Galician

After 40 years in the Galician sea, the radioactive drums are in a critical state of deterioration. The solution may be worse than letting it be

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“There is no life down there.” For decades it was almost a legend among activists and oceanographers: a giant landfill, with hundreds of thousands of radioactive drums, abandoned in the abyssal plain of the Atlantic. The problem is that there was life and they were killing it. A little less than 300 nautical miles from Cape Fisterra in Galicia – just over 500 kilometers – the Nodssum Project, which is already on its third expedition, has sounded the alarm. Far from the myth, French scientific missions They located thousands of barrels, went down with manned submarines, photographed leaks and measured radionuclides above what was expected. 220,000 barrels They only found a thousand. The rest, some 100,000 tons of nuclear waste, lay at the bottom and was carried away by the currents, its contents scattered. Now, with just over 3,500 barrels located, it is concluded that they are suffering from an “advanced state of deterioration”, according to researchers from the Center National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). A cemetery under the Atlantic. Where does all this come from? The drama began in 1946. And until the early 1990s, British, Dutch, Belgian, French and other European ships continuously dumped low- and medium-level radioactive waste at the bottom of the Atlantic. They are concentrated in an area of ​​about 10,000 square kilometers, at a depth of 4,000–5,000 meters. It is, without hot cloths, the third largest landfill of canned nuclear waste known on the planet. Inside there are no fuel rods, but rather civil and military nuclear waste: sludge, gloves, laboratory equipment, medical remains, resins, contaminated scrap metal, encapsulated in cement or tar to withstand the pressure of the deep ocean. When the landfill began to be mapped, they did not even document 1% of the total. To date, just over 3,000 barrels have been located, identified with the autonomous robot UlyX and high-resolution sonar. A longliner and a lot coraxe. The They came between two freighters that were dumping garbage to the Atlantic Trench. The press took notice and that practice bounced around in newspapers around the world. The protests had an effect, because the European body in charge of controlling this waste declared a moratorium on discharges. Moratorium that is still in force today. The first NODSSUM-I campaign focused on making the invisible visible. since a decadethe expedition has been expanding the mapped area to about 140 square kilometers, with densities of about 20 drums per square kilometer and more than 3,350 barrels cataloged. The great novelty came with the manned submarine Nautile, which made it possible to directly observe the state of the barrels at more than 4,000 meters deep. It was then that the real state could be noticed. Barrels in the last. Corroded surfaces, colonization of anemones, open cracks in dents and leaks of encapsulating material – with tar and cement overflowing – in some containers, in addition to the detection of radionuclides above what was expected. The sea salt is slowly eating away some brass lacking the necessary security. The expedition has taken 345 samples of sediment, about 5,000 liters of water and specimens of abyssal fauna (fish, amphipods, small crustaceans) to analyze them in the laboratory with precision one hundred times greater than that of the instruments on board. To date, no “anomalies” have been found in the sediments and, although the radionuclides are below legal limitsthey do exceed all previous estimates. Rescue them… or leave them where they are. The current objective is to contain the threat. Can 200,000 drums be removed from the bottom of the Atlantic? Technically, yes; Politically, economically and in terms of risk, things get complicated. The Nuclear Safety Council insists on a clear message: the Galician and Cantabrian coastal waters do not show significant levels of radioactivity, below the limits set by Spanish and European regulations. And Spain does not even have responsibilities, since it did not dump waste into the Atlantic trench. In fact, the problem goes beyond the astronomical cost: many barrels are so degraded that they could disintegrate in the lifting process. If deterioration continues, will there be greater problems resulting from bioaccumulation? How does it affect the abyssal food chain? This is exactly what you are looking to answer. At the same time, we are trying to study this deep habitat full of organisms adapted to a darkness that now coexists with an 80-year-old nuclear legacy. Images | BNG (by Wolcott Henry), Flickr (owned by Tomas Vazquez) and Campagne NODSSUM, CNRS, Flotte oceanographique française. In Xataka | 800 meters deep in a 175 million year old rock: Germany’s solution to nuclear waste In Xataka | The big problem with nuclear energy has always been its waste. Russia can now recycle them up to five times

Galician depopulation is filling the cemeteries with anonymous tombstones. There are those who want to solve it with QR codes

