Germans

The war in Iran is turning tourism upside down. And that translates into something for Mallorca: thousands more Germans

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In just over a month, the Middle East conflict has reminded the world that, at least in the 21st century, the seismic wave of wars is felt far beyond where the bombs fall. Its effect has already spread to the price of oilthe stock market and geopolitics and now threatens to shake the shopping basket. Another sector in which it is also leaving its mark (and a lot) is the touristwho has seen how in a matter of weeks flights were canceledthey reinforced routes and basically demand swung at a global level. And that is being felt strongly in the Balearic Islands. More flights to Mallorca. That the Balearic Islands see their flight schedule reinforced at the gates of Easter and with summer just around the corner is nothing new. What is curious is that the programming is shielded with dozens and dozens of extra frequencies, such as reveals Mallorca Diarywhich estimates that the war in Iran has led to more than a hundred extra flights being planned between Germany and Mallorca for the start of the season. In practice this translates into something that will soon be noticed in the Balearic Islands: tens and tens of thousands of extra places for German travelers until June. How many flights are there? Yes. The biggest injection will come from Eurowing, an airline low cost based in Düsseldorf and part of the Lufthansa Group. A few days ago its managers announced the scheduling of a hundred extra flights to Palma, an effort that they relate (without mentioning it directly and explicitly) to the instability that the Middle East is experiencing. “The airline responds to the changing demand of the sector and reinforces its offer to the western Mediterranean,” clarify. According to the calculations of the company, the reinforcement of its operations with Mallorca will result in 36,000 extra seats until the end of May. “Around 100 additional flights are planned to Palma, along with around 70 connections to the Canary Islands (Fuerteventura, Las Palmas, Tenerife), as well as to Faro, Málaga, Naples and Nice,” Eurowings specifies before specifying that the new scheduled flights will operate from the airports of Berlin, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Hamburg and Stuttgart. Beyond Eurowings. The Lufthansa airline is not the only one that has decided to redouble its commitment to the Balearic Islands. Condor Flugdienst, another German operator, will reactivate two connections with the Spanish archipelago starting in May: one will be the Dortmund-Palma route, which will be covered daily with an Airbus A321; the other will link the Münster/Osnabrück airport with Mallorca. The list of companies that will target the Balearic Islands offer in the coming weeks are Ryanair and TUI Fly. The first offers a route to Mallorca from Friedrichshaffen, in Baden-Württemberg (Germany). Regarding the second, Tourinews inform that a few days ago it announced the scheduling of 68 additional flights with around 10,000 seats from several German airfields, including Hannover and Munich. The destinations are spread across various points throughout southern Europe, including Greece, the Canary Islands and Mallorca. “They have changed their plans”. It is not just that German airlines seem to look with redoubled interest at the great destinations of southern Europe and the Mediterranean. The sector itself recognizes a change in trend that is related to the war in Iran and the influence it is exerting on the market. “Many tourists who had not yet booked and were planning to travel to destinations in the Middle East have changed their plans at the last minute and opted for other places,” clarify to Mallorca Diary from the Business Group of Travel Agencies of the Balearic Islands (AVIVA). a few days ago The reason assuredciting data from tour operators, that British reservations have skyrocketed by 40% in the Balearic Islands. The Canary Islands have also recorded an increase of 16%. “Last minute increases”. Last week the Hotel Business Federation of Mallorca (FEHM) calculated that the average occupancy during Easter will be around 70%, a level similar to that of past years, with 92% of its places activated. In the specific case of Palma, the forecasts were somewhat better and almost 90% of the available rooms were expected to be filled. These are, however, the starting data. In general, the group is cautious, remembering the “uncertainty” that reigns in the market internationally and also recognizing that its initial estimates may be out of date, opening the door to an increase in reserves. “There may be increases due to last minute sales,” anticipates the executive vice president of FEHM. Has the scenario changed that much? The truth is that yes. And in several aspects. The war and its consequences, which extend far beyond Iranian borders to the rest of the Persian Gulf, have made tourists from other countries be suspicious of destinations established until now. A few weeks ago, the Mabrian firm studied the security perception indices of nations such as Qatar, the Emirates and Saudi Arabia and found that the indicator had plummeted. The most curious thing is that it has also taken its toll on other distant tourist spots, such as Jordan, Türkiye or Egypt. The study was carried out shortly after the US and Israeli attack on Iran and Tehran’s subsequent reaction, which turned the airspace of much of the Gulf upside down. Since that region plays a key role as an air interconnection point on routes between Europe and Asia, the war also took its toll to connections with countries like Sri Lanka. Surprising (but not that surprising). In reality, the latest movements of Eurowings, TUI Ryanair only confirm what analysts tell us. weeks anticipating: that part of the demand that now views the Middle East with suspicion will be redirected towards other beach destinations in Western Europe. Which is it? In mid-March the BBC spoke from Portugal, Italy and Spain, as well as the Caribbean, Mauritius and the USA. They were not simple predictions. The British chain cites data from a famous travel agency, Thomas Cook, which already at that time … Read more

