growing

The lynx in Spain is growing at such a speed that it has appeared in an unexpected place: Euskadi

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An Alava rancher checked his photo-trapping camera last December. He was looking for genets, badgers or wild cats on the plot he has in Campezo. And he found biological gold. The unmistakable brushed ears and sideburns make it clear: the video in question It shows for a few seconds the presence of a lynx in the middle of the night. A tourist from the south. The Hontza Natura Elkartea association spread the image and the environmentalist offices raised their eyebrows: something like this had not happened in more than a hundred years. The boreal lynx inhabited the Aitzkorri-Aratz mountain ranges, the Gorbea massif or Valdegovía at the beginning of the twentieth century. But this is different, it is a Lynx pardinuspure and simple Iberian lynx. The same one that is being tried to reintroduce in the Valencian Community. And he wears a radio transmitter collar. Apparently, it comes directly from the south of the Iberian Peninsula, crossing half of Spain without a train ticket – it is not in vain that they can travel up to twenty-five kilometers a day. Hence, this presence in Álava marks a brutal biological milestone… and opens a crack in the debate on the recovery of wild fauna. Avoiding extinction. It was close and literally. There were less than one hundred copies left at the beginning of the 2000s and today they exceed 2,700. The Ministry for the Ecological Transition (MITECO) he stuck out his chest before Europe with their official censuses, consisting of specimens in Zaragoza, Palencia or Cuenca. The WWF Spain celebrated also the success of the Iberlince program. The specimens released in Andalusia, Castilla-La Mancha and Extremadura have managed to settle. And the natural expansion towards Aragon or the northern plateau demonstrates feline adaptability. However, this Disney story with a happy ending should also be read from rural sociology. Because this feline depends almost exclusively on the wild rabbit. 90% of your diet. Diseases, such as myxomatosis or viral hemorrhagic fever decimated its population. 212 died from accidents. And, when hunger strikes, the animal will seek new territories. That’s where the real problem begins. At some point, people will target the lynx. Beautiful and problematic. PACMA warned of the risk. Animal activists denounce deaths due to vehicles being run over and demand urgent and effective wildlife crossings. Ecologists in Action pointed out another enemy: illegal and poaching. Snares, poison and shooting kill dozens of cats a year. Artemisan Foundation, voice of the hunting sector, defended another position: that hunters have absolute control over predation in their reserves. When rabbits are scarce, lynx compete directly with shotguns. The school story has clothed the lynx with sympathy. He enjoys good press, with that amber look that is touching. Let’s take as an example the hatred suffered by the wolf or the brown bear. The demonstrations by ranchers against the wolf have paralyzed roads in Cantabria—although the story changes little by little–. The bear, in the Pyrenees and the Cantabrian mountain range, falls even worse. After all, the lynx weighs less than fifteen kilos, is elusive and rarely attacks larger livestock or calves, settling for partridges, rabbits and, if lucky, some absent-minded chicken. A close precedent. The wild boar is the best example in Spain. A couple of decades ago, seeing a wild boar brightened the day of a Sunday hiker. Today they affect crops on the plateau and cause fatal accidents on secondary roads, becoming an urban drama. The Generalitat of Catalonia declared constant hunting emergencies due to overpopulation. So the animal went from being a majestic pig to an official and destructive pest. Raids have been carried out for five years. Germany underwent an identical metamorphosis with the gray wolf. Politicians celebrated its return as an unprecedented ecological triumph and Berlin urbanites designed welcoming campaigns, until the shepherds of Lower Saxony suffered the direct consequences. German Green and Conservative Parties Now Openly Debating Lethal Hunting Quotas. Canada saw how the populations of pumas and black bears They multiplied near high-income residential areas, where cities like Vancouver or Banff celebrate their mystical connection with nature, until they began attacking pets, scaring children in public parks and sneaking into gardens. The shadow of the Iberian lynx. Seeing how it is expanding, with Álava as the tip of the spear, the question is whether beyond the Gorbea massif they will begin to sneak into private farms with greater frequency, whether they will hunt poultry and attack small rabbit farms. Hontza Natura Elkartea documented the discovery but Euskadi lacks an official reintroduction plan for this species. And we want wild and vibrant nature, yes, but away from our garage, without personal risks. Image | Flickr (Gerardo González Fernández) In Xataka | Wolf hunting throughout Spain depended on a red button that changes its status. And Europe has decided to press it In Xataka | We have managed to make the dire wolves return after 10,000 years of being extinct. The problem is that “come back” may not be the right word.