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It is one of the most unknown parishes in Pontevedra, a small town that has been shedding its inhabitants until it is left with barely 700. We are talking about Cerpozones (Cerponzóns), near the town of Alba or Tilve, the northern corner where they have wanted to take a curious step to preserve their own history: place QR codes (quicktime response) on cemetery tombstones. You scan a tombstone in Galicia and a life appears. “Linguistic restitution act“The O Chedeiro Neighborhood Association has been responsible for reformulating the usual text that can be found on the tombstones of the San Vicenzo cemetery. Why? Because they want the most distant generations, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren, to be able to discover what story there is behind the names engraved in the marble. Read the past to understand the present. The first QR premiered in the family pantheon of Juan José Esperón-Recareyneighbor, writer and secretary of the association. The scan opens a direct link to the blog ‘O Roque de Cerponzóns’, where the life of this family crossed by emigration, agricultural work, sociability in taverns and the daily history of the parish is documented. In this blog you can discover the life, for example, of Jesús Recarey Lorenzo, tram conductor and conductor who dedicated a life to daily mobility, or Carmen Recarey Cochón, owner of the Rums tavernthe social center of the parish. Cerponzóns has also recently been the headline of several news stories for the documentary ‘A cardboard suitcase‘, as part of an initiative to preserve the memory and discover the history of this parish. The family has already changed the inscriptions on the tombstones from Spanish to Galician and this time they wanted to do something special, inspired by the Association of Officials for Linguistic Normalization of Galicia, which proposes using QRs with information in Galician about the deceased to remember names and experiences. Much better than a DEP When the grave is an interface As ironic as it may seem, this Pontevedra movement rhymes with many other actions carried out on the other side of the world. In Japan, the funeral company Ishi no Koe (literally “The voice of the stones”) has developed marble tombstones with embedded QRs that give access to websites with photos, videos, family testimonies and records of who visits the tomb and how many times said code has been scanned. These high-tech tombstones They are around $10,000. And the same with automated columbariums in china: In cities such as Shanghai, Shenyang or Fujian, cemeteries have been offering QR stickers on tombstones for years that, when scanned, show obituaries, photos, videos and music of the deceased, in the context of Grave Sweeping Day (Qingming) and a growing culture of “virtual mourning rooms“Well, and the candles are so automated that they light themselves at night. In Europe we can also find similar examples of this adaptation to the times. Denmark was one of the pioneers: In 2012, a tombstone company began offering porcelain plaques with QR codes for access to biographies within Roskilde Cemetery. The service cost about 100 euros and was sold as a way to preserve local stories and make the visit to the cemetery more interesting. I remember, in fact, on a visit to Berlin that its three Jewish cemeteries already had similar systems for being able to follow the sentences as if it were karaokeand even some masons were changing or repairing the codes for more robust plates. Although it is easy to consider it an experiment to understand digital grief. In the United Kingdom there are dozens of companies like Digital Gravestones or StoneCode Lite that sell packages of digital memorials. These include a website with photos, biography, timeline, cemetery location on Google Maps, condolence book and QR plate or weather-resistant NFC tag, with classic, minimalist or modern models and hosting from one to five years. There it is nothing. The truth is that an easy-to-read epitaph has an imprint that cannot replace a QR code. However, creatives such as historian Frederick Meza, designer of Memorial QR, consider that this is a more useful and practical form of documentation, archiving, and also to promote necrotourism and historical pedagogy of relevant figures: dignitaries, former mayors, artists and party founders, etc. Too much data for a place of mourning? Songs, poems and digital condolence books, this model also opens a debate: what about privacy? That anyone can scan and access that information may bother certain family members who prefer to preserve and reserve their past. However, the digitization of cemeteries has been unstoppable after the pandemic. In Spain, the cemeteries, with their cypress trees and flower crowns, are extremely quiet places where a certain decibel threshold is rarely violated. It is clear that QR codes are not just a gadget, but a way to expand the tomb from the name-date to the complete story, something very useful for anchoring biographies to local contexts, minority languages ​​or family genealogies that were previously lost in scattered papers. The parish of Cerponzóns has managed to manage its story through its blog, but the friction is still there: who decides what is told and who reads it? Or, more specifically: what happens when a public cemetery becomes an archive accessible to anyone curious, is it safe? It remains to be known how passwords are managed and what will become of technical continuity to verify whether great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren will truly know about their ancestors without entering broken links 50 years from now. Images | Unsplash (Brett Jordan, Waldemar Brandt), Tourism of the Council of Redondela In Xataka | Spain has more pets than children, so Malaga has inaugurated something inevitable: the first cemetery for dogs In Xataka | Burying a loved one is expensive. Some cemeteries are already beginning to offer an alternative: fertilizer for plants

