highest

one of the fantasy films of 2025 is also among Gerard Butler’s highest rated

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It is one of Gerard Butler’s most highly rated roles (“honestly, a masterpiece” he said. one of the users of the AlloCiné website), although it is not exactly one of his best-known interpretations. And in fact, it was not the first time that Butler gave life to Stoick the Vast: he had already given him a voice in the animated films of ‘How to train your dragon’. However, it was with the live-action version, released in 2025, where he earned the applause of websites such as the aforementioned AlloCiné, where he has the best score of all his performances, ahead of more popular films such as ‘300’. You can check if the hype it’s for both Movistar Plus and SkyShowtime. In the film we will travel to the island of Berk, where Vikings and dragons have been killing each other for generations without anyone being very clear about the reason for this conflict. Hiccup is the son of Chief Stoick and the Viking least prepared for war: he prefers to think rather than strike, and that makes him an embarrassment to his father and the laughingstock of the town. Everything changes when he wounds a dragon, which instead of finishing off he decides to heal and understand. The friendship that is born between the two dismantles everything Hiccup thought he knew about dragons, and ends up forcing his entire island to choose between tradition and change. The ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ saga was born in 2003 with Cressida Cowell’s novels, which sold more than sixteen million copiesand jumped to the movies in 2010 with the help of Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders, the same tandem that would later direct ‘Lilo and Stitch’ separately. Fifteen years later, DeBlois returned alone behind the camera, marking a very special milestone: it was the first time that the original director of an animated film also directed his own live-action remake. The film also has a very pronounced emotional component for Butler: during the production of the film in Belfast his mother fell ill, so the actor frequently traveled to Scotland on weekends to accompany her. Finally, he died shortly before the world premiere of this live-action adaptation. The film paid an emotional tribute to him, with a few lines of dedication in its credits. In Xataka | Two hours of claustrophobic melodrama that not even Tarantino could endure: “I saw it in the cinema and I barely made it to the credits”

To the question of which Spaniard has the highest quality semen, the answer is clear: it is not the people of Madrid.