We thought that growing up defined the genus ‘Homo’ from its beginnings. Massive analysis proves we were wrong

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For decades, paleoanthropology has tried to decipher at what exact moment in our family tree we took the big “growth spurt” in our height to go from being relatively small people to the heights we see today in our environment. The classical anatomical belief held that the appearance of our genus was accompanied by a drastic and immediate increase in body size, but little by little We are learning more exact details. A new study recently published point out that the evolution of our body mass was not a sudden jump that defined all the first humans equally at the same moment, but rather a much more complex and gradual process than we thought. What we believed. Traditionally, several evolutionary models suggested that the origin of the genus Homo marked an abrupt anatomical boundary. It was assumed that the first humans quickly developed bodies much larger than those of the australopithecines, thus justifying new locomotor and energetic adaptations for the new ‘functions’ that we would acquire on a daily basis. To test these competing hypotheses, the research team has not simply compared fossil estimates in isolation, but has used advanced statistical tools on a data set composed of 386 specimens spanning 21 different taxa. This methodological rigor allows us not only to compare raw sizes, but also to take into account phylogenetic non-independence, size variation within the same species and the margins of uncertainty inherent to the fossil record itself. When did we take the growth spurt? The results of the analysis are statistically conclusive and rewrite the previous consensus, since, contrary to the classic hypotheses, the researchers found very weak support for the idea that the increase in size was a defining and transversal characteristic of the entire genus. Homo. Instead, the data show strong evidence that the marked increase in body mass occurred exclusively in species of Homo later, explicitly excluding the Homo habilis. That is, the first representatives of our genus continued to maintain a relatively modest size and the true biological leap that led us to scale our body proportions occurred later in the evolutionary lineage. It wasn’t that simple. As New Scientist points out, understanding body size is essential to understanding our past. However, for scientific rigor, the article of PNAS It stands as the essential primary source compared to more generalist readings, since, while there are voices that tend to look for immediate “cause and effect” narratives, the strict biological data of this study demonstrate that human evolution rarely works with changes that occur overnight all at once. That is why this work eliminates the “noise” of previous speculation by integrating multiple variables into a single analytical framework, and the result is that it was selective pressures and millions of years that modeled the physiology and size of the modern human being. In Xataka | The first “social network” in history is 57,000 years old, it was made up of hunters and gatherers and served to avoid extinction

Cancer in people under 50 years of age has been growing for decades. A macro study finally points to the big culprit: biological aging

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The increasing incidence of cancer in young adults is one of the most debated topics in recent oncology. In recent years, exhaustive reviews have warned of an increase in diagnoses in those under 50 years of agealthough medical science had long been searching for the underlying mechanism that connects the dots between modern lifestyle and the early onset of this hated disease. The answer. A new study recently published seems to have found a key piece of the puzzle, which is nothing more than that our cells are aging faster than our ID card. This is the conclusion of research published in the journal Nature that indicates that accelerated biological aging is associated with a greater risk of developing early-onset cancers, especially solid cancers such as lung, stomach and also uterine cancer. Two concepts. To understand the finding, we must first differentiate between chronological age and biological age. The first of these is immovable, since it is nothing more than the years that have passed since our birth. But biological age is flexible, since it is calculated by evaluating the physiological state of a person through blood biomarkers and metabolic profiles. It reflects how “old” our tissues and organs really are. How to measure them. To measure this, Tian’s team used models already consolidated in scientific literaturesuch as PhenoAge and the Klemera-Doubal method. With these tools, they crossed the data of more than 150,000 adults from the UK Biobank and approximately 10,000 program participants. All of Us of the United States. The result shows a dangerous imbalance. This means that those people born in more recent decades had a greater tendency to have a biological age higher than that corresponding to their date of birth. And this time “jump” has direct clinical consequences such as the appearance of cancer. To be more specific, it has been seen that every time we have a person with a biological age higher than their corresponding age, they have an 8% higher risk of having early-onset solid cancer before the age of 50. If we compare the extremes, individuals located in the tertile with the greatest biological aging have a 15% greater risk of developing the disease compared to those in the tertile with the least biological wear and tear. The context. The main thing is not to fall into alarmism, since, although it is true that cancer is increasing in the youngest people in society, it is also increasing in all remaining bands due to multiple factors such as general population aging and better screening methods that allow us to detect cancer earlier. However, the specific data on early onset are undeniable, since large studies point to significant increases in thyroid, breast, colon, kidney and endometrial tumors in the 20 to 49 age group. Colorectal cancer, specifically, is the one that worries the most due to its escalation in young adults. The lifestyle. That we are biologically aging much faster than we should is not magic, but rather it seems to be influenced by different factors related to lifestyle. These include rates of youth obesity, prolonged consumption of diets rich in ultra-processed foods, a sedentary lifestyle, and exposure to environmental toxins. What this new work provides is the quantification of the damage, since these risk factors accelerate the biological clock. We must keep in mind that the human body is exposed to pro-inflammatory factors for more years from early stages of life, which makes it easier for DNA damage to accumulate faster than cellular mechanisms can repair it. In Xataka | Experts agree about the sun and hair: “It is one of the most exposed areas and one of the most forgotten”

