag”:””, “duration”:”217″} There is more, much more. Because the signs are there. Cities are reacting: Barcelona has gone from 197 climate shelters in 2021 to more than 500 this summerwith coverage of 99% of the population within less than ten minutes walk; Bilbao, for its part, has around 131 spaces. Leisure also changes and Summer bookings to Norway up 37% while the north of the peninsula gains tourists. That is, it is no longer whether we change “habits, customs and solutions” but how we do it. We should talk more about this because that is where a good part of our near future lies. Image | Sam Williams In Xataka |ENT doctors agree: “Sleeping with air conditioning forces the nose to work excessively” (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news While the heat ‘Spanishizes’ Europe at full speed, Spain begins to ask itself a key question: whether it will have to ‘saharize’ itself was originally published in Xataka by Javier Jimenez .

“It is very difficult for a worker to reach 67 years of age in full capacity”

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The vast majority of employees over 63 have something in common: they can’t wait to retire. However, with each passing year, retirement seems a little further away. In reality, it is not a perception, but it’s a reality which has been occurring since 2011, when the regulations were approved that delay the retirement age by a few months each year. Alfonso Muñoz Cuenca, Social Security official specialized in pensions, counted from her YouTube channel the case of an acquaintance who was 65 years old and had 25 years of contributions who couldn’t wait to retire. For the expert, this feeling is the symptom of a problem that is repeated more and more as they harden retirement requirements: There are people who reach the final stretch of their working life without the real ability to sustain the pace required of them. Age increases, but the body does not always accompany. As and as highlighted Trendsthe Social Security reform of 2011 established in the Law 27/2011 established the progressive delay of the retirement age, while the requirements to access it were also increased. In 2026, only those people who can prove a minimum of 38 years and 3 months of contributions will be able to retire at age 65. Whoever has not paid for that time will have to wait until the 66 years and 10 months to retire. The current pension system was designed in a very different social and health context, in which workers lived an average of seven years after retiring. According to INE data Today life expectancy exceeds 20 years on average after retiring. However, the fact that life expectancy is longer does not mean that the most veterans reach the end of their working life in full physical condition to meet the demands of the position, which makes the latter especially hard for them. Burnout does not always have a diagnosis. Muñoz Cuenca summarizes it in his video, stating that “there are workers who can barely reach the age of 67 standing on a scaffold, or doing endless shifts in a hospital without rest.” The problem is that this wear and tear rarely appears in a medical report. There is no declared disability, but rather accumulated fatigue, loss of rhythm and a body that no longer responds the same who did it when he was 40 or 50 years old. The burnout data in Spain collected by Unobravo confirm that 55% have suffered total exhaustion at some point. The health sector and care professions are those most affected by this situationwith sectors with chronic staff shortages and high workloads. He UGT report of 2025 He adds that job insecurity increases the probability of developing depression by 61%. The exhaustion of employees in the last years of their working career that Muñoz Cuenca describes has, apparently, a lot of statistical support. The problem of the years listed. In his video, the expert comments on the case of a 65 and a half year old worker who wants to retire, but only accumulates 25 years of contributions, which closes the doors to early retirement. Just to have the chance to access early retirement On a voluntary basis, you need to have contributed for at least 35 years. Whoever does not reach those figures has few options. Muñoz Account says that, after a career marked by the precariousness of temporary contracts, the years dedicated to caring for her children, not adding these minimums is more common than it seems. He Labor Market Report for those over 45 in 2026 Prepared by the Occupations Observatory, there are more than eleven million people over 45 years of age employed or affiliated with Social Security, more than half of the total. Many arrived late to the labor market or have accumulated careers with many bumps, which makes them serious candidates for not meeting the minimum requirements to access retirement at age 65. Partial retirement as an escape valve. Muñoz Cuenca proposes what he calls “work slowdown”: reducing the workload progressively as the end of active life approaches. Not as a new right, but as a change of mentality in companies to facilitate generational change. The legal tool already exists in the form of partial retirement with relief contract. From 2025, you can apply up to three years before the ordinary age, with a minimum of 33 years of contributions. This mechanism allows the employee’s working hours to be reduced by between 25% and 75%, and collect part of the pension, while the company hires someone to cover the remaining hours and train them to take their place when retirement is final. However, far from being the norm, this type of progressive retirements They are the exception since not all companies are obliged to accept it, so the employee has no choice but to force the machine beyond its capabilities, resulting in an increase of 43% in the number of leave among employees between 55 and 65 years old. Gina Aran, human resources consultant, confirmed in an interview for The Vanguard that “retirement should be one’s own choice, made judiciously, taking into account the state of health, and insists that it should not be something abrupt and obligatory.” In Xataka | Social Security has published the data on sick leave in 2024 and we have bad news: we have broken a record Image | Unsplash (Sweet Life)