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Semen also has geography. And in Spain, Madrid does not fare well. Let’s assume that semen quality has been declining for decades. In Spain it has fallen 28% in just 15 years, a 78% if we value the last two decades. That is to say, a concentration of sperm is produced so low that it is less than half of what it was in the 70s. And it continues in constant regression. With this breeding ground, the question is: and which region is coping best with this decline? Alcohol and coffee have nothing to do with each other. The investigation analyzed 386 men seen in seven Spanish fertility clinics—such as the Bernabeu Institute—between 2024 and 2025. After adjusting variables such as body mass index, exercise, and alcohol, tobacco, or coffee consumption, the authors observed that men from the north recorded the best seminal parameters, even when their habits were similar to those of other regions. This gives us a clue to talk about pollution, environmental inequality and public health. The results have been presented at the 42nd congress of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE). AND In it we can find clear differences in semen quality depending on the area in which the donors live. Those who win this game are the residents of the north, with Asturias and Cantabria far ahead of Madrid and the center of the peninsula. But there is fine print. More agile, faster. The total count of motile sperm is striking, almost double in the north than in the central area. In data: 94.35 million on average compared to 50.11 million in the central area. This index talk about health: “the northern region also presented the highest average sperm concentration (80.96 million/ml) and sperm motility (44.79%), compared to 55.4% in southern Spain and 53.4% ​​in the center.” If diet, exercise or substance use alone do not draw this map of semen quality, what does? The first conjectures point to a population that breathes worse, drinks and involuntarily incorporates into its body part of the atmospheric pollution, a mixture of industrial and agricultural toxins, where endocrine disruptors in plasticspesticides and everyday cosmetics. Out of the pot. Beyond Spain, the pattern repeats itself: studies with fertile men In cities such as Copenhagen, Paris, Edinburgh and Turku, they already showed in the early 2000s that the Finns had the highest sperm concentrations while the Danes recorded the lowest values, with also variations in mobility depending on the city. If we take a look at the retrospective analyzes of French donors found significant differences within the country itself in volume, concentration, and total number of sperm. The north wins again. In general, the men of the nordic west They have worse semen quality than those from the Baltic area, in parallel with a higher incidence of testicular cancer, another marker of male reproductive stress. Does better semen equal more pregnancies? Not necessarily, but almost. Let us keep in mind that, although the relationship with fertility is not linear, below certain thresholds of concentration and mobility, the probability of spontaneous pregnancy decreases considerably. To understand what “better semen” means, it is worth going down a level. According to the World Health Organization, reference values ​​are measured in concentration (millions of sperm per milliliter), ejaculate volume, percentage of motile sperm and proportion of sperm with morphology considered normal. It is necessary to distinguish between progressive sperm (the vanguard that advances efficiently), versus non-progressive and completely immotile ones. In morphology, the shape of the head, middle piece and tail (flagellum) is evaluated, since anatomical alterations can make fertilization difficult. Plastics and fertility. By the way: nitrile and latex gloves release plastic microparticles and contaminate environmental measurements does not invalidate that the presence of endocrine disruptors in human tissue does not affect male fertility. The evidence is solid. For example, a 2023 study that analyzed 6 human testicles and 30 semen samples found microplastics both in tissue and fluid: around 0.23 ± 0.45 particles per milliliter in semen and 11.60 ± 15.52 particles per gram of testicle, with sizes mostly between 20 and 100 microns, finding polystyrene in testicles and polyethylene and PVC in semen. The problem is broader. The taboo of male fertility, treated as a private matter, has obscured problems that can be investigated as a collective indicator. And this deterioration does not respond, or not only, to individual behavior. The greatest weight lies in the place you livenot in the genes you carry. A cardinal clue: of course smoking, drinking or moving more or less matter, but it does not depend so much on personal decisions. A debate that is more political than folkloric (and health and regulatory). A cocktail of bisphenol A, methyl, ethyl, propyl and butylparabens, benzophenones and phthalate metabolites is directly associated with significant reductions in total and progressive sperm motility. Therefore, Asturias beating Madrid is not something to celebrate, but rather to raise the alarm about the qualities of the water – it will not be that good -, what pesticides are used nearby and what mix of chemicals goes through daily life. The tip of an iceberg that does not lie in who comes out better off, but rather in the cost of those who come out worse off. Images | Unsplash (1, 2 and 3) In Xataka | We already know how much we Spaniards masturbate at work (and what is more important: which communities win) In Xataka | If you are worried about the quality of your sperm, science has a clear recipe for you: ejaculate more

New York has discovered that its highest paid employee is not the mayor, it’s a plumber. It seemed impossible until they checked their schedule.

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In 1927, Al Capone’s accountants were not the ones who ended up putting him in court. They did it own financial records. When investigators began to review income, schedules and money movements, they discovered that the accounts told a very different story than the official one. Because many of the most striking investigations did not begin with a complaint, but with something simpler: carefully looking at a time sheet. The highest paid employee. The story begins last yeara time when, to everyone’s surprise, the highest-paid municipal employee in New York was not the mayor, nor the police chief, nor the head of the firefighters. No, it was Jakub Markowskia plumbing supervisor for the municipal public housing authority who entered $465,000. The figure immediately attracted attention because it practically placed him at the top of a workforce of some 350,000 public employees. A possible explanation and something more. The first investigations confirmed that a good part of that salary came from the crazy figure of almost 2,560 overtime hours accumulated during a single fiscal year. Translated into practice, it represents an average close to seven extra hours a day for an entire year, an extraordinary workload even for a service used to dealing with urgent breakdowns. However, when reviewing the municipal documentation an unexpected detail appeared: during that same period there was also at the head of two private companies plumbing workers who worked on dozens of jobs spread across some of the most exclusive neighborhoods in the city. It’s not the salary, it’s the time. That discovery completely changed the focus of the case. The New York Department of Buildings is now investigating whether the compatibility between both activities respected the regulations municipal and whether Markowski had the necessary authorization after being promoted in 2024 to a supervisory position related to fire safety. Not only that. Investigators are also analyzing whether he could exercise the direct supervision required by law in especially sensitive jobs, such as gas installations, while accumulating such a volume of activity. More and more doubts in the hours worked. The investigation also tries to clarify how their companies really worked. counted the new york times that, although Markowski was listed as a licensed plumber, several contractors recalled dealing primarily with another businessman, Robert Tarnawa, whose exact relationship to the work remains under scrutiny. Precisely this point is especially relevant because New York legislation requires that certain works be supervised directly and continuously by a licensed plumber. A case at the worst moment. The context doesn’t help either. The New York Housing Authority manages more than 240 residential complexes where nearly 300,000 people live and has a huge investment deficit for repair badly damaged buildings. In recent years, furthermore, the organization has been involved several scandals related to bribery, extortion and fraud overtime, which has increased scrutiny over any possible irregularities in the management of its resources. More questions than answers. To date, Markowski has not been formally accused of any wrongdoing and authorities insist that the investigation remains open. Nor has the details of the specific tasks that justified his thousands of overtime hours been made public, information requested by the own The New York Times through transparency legislation. What has become clear is that the story of New York’s highest-paid public employee has ceased to be that of an exceptional salary and has become that of an agenda that the authorities are examining minute by minute. As shared in the Times Attorney April McIver: “Allowing a single person to run a private plumbing company while serving as a city supervisor and logging more overtime than any other city employee is not only wasteful, it raises serious questions about the integrity, safety and oversight of the New York Housing Authority’s operations.” Image | sam valadi In Xataka | New York has launched its new and revolutionary garbage containers. Spain has been using them for years In Xataka | For decades we climbed this New York skyscraper without knowing that the screws that held it in place could not hold.