We have been growing lettuce in space for years. Now we have discovered that they are more likely to make us sick

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Bad news for astronauts who usually eat healthy. That is, for all astronauts. It has been almost ten years since the crew of the International Space Station consume vegetables they grow themselves in microgravity: lettuce, peppers, radishes. Some hot chili. More recently, the astronauts of the chinese space stationwhich already has lettuce, cherry tomatoes and chiveseven though it hasn’t been in orbit that long. The problem is that space salads They are not as safe for consumption as we thought.. A team of researchers from the University of Delaware has discovered that lettuce and other vegetables grown in microgravity are more prone to contamination by bacteria such as Salmonella. Until now, we thought that under microgravity conditions, plants tend to open their stomata (the small pores in their leaves and stems) more instead of closing them to prevent the invasion of pathogens. However, a recent job from the same laboratory has discovered that at the entrance of Salmonella enterica in the tissue was independent of stomatal density, and that the factor that best predicts it is the variety (cultivar) of lettuce together with the microgravity itself. Friendly bacteria also lose their protective effect In previous studies, researchers explored the use of a friendly bacteria, B. subtilis, as a solution to the problem. However, the bacteria, which on Earth help plants fight pathogens, failed to protect them in it simulated microgravity environmentsuggesting that space significantly changes the interaction between plants and microbes. The finding is important. Not only because it calls into question whether salads on the International Space Station are completely safe, but also because it helps understand the challenges of agriculture in future space colonies. Now, anyway, we have another solution: use red lettuce. Probably, the higher content of phenols and antioxidants protects them from salmonella and the data suggests that selecting varieties with these traits could improve the food security of space crops. With population growth on Earth and the loss of agricultural land, space is an increasingly realistic option for growing food. But if they want prevent a salmonellosis outbreakfuture space farmers better wash their hands thoroughly with soap and water. A previous version of this article was published in February 2024 Image | NASA/Cory Huston In Xataka | NASA astronauts will eat their first lettuce from a garden in space today

If Mercadona wants to continue growing, it needs to dominate the online channel. Now you have your first semi-automated warehouse