A Galician gas station already knows the consequences of confusing diesel with gasoline

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Everything seemed to be going well. Well. Neither good nor bad. Everything seemed to be going normally. Until someone raised the alarm. The hose with 95 gasoline was not adding 95 gasoline. And what’s worse, it was not adding gasoline. The green hose was feeding gasoline cars with diesel. This is what happened a few days ago at the Repsol gas station in Ribadeo (Lugo). There, customers have spent almost five hours refueling diesel in their gasoline cars due to an error while filling the tanks. The company already assures that it will take care of all repairs. 270 minutes That is the time between 12:49 and 17:19. That is also the time that the Repsol gas station next to Ribadeo has been supplying diesel instead of gasoline to the cars that stopped at said station, as they have accepted in a statement published through the social networks of the Association of Industrial Traders, Services and Self-Employed (ACISA). It explains that the confusion comes from an error during filling the tanks with the tanker truck. This has meant that for four and a half hours, a mixture of gasoline and diesel has been served to those who wanted to refuel with 95 gasoline. Click on the image to go to the original post “We sincerely apologize to all those affected. We take responsibility for the breakdowns resulting from this incident,” they say in the statement while encouraging all those affected to stop the car as soon as possible, report to the insurance and get in touch through this website. At all gas stations, the diesel hose openings are wider than the gasoline ones, to avoid this mistake. Thus, unless you get stubborn and look for the most unexpected tricks to put diesel into a gasoline car (as happened to former soccer player Dani Güiza)it is very difficult to fall into this error. If it happens as in this Galician case, fill a tank with diesel It can cause serious damage to the car if we start driving it and don’t realize it until it stops completely. And diesel will cause the car’s power to drop and start to emit large amounts of smoke. After running in fits and starts, it will stop. This is a real problem because you have to empty and clean the tank but in the workshop they also have to do an arduous task to clean the spark plugs, the injectors and all the components through which the diesel has passed. When the amount of fuel refueled is low, we could continue driving, but it has to be very low. In this case, the diesel will be mixed in part with the gasoline, so if the tank has not been filled much, the situation may not have been very serious. On the other hand, those who have filled the tank will have to do a deep cleaning of all the components. Photo | Wassim Chouak and Google Maps In Xataka | We thought that gasoline cars were much cleaner than diesel cars. We did not have the effect of the sun

They have asked a Galician judge if Raynair and Vueling can charge for hand luggage. The answer could not be more Galician