A bank convinced people in a poor town in the US to spend their savings. Now it’s full of millionaires

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Stories of lucky breaks and millionaires there are manybut they almost always have a common denominator: we speak in singular. That is why what happened in a small town in Florida whose families were going through serious difficulties to get ahead is so special. Even today, the enclave continues to seem like a nondescript and inhospitable town. But don’t be fooled, a large number of millionaires still live there among the people. And all thanks to Coca-Cola. Quincy and the banker. This is the name of the town in one of the most fascinating stories of the United States economy. There, in the midst of the Great Depression of the 1920s and 1930s and with part of the census in serious difficulties, a figure appears who was going to change everyone’s lives. Your name: Pat Munroean astute banker, a businessman who focused on a key detail to convince all citizens. No matter how impoverished they were in Quincy or how dire the financial situation of the families, the man observed that almost religiously, people spent every penny on a nice ice-cold glass of Coca-Cola. What if that devotion turned it into a stroke of luck? Coca-Cola in a bag. The sugar giant It went public in 1919 at $40 a share.but a conflict with the sugar industry and its bottlers caused a 50% drop shortly after, when it reached $19 per share. Put another way, there was a time in history when Coca-Cola was trading for less than cash in the bank and its stock was extremely cheap. And among others, Munroe was at the right time. The bargain of the century. What did he do? Invest. The man began to acquire Coca-Cola shares as if there were no tomorrow. However, he did not do it alone. He encouraged all his acquaintances and friends of acquaintances in town to buy a stake in the company. Focusing on bottom line profits and brand power, Pat Munroe kept buying and buying. And as he did so he kept telling everyone in Quincy who would listen to him to buy too. He took advantage of the trust and respect the community had for him and went on a crusade to get anyone who could to get on the Coca-Cola train. Loans for shares. The man was so sure of his success that every time a person went to his bank to ask for a loan, encouraged him to accept another in exchange for shares. Farmers, shopkeepers, teachers: absolutely anyone who could spend money was tempted by Munroe. For the banker, the fact that Coca-Cola shares were at $19 each was an opportunity that no one in the city should escape. That is why he never tired of urging people to buy and, almost as important, to remain firm in the decision regardless of the market fluctuations that occurred in the short term. The ball Finally, the banker’s observations turned out to be a historic success. Quincy, an eminently agricultural city, not only stayed afloat in difficult times thanks to Coca-Cola dividends, brought a wealth that is still studied in universities. In fact, the enclave became the richest city per capita in the entire United States for a time, and dozens of its inhabitants were nicknamed “the secret Coca-Cola millionaires.” People who trusted Munroe’s good eye and invested all their money (and what they didn’t have), and who amassed enormous fortunes with those first shares, which they then passed down from generation to generation, turning them into the eponymous Coca-Cola millionaires, ones who, effectively, established entire dynasties of financial prosperity that transcended generations. How much are we talking about? It is difficult to speak in total terms, but to give us an idea of ​​the money, in 2013 it was made a study evaluating what happened in Quincy. The results showed that a single share with reinvested dividends was worth $10,000,000. $270,000 in pre-tax cash dividends would be sent to the owner by sending a check for approximately $67,500 in March, June, September and November of each year. Thus, if the great-grandmother and the great-grandfather on duty had acquired a round lot of 100 shares for between $1,900 and $4,000, depending on the purchase price, they would have more than a billion dollars, excluding the effects of estate taxes. By the way, the current value is considerably higher, since the stock has more than doubled its price since then and the quarterly dividend now exceeds $0.53 per share. Money for crisis. That investment has been a lifesaver every time a tough time approaches. When the local economy was supported by coca and the crisis arrived, tail dividends. In fact, these assets have supported the city through every recession since. When crops failed, it was Coca-Cola money that kept people employed. When the national economy collapsed, it was Coca-Cola’s cash that allowed people to stay in their homes. When times were good and Coca-Cola was cheap, they bought more shares. Quincy today. It is a unique story, because it is unusual. Every family that amassed a fortune then passed it on to their children and grandchildren, in some cases through direct donations and in others through the use of trust funds. Even the bank where it all started has a Coca-Cola on display and, according to data from the early 2010s, a staggering 65% of trust assets under management were still invested in Coca-Cola stock. Quincy’s appearance today is not much different from the Great Depression era. It remains a quiet and eminently agricultural city with a population around to 7,000 inhabitants. But don’t let your eyes fool you, some of the grandchildren whose families built an empire, that of the secret Coca-Cola millionaires, still walk through those streets. A version of this article was published in July 2025 Image | PXHere, Ebyabe, PXHere In Xataka | Jeff Bezos asked his parents for their life savings to found Amazon. They only asked him one question: “What is the Internet? In Xataka | Madrid may … Read more