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Not everything is white label and pre-cooked food in Mercadona’s strategy. Although the Valencian company is transforming part of its stores in ‘merchants’spaces where customers can eat dishes already cooked in the supermarket, their commercial commitment also involves the opposite pole: attracting those families who choose to stay at home and make their purchases remotely. Only in 2025 the online channel reported 1.1 billion to the company, which explains why it has just released a new mega warehouse in Madrid with which he wants to revolutionize his distance sales. In fact, he calls it a “Semi-Automated Hive.” What has happened? What Mercadona just opened a warehouse in the La Atalayuela industrial estate, in Villa de Vallecas (Madrid), which aspires to mark a before and after in its online sales channel. The reason: although the Valencian chain already has six other similar warehouses, spread across Valencia, Barcelona, ​​Alicante, Seville and the Community of Madrid itself, where it manages another two in Getafe and Boadilla del Monte, none of them is comparable to the one in Vallecas. Why is it different? The other six “hives” (the name with which Mercadona refers to this type of warehouse) work with operators and machinery, but the one it has activated in La Atalayuela is the first semi-automated one in its network. That is, the new warehouse incorporates 70 robots that will be responsible for directly managing 2,700 non-perishable goods, which will in turn simplify the tasks that depend on the operators. “The worker no longer walks through aisles to locate the products, but rather the product arrives at the order preparation station,” clarify. Do we know anything else? Yes. The new warehouse does not only stand out for its operation, it also stands out for its size. Round the 32,000 square meterswhich makes it the largest “Hive” in the network managed by Mercadona. To build it, the company has invested 54 million euros and formed a staff of 700 people. Its objective is to be able to attend up to 5,000 orders per day, which would raise Mercadona’s total capacity in the Community of Madrid to 8,000 if the warehouses that already operate in Getafe and Boadilla del Monte are taken into account. The firm aims to cover 95% of the locations in the region this year. Why is it important? Because, beyond what it may mean for the service it provides in Madrid, the new warehouse also tells us about Mercadona’s strategy. The chain has been betting on its white label and the section ‘Ready to eat’which basically offers customers an assortment of already cooked dishes. The bet is going reasonably well: the latest data that has emerged shows that in 2025 the company will invoice in Spain 700 million of euros through this last route, a figure that rises to 3,000 million if the entire business of pre-cooked foods in the national and Portuguese markets is included. Although the online channel includes a section of “prepared dishes”the ‘Ready to eat’ section basically relies on face-to-face sales in stores. In fact, in some stores Mercadona even offers spaces with tables and chairs where customers can eat, just as if they were in a bar. The new Colmena aims at a different business niche: that of distance sales. And how are you doing in that business? In your latest annual report Mercadona revealed that in 2025 the “reinforcement” of its online purchasing model allowed it to increase turnover through that channel by 26%, surpassing the barrier of 1,000 million euros for the first time. To be more precise, the Valencian company was talking about a cash flow of 1,061 million euros thanks to both the activity of its “Hives” and the 218 physical stores that offer the service. In addition to opening warehouses, Mercadona has made two major improvements in this channel in recent years: it has enabled its website to make it accessible to customers with vision problems and it has incorporated Bizum as a payment method. Images | Mercadona In Xataka | In Spain, eating has become a procedure that must be quick and easy. And that is making gold for the supermarkets that prepare dishes

The advanced chip business is growing so fast that it cannot keep up

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ASML, the Netherlands-based company that makes the most advanced integrated circuit production machines, had planned to hire 600 new employees in Taiwan this year. Finally she was forced to revise upwards your hiring plan. In 2026 they will arrive at their facilities on this Asian island 1,000 new additions. Grace Wang, the vice president and general manager of ASML in Taiwan, has declared that this change has been brought about by the insatiable demand for chips for artificial intelligence (AI). ASML does not manufacture semiconductors, but its equipment extreme ultraviolet photolithography (UVE) are being used by TSMC, SK Hynix, Samsung, Intel and Micron to produce the advanced integrated circuits that data centers demand. Especially CPU, GPU and HBM type DRAM memories (High Bandwidth Memory or high bandwidth memory). In fact, this company alone occupies the first link in the global chip manufacturing chain because it is the only one that produces EUV lithography machines. Be that as it may, Grace Wang’s declaration of intent responds to an unappealable reality: Taiwan is the industrial heart of this Dutch company. ASML manufactures components on this island and assembles UVE lithography equipment which it subsequently delivers to its local customers. These operations are also carried out in the Netherlands, but there are two compelling reasons why Taiwan is enormously relevant to ASML’s business: its best customer and its biggest focus on its global customers reside there. TSMC is ASML’s largest customer A determining factor that is promoting ASML’s expansion in Taiwan is its close relationship with TSMC, the largest manufacturer of integrated circuits of the planet. The operations of this company on the island currently generate 8.3 billion eurosa quarter of ASML’s global revenue. And much of that money comes from the coffers of TSMC, which is building new advanced semiconductor production plants in Taiwan, Japan, Germany and the US. ASML is building a facility in New Taipei that costs about $954 million. However, ASML’s Taiwan branch is not just hiring more staff (it currently has 4,500 employees on this island); is also building a new facility in New Taipei that costs about 954 million dollars. Their plan is for this plant to begin operating before the end of 2026 and to house about 2,000 employees in its initial phase. We still don’t know for sure what this factory will do, but it will probably combine component production, EUV machine assembly, and technical support to customers, primarily TSMC. ASML’s infrastructure in Taiwan is distributed between two cities with very specialized functions. Linkou is responsible for reconditioning chip manufacturing equipment, producing grating manipulators for deep ultraviolet (DVP) machines, and cleaning UVE collectors. Tainan, however, serves as a large global customer service center. And in a few months, as we have just seen, the New Taipei plant will be ready. The future of ASML is promising even though US sanctions They prevent it from selling its most sophisticated machines to its Chinese customers. Image | ASML More information | DigiTimes Asia In Xataka | The chip of the future comes from Japan: it is 1,000 times faster than current semiconductors and does not heat up