In 1919 the Germans decided to sink their entire fleet in the North Sea. The steel from those ships ended up in space

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At 11:20 in the morning of June 21, 1919, Admiral von Reuter’s ship began to signal to the rest of the German ships in Scapa Flow Bay, England. The taps and water intakes were opened, the pipes were destroyed, the portholes were dismantled: no one noticed anything. Until around midday, the Friederich Der Grosse began to list to starboard. It was already late, the German flag was flying from the 74 masts. Scapa Flow. The image tells the story of Scapa Flowthe sinking of the German fleet immediately after World War I. While the Allies negotiated the terms of the Armistice with Germany, the fleet was held captive and stationed off the British coast. Von Reuter feared that the Allies would divide up the ships, so he decided to sink it completely, at any cost. The British naval ships that were on maneuvers arrived at 2:30 p.m. and were only able to save one ship. The last to sink was the battlecruiser Hindenburg. Nine Germans were killed, 16 were wounded, 1,774 were detained. 52 ships were sunk on June 21 at Scapa Flow. But they are no longer there: they are on the Moon, Jupiter and beyond the orbit of Pluto. steel is steel. A tough guy, with bad temper and few words. But in 1945 (or a little before), everything changed. We didn’t realize it at first, but we quickly discovered that although all steels are equal, there are some steels that are more equal than others. I’m not going around the bush: what happened in ’45 was the atomic bomb, the device of the Devil that made us change geological era. The problem. Since the first atomic bombs exploded on the Earth’s surface, the air contains traces of radioactive elements. They are there, dissolved in it, but the amount is so small that they are harmless. Unless for some strange reason you have to blow in enormous amounts of air in the manufacturing process of some material. It’s almost useless to us. That is, all steel manufactured after the explosion of the first atomic bomb is radioactive. Very little, almost nothing. But enough so that some medical, physical or astronomical instruments do not work correctly. For example, radioactivity monitoring systems used by spacecraft. He tells it David Bodanis in “E = mc². Biography of the most famous equation in the world“, a book that, although it has become somewhat outdated, is still a delight. You may have heard the story, but it is a good story. Steel = expensive. In the book, Bodanis explains that, faced with this problem, uncontaminated steel became very expensive. Above all, because before ’45 we did not make steel in quantities so industrial as now. I imagine dozens of NASA engineers rummaging through their family’s cutlery so they can send reliable machines into space. Until someone remembered Kaiser Wilhelm’s ships. The peculiarity of Scapa Flow. There are sunken ships in many places, but there are not many shallow inlets with 52 sunken ships in their waters. Not all of them were there, but a few were enough for us to manufacture the equipment that the Apollo mission left on the lunar surface, that which the Galileo probe took to Jupiter, and that which the Pioneer probe is taking even further. The evil, the sea. In Xataka | Quantum find in Cambridge points to solar ‘Holy Grail’: single-material solar panels In Xataka | The Atacama salt flat is the key on which the electric car industry pivots. And it’s starting to dry

We know that the price of housing in the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands is skyrocketing because neither the British nor the Germans can afford it.