“Investing in the development of full electric cars would be an expensive hobby”

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something like It happened to Luca Cordero di Montezemolo It has happened to Stephan Winkelmann, CEO of Lamborghini. He did not want to say but he said when asked about the new Ferrari Luce and all the controversy that has surrounded the Italian company’s first all-electric launch. And Lamborghini, unlike those from Maranello, canceled its all-electric project a long time ago. And both positions have their reason for being. “The right way”. It is the one they have taken at Lamborghini, according to Stephan Winkelmann. Those three words are part of the answers he has given to CNBC in relation to the new Ferrari Luce. Although Winkelmann assures that “each brand, each company has to decide for itself,” he has not hesitated to defend his position. And the head of Lamborghini considers that canceling its first fully electric car has been “the right path.” According to their internal reports, they claim that interest in a completely electric car from Lamborghini had slowed down and that is why they decided to stay with plug-in hybridization. “An expensive hobby”. This is how resounding Winkelmann himself was a few months ago when he confirmed that the project for Lamborghini’s first electric car had been cancelled: Investing heavily in the development of full electric vehicles when the market and customer base are not ready would be an expensive and financially irresponsible hobby towards shareholders, customers and towards our employees and their families. The words were collected by media such as Motorpassion and they emphasize the purchase intentions of Lamborghini customers, who They still prefer the company’s V8 and V12 engines. The company, however, has used its research on the electric car to carry out the Lamborghini Revueltoits first plug-in hybrid. Because?. As we told you during our introduction to the Lamborghini Revueltothe company was always very clear that electricity had to be a means to increase the sensations on board and improve dynamics, not aiming for a more language ecofriendly. This decision, like that of canceling its first electric car, has its own internal logic within a company like Lamborghini, which clearly opts for hypermuscular and hypermasculine cars where sportiness is almost its only reason for being. The only concession they have made is the Lamborghini Urus and its creation falls within the Volkswagen Group’s logic of cost utilization. a lot of sense. If the approach proposed by Lamborghini was that of an electric supercar, the truth is that there does not seem to be a market for this type of car. Mate Rimac, CEO of Rimac and creator of, perhaps, the sportiest electric car in the world, complained that political pressures to jump to electric cars They were precisely slowing down the potential sales of their electric cars. Beyond the fact that the customer may miss the sound of a V12 engine and the feel of a gearbox, the truth is that if the average driver is forced to skip the electric car, driving a combustion supercar will be even more elitist. It is very likely that more electric supercars will arrive but right now the context is against them. The public for this type of car seems to be revolting against the regulations that, supposedly, force them to jump to electric cars. By pure physics, the electric car needs to be much heavier than a combustion car right now. And finally, obviously lacks that sensory part which can only be associated with the sound and smell of a combustion engine. And the Ferrari Luce? It is logical that Lamborghini defends its position and claims that its customers are not looking for an electric car, but the public profile is different between Lamborghini and Ferrari. Or, what is certain, Ferrari is trying to catch a different audience. The Ferrari Luce is not an electric supercar, it is not an aggressive and aerodynamic sculpture on wheels as has been the norm in its history. It is a car designed to send the message that whoever has it is up to date and embraces innovation and groundbreaking products. Since we saw the interior of the car it is something that seems more than evident. The fact that the car was shown in a light blue color and without a trace of moving videos underlines that we are looking at the launch of a car as a fashion accessory for walking comfortably through the center of any city without the discomforts typical of a supercar. Click on the image to go to the original tweet A little pull. Although Stephan Winkelmann says he does not mean to say, the truth is that he says a lot with his response. Despite not wanting to get into controversy, his defense that Lamborghini customers do not opt ​​for this type of car is a way to distinguish the two types of customers. A reaffirmation of Lamborghini’s identity. It adds up Lamborghini’s social media post coinciding with the launch of the Luce, which reads “proud to keep you dreaming” or “proud to keep your dreams” and four attached images of a Lamborghini Revuelto in a tone of blue very similar to that used by Ferrari for the presentation of its Luce. Photos | Lamborghini In Xataka | If the Ferrari Luce breaks with the entire history of Ferrari it is for a very simple reason: new rich