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Two years later, it will be Europe that contributes its point of view. The answer will be key to deciding whether Ryanair, Vueling or Volotea can charge for hand luggage. The decision falls on a court in A Coruña, after the Public Prosecutor’s Office sued these three companies. Those involved will have to wait to know what the High Court of Justice of the European Union says. The demand. Ryanair, Vueling and Volotea are three companies that have been operating at A Coruña Airport. All of them are low cost and are known for applying very strict measures when it comes to hand luggage. So strict that passengers have been allowed for years only with a small backpack if they do not want to face an extra cost on their flight. The Public Prosecutor’s Office, however, considers these practices to be abusive. It is the same line that the Government has followed, which even sanctioned the three for this luggage policy. In that fineRyanair with more than 100 million euros in punishment was the one that had the worst stoppageBut the legality of that fine is in doubt. And what has happened? That the A Coruña court handling the matter has referred the matter to the Superior Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), as explained in The Mediterranean Newspaper. Now, the CJEU must give a reasoned response to the matter and with this response the magistrate will decide. For now, the procedure is suspended. This occurs because the magistrate handling the matter requires the involvement of Brussels in two questions. The first is whether the European Union’s freedom of pricing regulations go against Spanish regulations that require airlines to allow free travel with hand luggage. And, second, if this extra price on the ticket is an abuse of consumers. There is nothing clear. It is not the first time that a Spanish magistrate asks the CJEU for help. The question raised refers to a similar decision taken in 2014 in favor of Vueling, but according to the judge, that victory for the airline is not enough to now settle this new confrontation. And justice itself in Spain has taken decisions that may seem contradictory. In fact, there are two very clear examples: The airline wins: last year, in SevilleRyanair won a trial in which it was accused of a position of power by charging for hand luggage. The passenger wins: also last year, in SalamancaRyanair lost a trial in which 147 euros were claimed for charging a passenger for a carry-on suitcase on different routes between 2019 and 2024. Why does it happen? The problem is that the rules that regulate air traffic do not clearly specify what is or is not carry-on luggage. And they do not specify minimum measurements either. This has caused tension in Spain that is repeated. For the Government, the measures used by low-cost companies They are clearly insufficient to carry the essential luggage. On the contrary, these companies defend that they do allow a backpack to pass under the terms offered and that the law protects them when they decide to price larger packages. Furthermore, they point out that on their planes there are no spaces for all travelers to carry their luggage in a suitcase, but the Government defends that if the luggage fits under the seat, this cannot be an excuse. And Europe has already positioned itself. The problem is that Europe has already taken a position repeatedly on this issue. First, we know that the European Union has worked on a new regulation in which it will specify what minimum measures are required… and the problem for Spain is that These measures coincide with those requested by Ryanair on its trips. Furthermore, the Transport Commissioner of the European Commission seems to have positioned itself clearly in favor of companies. In fact, a file has already been opened against Spain for the fine imposed on Ryanair and the rest of the low-cost companies in relation to the charge for hand luggage. With everything and until there is a clear ruleit seems that the conflict can be repeated over time. Photo | Dimitri Karastelev and Ray Freimanis In Xataka | When Ryanair CEO went to a restaurant he was charged for two extras: “priority seating” and “legroom”

The orchards allowed Galician households to save hundreds of euros on purchases. Now they are disappearing

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The proverb says that ‘he who has a friend, has a treasure’. In the Spain of 2026, that of house price skyrocketedthe accumulated inflation two digits and loss of power purchasing power, the reality is much more mundane: those who really have a ‘treasure’ are families with access to a garden, a corral, fruit trees or a small stable with sheep and cows, self-consumption tools that help save and lighten spending in the shopping basket. Curiously, at least in Galicia, fewer and fewer people take care of their own vegetables or livestock. And that allows you to save more than 100 euros per month. What has happened? That the garden is losing weight in Galicia. And in an accelerated and indisputable way. So revealed it on Monday Vigo Lighthousethat after styling the published data by the Galician Institute of Statistics (IGE) has concluded that in the region fewer and fewer families resort to self-cultivation, fruit trees or small farms to alleviate their economy. It’s not just that their number has decreased in the last decade, it’s that it is already at historic lows. If in 2007 45.1% of the community’s households saved thanks to the potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce, carrots… harvested in their gardens, in 2024 that percentage was already a meager 25.1%, the lowest level in the historical series. What do the figures say? If you walk through Galicia it will be increasingly difficult for you to see people working in small gardens or taking care of animals. The IGE statistics They do not talk about large agricultural holdings or farms with a business focus, but rather about family savings, which is why they focus on a very specific part of the Galician agrarian map. All in all, its reading is resounding. If in 2007 there were 452,200 families that saw their economy lightened thanks to the cultivation of their own vegetables, at the end of 2024 there were already 278,500. In between, years of almost uninterrupted decline. There are small swings, but they are largely explained by the context. For example, between 2019 and 2020, coinciding with the pandemic, the number of households with gardens grew slightly. The IGE also reflects that the trend is not equally clear throughout the region. Although the garden is losing weight in the community, it is holding up better in the interior provinces. Its decline is much more pronounced in A Coruña and Pontevedra. Does it only happen with orchards? No. The IGE also investigated how savings have evolved thanks to other forms of self-consumption, such as the use of fruit trees, the production of homemade wine or cheese, the care of livestock to obtain meat, milk or eggs, fishing… And the ‘photo’ is practically the same always. For example, in 2007 there were 372,000 homes saving thanks to their own hens, chickens and eggs. In 2020 there were already 298,300 and at the beginning of 2025 they barely exceeded 202,600. The collapse is not only due to a loss of population. Its incidence rate also fell: from 37.1% in 2007 to only 18.3% in 2024. Exercise Households that save on food thanks to the garden (no.) Households that save on food thanks to the garden (%) 2007 452,188 45.09% 2011 444,843 42.00% 2016 406,384 38.34% 2021 384,283 35.81% 2024 278,519 25.12% And other forms of self-consumption? The same. The same thing happens with the food (and savings) obtained thanks to fruit tree cultivationhe cow milkingthe elaboration of wine or spirits homemade, the cattle breeding or the ‘pig slaughter’, which despite its roots in rural Galicia has also deflated. If in 2007 it was practiced in 20.7% of homes, in 2020 it was already reduced to 7.6% and in 2024 to less than 5%. In practice, this means that the slaughter has gone from being a saving for 207,300 homes to being a saving for 55,100. And why is it important? Beyond the greater or lesser interest that weight loss in gardens may have, the phenomenon is curious because it coincides with another, also noted by Lighthouse: Taking care of orchards or farms pays off. And a lot. After years of inflation and increases that have been fueled by products like eggsself-consumption has become a way to cut spending by more than 100 euros per month. In certain cases the savings can reach 120. On average, the garden allows you to reduce the shopping basket by 30 euros, chicken farms by another 22, beef (or rabbit) farms lighten the basket by almost 40 euros and domestic fruit trees by 18. The greatest source of savings continues to be the slaughter of pigs. Those who practice it save 51 euros every month, since they avoid buying pork. So why does it decline? The million dollar question. Having a garden, a corral or even a small farm with cows and sheep may save money on purchases, but it requires other precious resources: time and space. Added to this is the expense involved in caring for vegetables and livestock. In a Galicia that is no stranger to demographic crisis and she is getting older, that is a challenge. The region is not spared from the rural exoduswhich makes it difficult for families to have space for gardens. Image | MRC Témiscamingue (Unsplash) Via | Vigo Lighthouse In Xataka | In emptied Galicia there are town councils taking charge of gas stations and stores. The objective: not to be left without services