Separations between people over 50 are growing. And there are two words that explain it: gray divorce

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The term may be striking, but one thing must be recognized: it does not leave much room for misunderstanding. The “gray divorces” They are neither more nor less than that, separations carried out by couples with gray hair, spouses who are over 50 years old and often have been married for several decades. Until not long ago they were a relatively strange phenomenon; But as the population pyramid widened at its upper end and society changed, they have gained weight. So much, in fact, that there are already experts investigating its causes to understand them better. New times, new trends. Divorces with last name. There is nothing written about love. About heartbreak, either. There are those who end their marriages just a few years after saying “I do”, those who do so after decades and those who sign the divorce papers after the age of 60, when both spouses have gray hair. Sociologists and academics specialized in demographic phenomena have even given the latter a name: “gray divorces”. The term is not entirely new. In 2004 I used it and to the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) and in 2012 researchers from the Bowling Green State University They even spoke of a “gray divorce revolution”, but since then it has attracted the attention of more and more experts. Today the expression is replicated in a good number of essaysincluding a extensive article published in 2024 in Sage Journal and that seeks to investigate its causes. A rising phenomenon. It takes reviewing some figures to understand that interest. In the US, the divorce rate among adults at least 50 years old has more than duplicate in a matter of two decades to the point that in 2010 almost 25% of separations could be considered “gray divorces”. Some experts have detected that their incidence has stabilized over the last decade or that they have even decreased after the pandemic, but still almost 40% of the people who decided to dissolve their marriages in the US in 2022 were still over 50 years old. Beyond the USA. The phenomenon is not exclusive to the US. The INE also leaves some brush strokes interesting about what is happening in Spain. For example, almost a third (31.8%) of divorces made official in 2024 were carried out by couples who had been married for at least two decades. Another key fact is that, although the highest number of separations occurs between spouses who are in their forties (40 to 49 years old), the average age at which they decide to follow different paths has not stopped growing in recent years until it is approaching 50. Among men it is already close to 49 years old. In general, the INE estimates that over the last three decades, senior divorces, between couples over 50, have skyrocketed by around 40%. Accented from 65 onwards. “Divorce in old age is increasing in the Western world, even in family-oriented societies like Israel, in which the most common family status for older adults, aged 60 or over, is to be in a long-term heterosexual marriage with adult children,” a group of researchers from the University of Haifa reflected a few months ago in an article focused precisely on the drift and causes of gray divorces. In their analysis, they also see a particularly marked increase among couples with members who are 65 or even older. Average age of spouses at divorce (YEARS) Women Men 2015 43.8 46.3 2016 44.2 46.7 2017 44.8 47.2 2018 45.2 47.6 2019 45.5 47.9 2020 45.6 48.2 2021 45.5 47.8 2022 45.9 48.4 2023 46.2 48.7 2024 46.6 49 And why do they separate? The big question. And there is no single answer. The first and obvious thing is that not only those who get divorced have changed; society itself has done it, increasingly older in regions like Europe or the US. Considering that the average age of Americans has gone growing gradually since the 1970s or that the population over 64 years of age hasn’t stopped to gain weight, it makes sense that there are also more and more divorces involving couples who have blown out all 50 candles. life expectancy has been stretched Furthermore, which broadens the life horizon of couples. “Your ability to enjoy has improved”. “In these societies, older adults enjoy relatively good health and functioning, and these conditions have improved their ability to enjoy life,” they add the Halifa researchers, who point both to the transformations of the population pyramid and at the cultural and social level. “Later-life divorce is increasing due to changes in marital and family structures and demographic trends.” Although that is the general framework, there are those who appreciate important nuances. After observing a slight drop in divorce rates among couples aged 50 to 60 from 2022, a study Recent research from Bowling Green State University raises an interesting reflection: gray divorces could be “largely” a phenomenon associated with couples Baby Boomersformed by spouses born around the middle of the 20th century. One process, two phases. During your studio Researchers at the University of Halifa discovered something else: they concluded that divorces that occur after the age of 50 or even in old age are usually the result of a “complex” and long process, lasting several years, during which two well-differentiated phases can be identified. “The first, continuous and prolonged, is that of staying together despite the distance. The second captures the moment of the final decision to separate, with a point of no return or inflection and several accelerating factors in the background.” The experts too have identified two large layers in divorces between older couples: the “interpersonal” and the “demographic”, such as increased life expectancy. Of the two, the most curious are the first, since – the researchers highlight – they do not differ much from the reasons that lead younger couples to break up: distancing, infidelities, health or financial problems, poor communication, behavioral changes or an imbalance of roles in the home. Second … Read more