This is how going to bed with a full stomach affects sleep

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Closing the computer late, shuffling home and sitting down to dinner at ten at night. For us it is a picture of customs; For the rest of Europe, an incomprehensible eccentricity. However, the shock is not only cultural but also biological. Although our social “normality” dictates that dinner is served after dark, our body tells a very different story. Evolutionarily, our body is not designed to digest large amounts of food when the sun has set. It’s not just about counting the calories we put on the plate; The real problem, the one that acts as a real time bomb for our health, is what the clock ticks when we put the fork in our mouth. Eating dinner late is altering our metabolism, sabotaging our quality of sleep and, silently, increasing our cardiovascular risk. Your pancreas doesn’t know that in Spain they have late dinners. To understand this phenomenon, we must look to the chrononutritionan emerging field of study investigating the close relationship between food intake and circadian rhythms. Our body works like an orchestra perfectly synchronized by light and darkness. By eating dinner at odd hours we are desynchronizing “peripheral watches” of vital cells located in the pancreas or liver. Meal timing acts as a critical signal for these peripheral biological clocks, which can modulate the quality of our sleep by regulating the rhythm of our central clock. The immediate consequence is a drastic worsening of glucose tolerance and insulin secretion. When we really should be sleeping. Here the body comes into conflict. On the one hand, there is a large release of cortisol (the well-known stress hormone) and, on the other, the release of melatonin is delayed, which is the master key to falling asleep. In fact, large-scale data support this: comprehensive analyzes of chrononutrition patterns reveal that later meal times—including the first meal, middle meal, and last meal of the day—as well as greater number of meals, are directly associated with higher scores on the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), which translates into a worse rest. Added to this is a problem purely mechanical: A reduced time gap between the last meal and bedtime can lead to a prolonged sleep latency period, that is, we toss and turn more before falling asleep. And digesting while lying down is the perfect recipe for the appearance of gastric reflux, a discomfort that can ruin anyone’s night. You eat the same as your early-rising neighbor and you gain more weight. According to the study published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolismadults who eat dinner at 10:00 p.m. burn 10% less fat and suffer a 20% higher blood sugar spike than those who eat dinner at 6:00 p.m., even if both groups eat exactly the same and go to bed at the same time. Alexis Supan, dietician at the Cleveland Clinic, summed it up perfectly: “When you eat late at night you are going against your body’s circadian rhythm.” The natural limit should be marked by the beginning of melatonin secretion. The researcher Marta Garaulet, a world reference in chrononutrition, has already demonstrated that people who eat later at midday lose less weight than those who eat early, even when they consume the same calories, expend the same energy and sleep the same. The time alone makes the difference. The consequences of ignoring this limit go far beyond the scale. A study led by the institute ISGlobalbased on cohort NutriNet-Santé with more than 100,000 participants, concluded that dining after 9:00 p.m. It is associated with increased cardiovascular risk, especially impacting the risk of cerebrovascular disease in women. On an emotional level, a recent meta-analysis from 2025 details that eating late worsens the rhythms of key neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine, increasing the risk of depression. On top of that we hit the same clock twice. But there is a modern factor that makes this scenario worse: screens. Not only do we eat dinner late, but we do so under the beam of our cell phones. Light of any kind suppresses melatonin, but as you warn harvardthe blue night light does it in a much more powerful way, blocking it for twice as long as other lights and moving our circadian rhythms out of phase by up to three hours. Recent clinical studies have demonstrated that exposure to blue LED light significantly suppresses melatonin secretion after two hours of exposure and maintains this suppression over time. We have a late dinner and then look at our phones in bed: a combination that our biological clock simply cannot accommodate. Our children are headed towards the same error. The problem worsens when we look at the new generations. The magazine The Lancet has warned that Spain could be the fourth country in the world with the highest childhood obesity in 2050. The VALORNUT project of the Complutense University has shed light on this: Late dinners and very long “eating windows” in children translate into more improvised diets, with lower nutritional value and worse cholesterol profiles. Furthermore, 60% of these children sleep fewer hours. The experts’ recommendation it’s clear: concentrate all meals in a period of less than 12 hours. The solution is to adjust the clock. So when should we have dinner? The golden rule agreed upon by experts is to allow between three and four hours to pass between the last meal and the time of going to sleep. If we take the Spanish average of going to bed around 00:30, we should be finishing dinner, at the latest, at 21:00. Here it is important to qualify the context. We have been cushioning this metabolic blow in part for decades thanks to a cultural pillar: the Spanish Mediterranean diet tends to make dinner a much lighter meal than the midday meal, leaving the energy weight of the day in earlier hours. A late, heavy, ultra-processed dinner followed by a trip straight to bed is not the same as a light dinner with some physical activity before going to sleep. … Read more