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The price of housing in highly stressed tourist areas, such as the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands, has reached levels so high that neither the British nor the Germans, traditionally the most active foreign buyers and wealthy people on the islands, can afford to continue acquiring properties at the rate of previous years. As and how they collected in Express this trend well supported by the latest data of the General Council of Notaries, in which a very relevant change can be seen in the Spanish real estate market, especially on the islands, where international demand has always been noted as part of the problem. Fewer houses are sold. According to the log data Notaries, during the first half of 2025, the Balearic and Canary Islands have experienced a real turnaround in the home buying and selling market. The percentage of home sales by foreigners fell by 7.7% in the Canary Islands and 6.8% in the Balearic Islands during the first half of 2025. In the same period, only two territories showed a behavior similar to the islands: Valencia, which fell by 3.6% and Navarra, which reduced the number of purchase and sale operations with foreigners by 3.7%. The reason: too expensive housing. It is enough to continue reviewing the data provided by the College of Notaries to find one of the reasons that could have caused this. drop in trading volume: prices have skyrocketed. The figures show how the traditional appeal for British and German buyers is declining. The data reveal that the average price paid by foreigners in purchase and sale operations in Spain as a whole was 2,417 euros per square meter, which represents an increase of 7.6% compared to the price in 2024. Non-resident foreigners continue to pay higher amounts for their homes (€3,126/m2) than resident foreigners (€1,912/m2) and nationals (1,809 €/m2). In the Canary Islands the average price rose by 14.1%, far exceeding the national average, while in the Balearic Islands the average increase was up to 9% compared to 2024. Source: General Council of Notaries Foreigners continue buying in Spain. The data indicate that the volume of foreign sales operations in Spain has not decreased in the territory as a whole, where the total number of homes bought by foreigners increased 2% compared to last year, reaching 71,155 operations. This variation in the volume of operations on the islands, together with the increase in their price, leads us to suspect that price pressure is differentially affecting the most touristic and stressed areas, especially those that, as in the case of the islandsthe options to expand the surface area for residential housing are very limited. That is to say, it is not that foreigners are buying less, but that they are doing so in less tense and with more reasonable prices. Who buys in Spain? Despite the drop in sales from the islands, the British continue to lead the list of foreign buyers in Spain, with 5,731 registered transactions, followed by Moroccans (5,654 transactions) and Germans (4,756 purchases and sales). However, operations carried out by foreigners represented 19.3% of total sales, a slightly lower proportion than that registered in 2024 with 20.3%. This loss of prominence is felt above all in the islands, where the British and Germans clearly dominated the statistics. The end of the “Golden Visa”. Besides, the advertisement of the elimination of the so-called golden visas or “Golden Visa”“, which allowed you to obtain residency in Spain in exchange for investing a certain amount of money in real estate, has also conditioned the decline in demand. In the first six months of 2025, foreign residents accounted for 60.9% of the purchases made, which represents 6.4% more than the previous year. On the other hand, non-resident foreigners who were affected by the elimination of the ‘Golden Visa’ and had to assume new tax limits, they reduced their purchases by 4.1%. In Xataka | Hoteliers dream of hanging the sign full in 2025. The rent that their employees must pay is their worst nightmare Image | Unsplash (Boris Busorgin)

One day, all Germans in Germany appeared closed on Google Maps. The problem is that nobody knows why

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He common sense It is the best guide to avoid mistakes. The problem is that it is easy for us to leave it aside while We blindly trust technology As if it were infallible. And if not, they tell the German German drivers because, just before a national bridge, they saw in Google Maps What half country had become a forbidden area. Short. On Thursday, May 29, the Ascension Dayeither Christi Himmelfahrt. It is a national holiday whose previous day is one of those who more displacements record. HE esteem That, at that time, there are between six and eight million displacements, but although many concentrate the day before the holiday, there are also millions of displacements the day in question. The surprise came when drivers who use Google Maps in your vehicle They ran into With this image in which you can see a “prohibited” symbol on the main roads that join the four cardinal points of the country and cities as important as Berlin, Hamburg or Frankfurt. Inutschland in GanzChaos Bei Google Maps: Dienst Zeigt Unzählige False Sperrungenhttps://t.co/qefirrihx3 – Peter Berger (@leosgeminix) May 29, 2025 Alternative road collapse. It may have happened to you that seeing a sign of “prohibited the step” and your common sense dictates that you should pay attention to that signal, but the GPS Indicates that you can go through that street and, for a moment, you lean to browse. We trust them because they do not usually fail, but given that vision of the main cut roads, and how we read in The Guardianthere were those who did not play it and decided to go on secondary roads. The result was expected: collapse in some of them, delays, travelers trying to find deviations to those main routes and many calls to the police and the traffic control authorities asking about the situation. Also speculation about a cyber attack (as with the blackout in Spain) or a terrorist attack. Citizen collaboration. There was also the case of people who did not attend to those stop signals and dared to circulate on those roads, supposedly, cut. When they could do it without problem, they began to report their cases and that was when Google began to act. The company began to eliminate those notices in the application and traffic was restored as the rest of the people undertook their trips and consulted a route on Google Maps that no longer had the warning symbols. Engadget He assures that the error only lasted two hours, but it is more than enough time for that avalanche of drivers on secondary roads. Ok, but … what caused it? Google’s response was extremely vague. As we read in Arstechnicathe company did not comment specific details and, in fact, a Google spokesman confirmed to German media that the company would not give details about the case. They limited themselves to saying that a technical problem had been investigated that showed temporary road closures inaccurately, but that it had already been solved. They also commented that Google Maps baby from three sources: user reportspublic sources and external suppliers. And there may be the “guilty” (among many quotes). The German Automobile Club is one of the largest automobile associations in Europe and, in the face of the holiday, He warned on possible retentions on those roads. The speculation is that the Maps failure was related to a “hallucination” of the application due to jamsstill, non -existent. Not all GPS. Now, those who had to drive with total tranquility that day were the users of Apple Maps and Waze. Although the latter is owned by Google, both showed the traffic data correctly, without any closing signal on those roads. Being so marked for the exits in Germany, the drivers who were guided with those apps had to drive quieter than ever. In the end, it was at anecdote and in travelers who arrived something later to their destination, but can also teach a lesson: having several alternativestaking an eye on each of them before leaving is not a bad idea. Image | Xataka assembly In Xataka | Register or pay the fine: Spain already has a toll road where you cannot pay in the window