We have been growing rice for 9,000 years under the same thermal rule. We’re about to break it forever

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The rice It is not just another cerealbut it is the fundamental pillar that supports the diet of more than half of the world’s population. For millennia, humanity has relied on its ability to thrive in different latitudes and feed entire civilizations, but now we are about to bring this ancient crop to to unknown territory due to the increase in temperatures we are experiencing. They are documenting it. Rice has a limit to the conditions it can withstand in order to thrive, and science has sounded the alarm by pointing out that the thermal tolerance of rice has remained practically constant for the last 9,000 years, but now, in a matter of decades, we are about to break this barrier. A thermal limit. The research work has focused mainly on cross-referencing archaeological data from millennia ago with contemporary records of cultivation and future climate projections. In this way, after tracing the evolution of rice cultivation over the millennia, researchers discovered that its historical limits have barely changed. This means that ancient civilizations planted rice under temperature conditions surprisingly similar to the maximum temperatures supported by the current varieties we use. This is why the bug, evolutionarily speaking, has not adapted to extreme heat that it had never experienced before. The increase in temperature. The study estimates that, towards the end of the century, the geographical area that will exceed thermal thresholds could multiply between 10 and 30 times in the main rice-growing countries of Asia. This means that the regions that are now the world’s rice granaries could become biologically hostile to the plant, not allowing it to grow. The first cracks. It is not necessary to go to the year 2100 to see the effects of this crisis, but thermal stress is already affecting rice fields. This is evidenced by a recent study that analyzed the practical cultivation of rice in China and showed that global warming is already altering the rules of the game. According to this workthe increase in temperatures is causing alterations in the life cycles and flowering of the plant, in addition to a worse use of the thermal resource in several of the most important rice-growing areas of the Asian giant. In other words: extreme heat is desynchronizing the rice’s biological clock, making the plant less efficient at growing and producing grain. Its consequences They do not focus only on withered plants, but also translate into a drastic drop in production globally. Already in 2017, published research warned of plausible rice yield losses under future climate warming, and now we are seeing that the hotter the heat, the less grain per ear. The social problem. Something to keep in mind is that, although the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide can increase plant growth, the reality is that its effects are distributed tremendously unevenly. Here science warns that these climate alterations are increasing the achievement gap between low-income and middle- and high-income countries. This also means that, while the richest nations will be able to invest in new infrastructure, cooling systems for crops or genetically modified varieties to be more resistant, the nations most dependent on rice will suffer the onslaught of production losses without being able to do almost anything. Race against the clock. A priori, we cannot trust that the natural evolution of rice will save us, because if we look back, we will see that if the thermal limit of the crop has not changed in 9,000 years, it will not do so magically in the next five decades. This means that alternatives must now be considered to save the most basic food or even prepare for a restructuring of agricultural areas in Asia. In Xataka | Spanish rice is discovering that there is something worse than droughts and pests: rice from Myanmar and Cambodia

Mercadona is growing more than ever and still has the capacity to grow more. The game is played in the north