Toyota has created the city of the future and it is full of AI and cameras that protect you. It’s also a privacy nightmare

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At the foot of Mount Fuji, Toyota he has been building a city for years entire designed from scratch to test their future inventions. It’s called Woven City, and it already has its first inhabitants. And although the city does not lack one bit of technology, living there also involves making certain concessions in terms of privacy. Below these lines we tell you all the details. Why does this exist? At CES 2020, then-Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda advertisement that the company was going to build a laboratory city on the land of a former factory in Susono, in the Japanese prefecture of Shizuoka. The idea was not to create just another corporate campus, but to build a real urban environment where engineers, researchers and residents would coexist and test advanced mobility, robotics, artificial intelligence and sustainability technologies. The project, developed under the subsidiary Woven by Toyota, has cost about 10 billion dollars, according to they count from Ars Technica, and its first inhabitants arrived just a few months ago. In detail. Woven City has, at the moment, about 100 hand-selected residents, who they internally call Weavers. They are Toyota employees and people chosen for their technological profile. They live in Japandi-style apartments (fusion between Nordic and Japanese) equipped with domestic robotics and health monitoring systems. The city is powered by rooftop solar panels and hydrogen fuel cells, and its streets are designed in three categories based on vehicle speed: expressways, personal mobility zones, and pedestrian-only areas. When completed, the total area will be about 294,000 square meters, although only about 10% of the planned space is operational right now. What is proven there. Residents act as beta testers for a diverse list of projects: from AI karaoke systems that choose songs based on mood to an air conditioning system capable of eliminating 95% of pollen from the environment, something relevant in a country where half of the population suffers from allergies. Delivery robots, tricycles or, as point the middle, the Guide Mobi, an autonomous vehicle that acts as a digital towboat to take cars out of the garage and take them to their owners without the driver having to move. According to they count From Ars Technica, 98% of residents have given permission for a robot with cameras to operate within their own homes. Here comes the problem. For all of this to work, Woven City is full of cameras. Many. According to the mediumyou could count up to eight cameras at a single intersection, and dozens more spread across the roofs of buildings, common spaces, and even the small cafeteria there. All that network of images feeds what Toyota calls the AI ​​Vision Engine, an artificial intelligence system designed to monitor, catalog and report on activity in the city. The system can identify people and follow them from camera to camera based on their clothing, without using facial recognition. They used it in a demo to detect potential thefts in a business. What Toyota says. The company says it has its own consent management system called Data Fabric, which allows residents to decide what data they share and what they don’t. “We allow Weavers to select what they want to share or not. Whether they don’t want to share anything or if they want to share everything is up to each individual,” explained John Absmeier, CTO of Woven City, told Ars Technica. The data, according to Toyota, is not sold to third parties. “At least for now,” they added in the media report. Between the lines. That 98% of the residents have accepted practically all the privacy conditions does not say as much about trust in Toyota as it does about the profile of the people who live there: they are selected technicians, who know perfectly well what they are agreeing to and who have come precisely to participate in the experiment. Kota Oishi, CEO of Woven City, recognized Japanese citizens, like Europeans, are especially sensitive to privacy and demand to know exactly what their data will be used for. The leap between this group of controlled volunteers and the implementation of similar technology in a real city with millions of ordinary people would be enormous, and questions about mass surveillance inevitable. The other big bet: a Own AI. While all this is happening on the streets, Toyota is working in parallel to not depend on the large technological giants in terms of artificial intelligence. Daisuke Toyoda, son of President Akio Toyoda and head of the Woven City project, counted on an interview in April to Automotive News that developing AI internally is key to protecting jobs and the company’s industrial knowledge. “If you only work with the biggest or best companies abroad, you run the risk of becoming a mere user,” he said. Toyota sees AI not as a tool to cut staff, but to digitize the knowledge of its best workers and raise the level of the rest. One of the most striking projects of this line is an AI clone of Akio Toyoda himself (even with his voice, his way of speaking and his philosophy) that is already used internally to train managers. And now what. Woven City is still in its infancy: only 10% built, 100 residents and many robots that “don’t do much yet,” according to counted the middle. The objective is reach 2,000 inhabitants when all phases are complete. Toyota does not expect it to be profitable in the short term; understands it as a long-term technological incubator to test its technology in more open, but controlled spaces. Cover image | toyota In Xataka | Chinese manufacturers no longer know what more innovations to incorporate into their cars, so they have added a toilet to one

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