The crazy story of the Galician woman who registered El Sol before a notary, sold plots online and then took eBay to court

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To the French monarch Louis XIV he was known as the sun kingthus, with a capital letter and all its absolutist pomp. Strictly speaking, that title, however, belongs to another person, and it is not even the priest king. Cuahtemocgreat governor of the Aztecs, nor the Egyptian emperor Amenhotep III. If there is a lady and sovereign of the Star King—or at least that is what she maintains—that is Angeles Durana Galician who one fine day in 2010 decided to do something that no one else had done in thousands of years of human history: she left her house in Salvaterra do Miño, in the Vigo region, and stood in the office of a notary to draw up an official record that she, and no one else but her, declared herself the legitimate and authentic owner of the sun. When the good notary heard her, he couldn’t help but laugh, but he had no choice but to consult with his professional association and, in fact, sign a record of what that lady said. Since then, the story of Ángeles Durán has taken on delirious overtones, worthy of a good astro-legal thriller.I solicited. I, owner of the Sun This is how Ángeles Durán has proclaimed herself, a Galician who in 2010 surprised the world by proclaiming herself the owner of the Sun. And no, we are not speaking figuratively. The news advanced it in its day The Voice of Galiciawhich recounted how Durán went to a notary in a neighboring town, in the Vigo region, to draw up a record that she was the legitimate owner of the axis of the Solar System. If that became news—and it did, so much so in fact that it jumped to foreign media— it was not so much because of the occurrence itself as because of the result. Durán left the office with a document that he later did not hesitate to use. pose for the cameras. “I am the owner of the Sun, a star of spectral type G2, which is located in the center of the solar system, located at an average distance from the Earth of approximately 149,600,000 kilometers…”, proclaims the minutes of statements with the notary’s seal. The Galician newspaper explains that the official made him laugh upon hearing Durán’s claims, but he still consulted with his school and ended up attesting that the woman in front of him declared herself the legitimate possessor of the Sun. Since then many things have been said about Durán: that he is lawyer and psychologistwho at that time served as judicial expert and even, as published The Voice in 2022, who lives in Italy and is focused on preparing a book about the British royal family. One of the latest news that is known about her is that she is dedicated to composing “spicy and erotic songs” and who has released an album. What there is no doubt is that Durán dedicated time and effort to planning her strategy to proclaim herself the owner of the Sun. Whether more or less correct, the undeniable thing is that her request was based on a legal argument that she raised at the time and still maintained in 2019. before the cameras of Cuatro. Going back to Roman law The Galician law basically rested on two legs: a legal vacuum and a legal figure that dates back to Roman law. The first is related to the international agreement that establishes that no country can appropriate the planets. The key for Durán is in that nuance: that it affects the states would not imply, he maintains, that it extends to individuals. The second key is the usucapionwhich allows you to gain real rights to those elements that have been enjoyed for a certain time. And Durán had decades benefiting daily from the Sun’s rays. Like the other almost 8,000 million people who reside on this wide planet, true, but no one else had thought to raise it like this in a notary office. The law is made, the trap is made. At least that’s what Durán thought. “I have not bought the Sun because no one has sold it to me. What I have done is a deed for what is called usucapion,” I insisted in 2019 during an interview in which he assured that this figure can be used “by electromagnetic apprehension.” The truth is that Durán has not been the first to do something similar. Decades ago an American businessman, Dennis Hopeclaimed that he had found a legal loophole that allowed him to claim sovereignty of the Moon. His argument was very similar to that of the Galician: Hope was based on an old law from the 19th century, of the American pioneers, and that the Outer Space Treaty It does not affect individuals. The most curious thing is that the Sun is not the only property that Durán has claimed, although it is certainly the one that takes the cake in size, implications and impact. The Galician has made other equally curious visits to the General Registry of Intellectual Property. The World and The Country They have echoed how he came to record Tarzan’s cry or “the longest score in the world”, 24,000 million measures and related to telephony. “Every time you dial a number, notes are ringing and no one has recorded them,” explained in 2010: “If you mark 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, you are making a few measures and all the possible combinations, all of them, I have registered in my name.” A little plot in the sun… Durán was not satisfied with proclaiming herself the owner of the Astro Rey. He decided to go one step further, cutting up the vast expanse of the star and selling plots on eBay. On the first day he managed to market nearly a hundred stellar plots. According to explained in his day10,000 solar portions were offered, each accompanied by its respective certificate. For one euro, anyone could get a piece of star. … Read more