The business ‘Dream Team’ repeats as the best company and the highest valued manager in Spain

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If we think about which Spanish company is the best ratedit is very likely that Inditex, Mercadona, Banco Santander or Repsol are among the most repeated. The same thing happens when we talk about entrepreneurs who have founded them or managers who direct them. Names like Amancio Ortega, Juan Roig or Ana Botín are the first that come to mind. For the last 25 years, the corporate reputation business monitor Merco make a ranking with the best valued companies and managers in the country. In its 26th edition of Merco Empresas, the duo Inditex and Juan Roig have remained immovable on the podium as a company and manager best rated from Spain. Inditex, again at the top One more year, Inditex tops the list of the 200 companies with the best reputation in Spain. They are closely followed by Mercadona and Grupo Social Once, which complete a podium that barely changes from one year to the next. The Merco Empresas study is prepared based on 65,000 surveys, seven evaluations and 29 different sources, as detailed by the Merco Empresas study. Merco report. In fact, the top 5 of 2026 has not moved one place compared to the 2025 edition. But from sixth place onwards changes do appear. Caixabank rises two positions compared to the 2025 ranking and enters the top 6. The insurer Mapfre also improves its rating, going from tenth to eighth place, achieving 7,111 points from the experts. Coca-Cola, on the other hand, loses four positions and falls to tenth place. Repsol, Iberdrola, Caixabank, BBVA and Santander complete the top 10 best valued Spanish companies. Juan Roig, eight years unbeatable Something very similar happens in the leader ranking. Juan Roig, president of Mercadona, repeats as the highest-rated executive in Spain for the eighth year in a row, as confirmed by himself leader ranking. Ana Botín, executive president of Banco Santander, follows closely behind. Closing the top 3 is Amancio Ortega, followed by Marta Ortega, founder and non-executive president of the Inditex group respectively. This block already has several editions without changing ordersomething unusual in a ranking that measures public perception and not just the figures on a balance sheet of financial results. From fifth place onwards there are new developments. Josu Jon Imaz (Repsol) rises to sixth place and Pablo Isla (Nestlé) enters seventh. Isidre Fainé and Gonzalo Gortázar (CaixaBank) also climb positions compared to the previous year. Antonio Huertas (Mapfre) slips into tenth place after climbing five steps. Florentino Pérez (ACS Group) and María Dolores Dancausa (Bankinter), on the other hand, leave the top 10 this year. From the analysis of this reputation list, two clear conclusions can be drawn. The first is that both Mercadona and Inditex, as well as their directors and founders, are two examples of business success not so much for its good growth figuresbut for having achieved connect with your customerswhich are those that are taken into account in this type of listings. On the other hand, it is striking how the personality or image that a manager projects can even be above the perception levels of the company he or she directs. That is to say, the public recognizes the work of a manager like Ana Botón, placing her in second position but, on the other hand, Banco Santander has not achieved the same connection with users than its president, maintaining ninth position in the company ranking. Amancio Ortega, the boss who no longer commands but continues to weigh Amancio Ortega left the executive presidency of Inditex in 2011 and does not even have a management position in its investment arm Pontegadea. Since then he has lived away from the spotlight in La Coruña. But its shadow is still very long. Ortega continues to be the largest shareholder of the group, with more than 59% of the capital through Pontegadea, and will collect this year a record dividend of more than 3,234 million euros. Furthermore, he remains the only Spaniard among the ten richest in the world, according to the Forbes list of 2026. Ortega no longer signs decisions on a day-to-day basis at Inditex, however, even after his retirement, his name continues to occupy a prominent place in the ranking of managers best valued by the public. In Xataka | Mercadona is doing the opposite of other large companies: freezing Roig’s salary to reinvest it Image | GTRES, Mercadona