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He who leads always leads, even if he does not always lead the same way. It sounds like a tacky tongue twister, I know; but that phrase sums up well the place that Mercadona occupies in the national distribution sector. We have been repeating for years that the Valencian chain is the one that takes largest portion of the “pie” of the sector, with a business quota 27% at the state level, but that reality is not equally forceful throughout Spain. For example, in Levante its footprint skyrockets to almost 34% while in the northwest it remains at 18.2%, only three points above its most direct competitor in that region, Eroski. What does that mean? That there is a part of Spain in which the company has ample room for growth. And in a way the Duero marks it. The general photo. Whether or not you are satisfied with your commercial offer or corporate strategythere is something that cannot be denied: Mercadona has known how to play its cards well. The company led by Juan Roig has managed to gain a share in its sector that is close to 30%. And that the distribution is not un simple business in Spain, where the super regional and ultra low-cost. NielsenIQ estimates that by the end of 2025 that footprint was 29.5%0.3% more than in 2024. Worldpanel by Numerator lowers it slightly until it is in 27%. In any case, the reading is the same: the Valencian company clearly dominates, comfortably ahead of its most direct competitors, Carrefour and Lidl. It has even made a more than respectable place for itself in the portuguese marketwhere it has carved out a 7% distribution share in just a decade. Paying attention to the map. The above will surprise few. What is striking is that just revealed Expansion based on data from Worldpanel by Numerator: Mercadona may be the sector leader in value share, but that dominance is not equally solid throughout Spain. Its great fiefdom is in what the consultancy calls ‘Levante’, an area made up of the Valencian Community, Murcia and Albacete. There its share reaches 33.6%. Not only is it the highest percentage in the entire Spanish geography and it is seven percentage points above the chain’s national share. It also doubles the mark of its main competitor, Consum, which remains at 16.8%. The ‘photo’ It is completed by Carrefour, with 7.9% of the pie, Lidl (5.2%) and Family Cash (2.9%). Are there more cases? Of course. The other region in which Mercadona has gained the largest share in value is the Canary Islands, with 31.9%, ten points above the next chain on the list, Dinosol (21.1%). In the ‘South’ territory (Andalusia and Badajoz) the firm’s footprint also exceeds 30% (31.5%). The results of Mercadona are equally strong in the ‘Central’ region (Madrid, Cáceres and part of Castilla-La Mancha, Castilla y León and Aragón), where it reaches 27.5%, and ‘Northwest’ (Catalonia and the rest of Aragón), with 26.2%. In all cases the same photograph is repeated, replicated in the areas of Madrid and Barcelona: Mercadona far surpasses its main territorial rival. The northern redoubt. The really interesting thing is, however, in the northern Atlantic and Cantabrian seas. The Worldpanel data by Numerator They show that Mercadona is still a leader there, but in a much less emphatic way. First because its quota is much lower than that held in Levante or the Canary Islands. Second, because it does not maintain much of an advantage over its competitors. The most revealing case is the ‘North-Central’ (Cantabria, Navarra, Palencia, Burgos, La Rioja and the Basque Country), a territory in which Mercadona’s footprint is 19.1%. It is enough to be dominant, but it is only one percentage point behind Eroski (18.1%). In third place is Carrefour (9.8%). It is a scenario similar to what we find in Galicia, Asturias and León, what the consultancy calls ‘Northwest’. Mercadona registers its lowest share in that region, 18.22%. Second place is once again occupied by Eroski (15.1%), followed by Gadisa (10.1%), Carrefour (6.8%) and Alimerka (5.8%). Click on the image to go to the tweet. Why is it important? Beyond the fact that these percentages help us better understand how the company is distributed and how it has managed to dominate the market at a national level, the regional results from Worldpanel by Numerator leave an interesting reading about Mercadona: its future largely passes through the north of the peninsula, where it has greater room for growth. When we decide where to make the purchase, we not only evaluate the prices and variety of the assortment, we also take into account factors such as proximity or more subjective values ​​such as taste or loyalty to a brand. Together they form a ‘barrier’ that determines how far a company’s share can go. At the moment Mercadona has managed to extend its footprint nationwide to 27%. It is not unreasonable to think that even has not hit the ceilingbut the fact that in the northwest area it is only 18.2% and in the Cantabrian Sea it is around 19% suggests that in those territories the margin for growth is much broader and clearer. Not everything is advantages. No, of course. The data published by Expansion They also reveal that the leadership of the Valencian chain is much weaker in the northwest and the area made up of the Basque Country, Navarra, La Rioja and the north of Castilla y León, where it is only one point ahead of its regional rival, Eroski. This makes it easier for them to be overtaken and to see their position threatened. After all, Mercadona has not been established throughout the country for the same amount of time. In Vigo, without going any further, I only had two stores in mid-2013. And that is a city of almost 300,000 inhabitants, the largest in the entire northwest of the peninsula. If it wants to establish itself, Roig’s company will have to erode the share of … Read more