The megaindios of Ourense, Zamora and León have paralyzed the Galician bird. It is the nth setback in a horrible year for Renfe

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The Madrid-Galicia bird had become an oasis for Renfe. The Spanish company, objective of all kinds of criticism during 2025 had seen how the Galician corridor was even bending the arm to the airlines. The fires are, now, the last unexpected twist that leaves a trail of cancellations, delays and travelers desperate to find an alternative route to the train. Fires. They are, without any doubt, the news that marks the rate of today in Spain. When we write these linesthere are more than 40 active fires in our country. Of these, two out of three foci They are located in Castilla y León. In addition, only in Ourense (Galicia) have burned more than 60,000 hectares. Lack of resources, forests that are lacking maintenance and one heat wave that seems to have no end They have been the perfect fuel to find ourselves in a situation that has been out of control. Click on the image to go to the original tweet Cut. With the provinces of Zamora, León and Ourense surrounded by the fire, the bird has stopped completely. This morning, Renfe confirmed in his X account that the circulation was interrupted “until the competent authorities allow resumption.” It is the fifth day that Renfe keeps the high -speed line between Madrid and Galicia suspended since Last Thursday, August 14, it would be suspended For the first time the rail service. The previous day, Wednesday, August 13the company already had to suspend some of the paths during the afternoon. Click on the image to go to the original publication From Madrid to Zamora. At the moment, the only solution that Renfe has given is to open a train that makes the journey between Madrid and Zamora. With an eye on the evolution of the fires, for the moment the only alternative they keep open is the one mentioned in the image superior. In the responses to the publication, Renfe confirms that There is no alternative plan For travelers who had tickets bought for any of the Galician cities. Bus alternatives have not been established, For example, and they don’t guarantee When can you return to normal. The nth problem. The interruption of traffic in the Galician corridor is the nth bad news for the company that is living a 2025 to forget. If we make a list of everything that has happened in the previous seven months that we have throughout the year we find the following: A flying line. The situation is even more complicated, taking into account that the Galician corridor was being the line that was best working at Renfe. As high speed has been settling, the data says There is a traveler transfer from the plane to the trainwhich is offered as a more flexible and interesting alternative if you want to spend less than 24-36 hours in Madrid. Besides, The particularities of the line and orders saturation to manufacturers have caused Renfe to have a dominant position on competitors. Although the line is liberalized and any company can operate, the truth is that companies such as Ouigo lack adequate rolling material and They do not expect to have it in the short term. What can the traveler do? At the moment, little if I planned to use the high speed line between Madrid and Galicia. As we have seen, Renfe is only partially offering, between Madrid and Zamora. Once there, there is no other than taking a car or a bus to continue the trip. Options for traveling tomorrow, August 19, between Santiago de Compostela and Madrid Shot prices. The other option, of course, is to fly from Madrid to one of the Galician airports. Of course, from one day to another, flying from Madrid to Vigo, to Coruña or Santiago de Compostela forces to invest more than 100 euros per ticket (there are only three options for less than that money and Vigo does not have them) and in some cases the prices per trip exceed 300 euros. But the trip is very complicated in the reverse sense. From one day to another, the cheapest option to travel between Vigo and Madrid forces to disburse 369 euros, from A Coruña you can travel from 272 euros and from Santiago de Compostela you have to disburse 379 euros. All data have been taken from the flight search engine Skyscanner. Photo | Hugh Llewelyn and Ume In Xataka | Each new data we know about the AVE in Spain points in the same direction: it is winning the game to Barajas