Mexico touches the sky with a new and elegant skyscraper of 484 meters and 99 floors. It will be the highest in all of Latin America

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For decades, it seemed that “the sky is the limit” applied to architecture was a maxim that only Asia and the Middle East reached. In fact, in recent times the world has witnessed a frantic race to see who has the biggest (skyscraper) between Dubai and Saudi Arabia. But there are some notable exceptions like the one that is about to premiere in Monterrey: the Tower Risea skyscraper that will not only be the tallest in the Central American country, but will also lead the skies of all of Latin America. If we open the range to the entire continent, it is only overshadowed by the mythical One World Trade Center in New York. The project. The Rise Tower is a mixed-use skyscraper that is being built in Monterrey (Nuevo León). It will have a height of 484 meters, of which 408 make up 96 residential floors and the remaining 76 make up the architectural spire that crowns the structure. More specifically, it will house residences, offices, a hotel, commerce and leisure facilities in a single structure, as is usual in skyscrapers of these characteristics, thus turning it into a city within a building. It will be located in the Obispado neighborhood, on Constitución Avenue in front of the Santa Catarina River, in one of the densest and most representative urban corridors of the city. The project is in charge by Nest and Ancore Group, has been designed by the Ancore architecture team and Mexican architect Esteban Ramos. Pozas Design Group and Next are responsible for its luxurious interior. Rise Tower layout diagram. Rise Why is it important. The Rise Tower will surpass the Torres Obispadowhich is also in Monterrey and is still the tallest skyscraper in the country. But once completed, it will officially be the tallest building in Latin America, a title that gives Mexico symbolic and technical leadership in the urban and architectural sector. Without going any further, it also moves the Great Santiago Tower in Chile. The building also positions Mexico in the world leagues of vertical architecture, a race dominated by Asia and the Middle East. For Mexico it is also a demonstration that the region can conceive, finance and execute projects at the scale of the world’s large urban centers and at the metropolitan scale, it can function as an engine for the repopulation of the urban center that favors investments in infrastructure. Context. Monterrey has been consolidating itself as the laboratory of vertical urbanism in Mexico for two decades. Without going any further, the construction of the Obispado Towers in 2020 had already surpassed the 300-meter barrier that defines it as “supertall.” The Rise Tower itself has been evolving since its first plans, when he aimed “only” 350 meters. The project is part of the trend of mixed-use supertalls that began to emerge in Asia and the Middle East since the 2000s and is now beginning to materialize in Latin America. Monterrey is in an area with wind and seismic activitywhich adds a layer of technical complexity to any potential design. In figures. Some numerical data of this stratospheric construction: 484 meters high: 408 habitable meters and 76 meters from the spire It will be the 13th tallest skyscraper in the world 35 levels of offices, 22 floors of apartments, 10 levels of luxury hotel 4,300 square meters of green areas and 8,000 square meters of leisure spaces. In detail. The tower has a rectilinear shape with a reinforced structural core and a perimeter framing system designed to withstand lateral loadssomething essential given that Monterrey is in a region where there is seismic activity and a lot of wind. The building envelope consists of a modular aluminum and glass curtain wall system, an aesthetically striking and effective combination for thermal control and management of dynamic wind pressures at high altitude. The concept of the façade is quite reminiscent of the architecture of mid-20th century skyscrapers. Points out The Civil Engineer The initial sketches suggested a more robust metallic aesthetic inspired by the historic Torre Latinoamericana in Mexico City (the grandfather of Mexican skyscrapers, built in 1956), but with the progress of construction, a greater presence of glass has become evident. In terms of sustainability, the project already has LEED Silver, Green Globes, Building EQ and Well certifications from the International Well Building Institute. For when? Construction began in 2023 and by March of this year the Rise Tower exceeded 306 meters and reached the 52nd floor, but there are still 170 meters left. The construction pace is high and in accordance with the governor’s statements from Nuevo León, Samuel García Sepúlveda, the inauguration is projected for the summer of 2026, before the FIFA World Cup. Nevertheless, other specialized sources They suggest that it will be delayed until the end of 2026 or even 2027. In Xataka | If the question is whether a skyscraper can be erased without demolishing it, Paris has the answer: yes, in exchange for a fortune In Xataka | Cancun has a huge bottleneck in its tourist area: Mexico is going to solve it with a megabridge Cover | Chorizowithegg and Rise Tower