TVs have not stopped growing. LG now has a range that reaches 115 inches, although the key lies elsewhere

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If anyone had doubts about where the television market is moving, just look at the size of the models that are gaining ground in stores and in catalogs. We have been seeing inches rise relentlessly for years, and the data reinforces that impression. The size of TVs in Europe has been growing at an average rate of 1.2 inches per year. Therefore, when a brand like LG now shows a 115-inch TVwhat we see is not an isolated extravagance, but the most recent expression of a very clear trend. The South Korean brand has presented its new QNED evo Mini LED 2026 range in Europe, a family with which it wants to reinforce its presence in the high-end LCD/LED televisions. We are not talking about a single eye-catching model, but rather a line designed to cover different sizes and uses within the home. So we see a movement that does not seem to be limited to a market trend, but rather to turn it into a broader product proposition. Not everything in this range revolves around size If the size is the first thing that catches your attention, the technical sheet is what really supports the discourse of this range. According to LG, the new QNED evo Mini LED 2026 are based on Dynamic QNED Color Proin Precision Dimming Ultra technology and in the Alpha 8 Gen 3 processor to elevate color, brightness and contrast, especially on large diagonals. The underlying idea is clear: that the image does not lose strength as the panel grows. The company also adds features such as AI Super Upscaling, AI Picture Pro and Dynamic Tone Mapping Pro, while the sound is in the hands of AI Sound Pro, which promises a virtual 11.1.2 channel experience from the integrated speakers. All this technical deployment is not fully understood until we bring it down to real use. LG presents this range as a proposal designed for those who want to set up a more versatile system at home, whether to watch movies, follow sports or play games. This includes features such as VRR support up to 165 Hz on the 115-inch model, AMD FreeSync Premium, ALLM and a Motion Booster that, according to the brand, can reach 330 Hz on compatible models. On paper, these are serious credentials for anyone looking for fluidity and quick response, although the final experience will depend, as always, on how these televisions perform outside of the release. LG presents this range as a proposal designed for those who want to set up a more versatile system at home, whether to watch movies, follow sports or play games. But if we have learned anything in recent years, it is that a TV no longer plays everything on the panel. It also matters, and quite a bit, what happens when we start moving through its menus, its recommendations and its day-to-day functions. This is where webOS 26 comes in, the platform with which LG accompanies this new range and on which it mounts tools such as Voice ID to recognize profiles, AI Concierge to launch contextual suggestions and functions such as Sports Portal or Sports Alert to follow matches, schedules and results without leaving the ecosystem. Add to that multi-AI capabilities powered by Google Gemini and Microsoft Copilot. It is also convenient to place this family in its context, because here we are not facing the highest proposal in the entire catalog of the house. Within LG, the QNED evo Mini LED 2026 line is placed in the high range of LCD/LED televisions, just one step below OLED, which continues to be its great premium showcase. That nuance matters because it helps understand what the brand is trying to do with this renewal: offer an ambitious alternative for those who want large screens, advanced functions and a clearly premium profile without necessarily entering the OLED field. Furthermore, the range is not reduced to a single format, but is deployed in various models and diagonals to adapt to different living rooms. However, there is an important part of this story that remains open. LG has said that Spanish users will be able to access this range in the coming months, but for now the new QNED evo Mini LED 2026 line It does not yet appear in the LG Spain catalog. This means that we still have no official prices and no more specific commercial date for our market. What this announcement does make clear is the direction that the South Korean firm wants to take: accompany the growth of inches with a proposal loaded with technical arguments. The rest, including their real reception, will begin to be measured when these televisions can be truly purchased. Images | LG In Xataka | Blue was the problem: how PHOLED technology can end burn-in on OLED screens

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