We have just discovered that rainfall has wreaked havoc on the Galician octopus

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The octopus is an animal of interest in the Galician coast, after all, this animal is used as the main ingredient of one of the most popular dishes of its gastronomy. However the fishing of this cephalopod So singular drag difficulties when satisfying market demand. After the octopus track. Now a new study in which researchers from the Marine Research Institute of the CSIC and Pescanova Biomarine Center have participated, gives us an important clue about stress in the common octopus (Octopus vulgaris). It is a track that It can help us to protect the fisheries of these animals and even improve the treatment they receive in the incipient aquaculture sector. Supply and demand. The Galician octopus of our tables does not usually have its origin in Galicia. We are not talking about The Galician-Leonese dispute For the origin of the octopus To Feirabut of the fact that the fishing of this cephalopod on the Galician coasts does not represent more than a fraction of the total consumption of the country. According to data from Vigo lighthousethe octopus campaign 2023/24 resulted in catches of 1.5 million kg (a notable decrease compared to the previous year); while according to data from the Food consumption report in Spain Of 2023, the octopus consumption (next to that of squid) of Spanish households was some more than 41 million kg. Only in preserves, almost 385,000 kg of octopus were consumed according to the report. Piscifactory octopus? So where does the octopus come from? One of the origins is on the African coastspecifically in the north of the continent. Despite this, world octopus demand implies a huge pressure not only on Galician heshes, but also globally. In this context, cephalopod fishing progresses towards a new border, that of the aquaculture or fish farming octopus. A border wrapped, yes in the controversy. While it is true that this practice could relieve pressure on the heshadows and protect coveted species such as overfishing octopus, there are many The voices That they have Raised against The latest projects that point in this direction. The reason: the ethical dilemma to raise for consumption animals whose intelligence It is usually equated with that of some of the most intelligent vertebrate animals such as cats or crows. Octopus stress. It is not to be surprised therefore the scientific interest in understanding aspects such as stress in these animals. Interest reflected in studies such as The recently published In the magazine Physiology-Endocrinology and Metabolism. This analysis focused on stress response mechanisms and potential osmoregulation in the common octopus. The responsible team resorted to liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry techniques, which allowed it to contrast that these animals do not produce cortisol, corticosterone or cortisone, three hormones that we usually associate precisely with response to stress and osmoregulation in vertebrate animals. An unexpected effect. He Team details that their findings can explain the mass death of octopus on the Galician coast seen in times of heavy rains. A phenomenon that It also extends To other geographical contexts. As they point out, rapid falls in salinity caused by rains could jeopardize the “physiological stability” of animals, a direct consequence of not having mechanisms for response to external stress factors such as cortisol. Pondering pros and cons. Learning about this fascinating animal not only allows us to satisfy the curiosity that these creatures generate, it can also help us protect them. It can also help those who seek ways to raise these animals in captivity since we can now intuit that the difficulties in responding to stress may be behind the difficulties that this form of aquaculture poses. It can also help us explain the growing difficulty in fishing these animals, a difficulty reflected in the fall in the volume of catches. In Xataka | Do not call it “octopus”, call it “giant tongue that licks everything that touches.” Science is clear Image | Pexels

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