NASA just classified the 2024 incident at its highest level

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When NASA launched the Commercial Crew programdid so with a clear idea: to partner with private companies that would design and operate their own ships under fixed-price contracts. Boeing and SpaceX have been part of this scheme since its origin, with the aim of guaranteeing regular manned access to low orbit. The Starliner manned test flight in June 2024 was to complete the technical validation process of the Boeing capsule before its certification, but anomalies detected during the mission completely altered the initial plan. Now, when officially classifying This test as a “Type A Incident”, NASA places what happened at the highest level of its incident scale and recognizes that the magnitude of the episode goes beyond a simple technical setback. What happened in 2024. On June 5, 2024, the CST-100 Starliner took off heading to the International Space Station on its first crewed flight with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on board. The mission was initially planned to last between eight and fourteen days as a comprehensive test of the system. However, during the approach They detected helium leaks and failures in the thrustersand NASA explained that a loss of maneuverability occurred as the crew approached the station, although control was regained before docking. The stay ended up extending up to 93 days and, after reviewing the flight data and performing tests on the ground, The space agency decided that the vehicle would return in September 2024 without the astronautswhich finally returned to Earth in March 2025 aboard SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission. A devastating report. The independent investigation team, formed in February 2025, examined the technical, organizational and cultural factors that contributed to the problems with the test flight. According to their conclusions, there was a combination of hardware failures, gaps in the qualification processes, leadership errors and cultural dysfunctions that generated risk conditions incompatible with the safety standards of the agency’s manned flight program. NASA has indicated that it accepts this document as the final report and that work to identify the technical root cause continues. What does “Type A mishap” (Type A Incident) mean? NASA uses this category as the highest level within its incident system. Let us remember that this definition includes cases such as damages exceeding 2 million dollars, the loss of control or destruction of a vehicle or the loss of human life. In the case of the Starliner flight, there were no injuries and, according to the agency, the mission regained control before docking, but there was a loss of maneuverability during the approach and associated financial damages. The designation recognizes that there was potential for a major mishap and that the conditions generated cannot be dismissed as a simple technical mismatch. SpaceX Dragon 2 NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman was explicit in addressing the cultural dimension of the problem. “It is decision-making and leadership that, if left unchecked, could create a culture incompatible with human spaceflight,” he declared at the press conference. The head of the agency maintained that the classification as “Type A mishap” seeks to “make things clear” and ensure that what happened is recorded appropriately for future learning. He also admitted that allowing the program itself to initially investigate itself was “incompatible with NASA’s safety culture,” a practice that, he explained, it has decided to correct. Boeing’s response. In a statement released after the report’s publicationthe company stated that it remains “committed to NASA’s vision of having two commercial crew providers” and thanked the agency for the research. Boeing maintains that in the 18 months since the test flight it has made progress in corrective actions to address the technical challenges detected and has driven cultural changes within the team. Images | POT In Xataka | NASA’s megarocket no longer leaks: Artemis 2 passes its vital test and clears the path to the Moon

The countries with the highest number of billionaires among their population, brought together in a very revealing graph