700 tons of nuclear waste have arrived in Germany from England. Germans are not quite happy

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A very particular shipment has landed on the German coasts. The special ship for the transport of nuclear waste Pacific Grebe docked in the port of Nordenham, northwest of Germany, transporting highly radioactive waste from the United Kingdom. Upon arrival, It was received by antinuclear activists and a strong police device. The controversial delivery. In total, seven castor nuclear containers, each four meters long and with a weight of more than 100 tons. More than 700 tons of nuclear waste in total only with this shipment. It’s about high -level waste (HLW) subject to a vitrification process. That is, mixed with liquid silicates and sponsored in stainless steel cylinders that are sealically sealed once the glass solidifies. These cylinders are then introduced into Castor containers, made of cast iron and stainless steel, a robust armor against radiation. They are German waste. The remains of the reprocessing of nuclear fuel used in former German centrals, which until 2005 was sent to facilities such as Sellafield’s in the United Kingdom and Hague, in France. Although Germany closed its last nuclear centrals in 2023, it has the contractual obligation to recover waste. This is the second of the three shipments planned from Sellafield to complete the repatriation of German nuclear waste. The first arrived in 2020 and was stored in Bibliis. Shipments from France concluded in November 2024. Once in Nordenham, Castor containers are moving with cranes to a special train. Before embarking on the ground, technicians make measurements to ensure that radiation levels comply with legal limits. The train takes the remains to a Intermediate storage In Narderaichbach (Bavaria), next to the old nuclear power plant in ISAR. The exact route remains a secret for security reasons. Why protests? The arrival of new waste has revived the debate and nuclear opposition in Germany. Groups like Ausgestrahlt (“Irradiada”) and Castor-Stoppen (“Stop the Castor”) have organized the protests. They argue that every movement of these materials “entails a huge risk” and criticize that the waste moves to Temporary storesinstead of waiting to have a deep geological cemetery definitive. Move them now, They say“only postpone the problem and do not solve it”, and ask that the waste only transports once towards their final destination. More protests are expected along the route that will presumably follow the train, including cities such as Bremen and Göttingen. There is a strong police deployment around these transports. The temporary stores. Germany faces the challenge of managing about 27,000 cubic meters of accumulated radioactive waste for 60 years of nuclear energy. For now, these materials are stored in 16 temporary stores distributed throughout the country. The search for deep geological storage to bury them definitively is underway, but it is a long and complex process, As Finland has demonstratedwhose example now follows countries that are closing their nuclear plants; Germany and Spain at the head. In short. Germany is fulfilling its international obligations by bringing its own nuclear waste back. It is what promised the United Kingdom and France. But each shipment reopens the wound of an unresolved problem: the lack of a permanent and safe home for the most delicate legacy of its nuclear era, which generates restlessness and protests between part of its population. Image | Download a Castor container in 2001-Dennis140 (CC-BY-SA) In Xataka | Switzerland will come true the invention of Nobel Carlo Rubbia: a nuclear power plant that reduces 80% of radioactive waste In Xataka | France has presented a striking plan for its nuclear waste: converting them into forks and pans

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