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The great fortunes they are not distributed uniformly across the planet. A few countries concentrate the majority of the world’s billionaires, while others barely contribute names to that exclusive club. The geographical distribution of extreme wealth leaves us with a snapshot that gives clues about which countries or tax policies encourage capital accumulation and they are the perfect breeding ground for generating wealth. In 2025, the wealth gap between the average population and the great fortunes has skyrocketed, but it has also left evidence of this difference between countries. The comparative graph prepared by Visual Capitalist allows you to compare this distribution in a very visual and direct way. The graph is powered by data provided by the study’Billionaire Ambitions Report 2025‘ prepared by UBS and the consulting firm PwC, in which an annual record of the number of billionaires is maintained. That is, people with assets exceeding one billion dollars at the beginning of the year. A billionaire factory To no one’s surprise, the US dominates by a wide margin the world ranking of countries according to the number of billionaires. The country hosts 924 people with a net worth of over a billion dollars, a figure that practically doubles that of the second-ranked player. This concentration also translates into a increase in joint wealthsince the sum of the US fortunes reaches a total of about 6.9 trillion dollars. China is in second place with 470 billionaires among its population. However, despite accounting for almost 50% of the billionaires in the US, their combined wealth is much lower, being close to 1.8 trillion dollars. That is to say, we only have half as many millionaires as the US, their combined assets are almost four times less. Third place on the list of countries with the most billionaires is occupied by India with 188 people with assets exceeding one billion dollars. Again, the comparison between India and China reveals a asynchronous growth between the number of millionaires and their total assets, with a combined capital of 888,000 million dollars. That is, with one third of China’s millionaires, the sum of the assets of the Indian magnates It is half of its Chinese counterparts. This reveals that a good number of Chinese millionaires have managed to overcome the billion-dollar barrier, but the accumulation of wealth from these great fortunes is not as pronounced as in other countries such as the US or India. The European map of billionaires Europe presents a internal distribution marked by notable differences between countries. According to data from the UBS report, Germany tops the European list with 156 billionairesbeing the main country on the continent in this aspect. Their combined fortune amounts to 692 billion dollars, which places them in a position alienated from the proportions of the United States or India. Common names also appear in the list in the lists of countries with millionaire populations, What are the United Kingdom like?which occupies fifth place with 91 billionairesor Switzerland with 84 great fortunes. In the following ranks are countries like Italy, which with 61 billionaires occupies the eighth position in number of great fortunes. France is also among the countries with outstanding figures, although well below these three leaders as it occupies thirteenth position in the ranking. In these cases, the harsh sales crisis in the Chinese and Asian markets for luxury products have seriously affected the balance sheets of exclusive brands like LVMH or Ferrariwhose owners are located as standard bearers of those great fortunes. The distribution of fortunes makes it clear that, even within Europethe concentration of billionaires tends to cluster in industrialized economies or with fiscal policies very oriented to capital returns. Spain takes positions Spain is not among the European countries with more billionairesalthough it has experienced recent growth in that select group. According to UBS data for 2025, the total number of Spanish billionaires who exceed the billion-dollar threshold It is 32 people. This figure places Spain as the seventeenth country with the most billionaires behind countries such as Germany, the United Kingdom or Italy in the continental ranking. The total combined wealth of the Spanish billionaires reaches $213.1 billion (about 182,602 million euros) in 2025, with an increase of 21.5% compared to previous years. However, in the Spanish case, the concentration of assets is not uniform, there is one figure that monopolizes a good part of that total assets: Amancio Ortega. In Xataka | Seven of the ten largest fortunes in the world in 2026 are due to AI: this illustrative graph makes it very clear Image | Visual Capitalist

AEMET prepares for “the highest hydrometeorological impacts in the world”

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As said Kevin Killeen“February is the worst month of the year, but it is an honest month.” And February 2026 is no exception in its honesty: the models gave historic rainfall throughout the Atlantic coast and the south of the peninsula and the rainfall is already here. The jet stream is going to pass over us so “constant and uniform” throughout the week. But it is not just the “concatenation of storms generated” by this, it is that “they are going to be fed with high moisture content” that comes directly from the Gulf of Mexico. What would have been excellent news three years ago has become a huge problem: this succession of storms arrives at a time when the soil cannot absorb even one more drop. A truly exceptional accumulation. To land the data, the latest models accumulated dan for this week of more than 100-150mm and up to 300 in areas of Galicia, Extremadura and Andalusia. In the case of Andalusia, in fact, the situation will be very complicated due to the extension of the Guadalquivir valley and the composition of its soil. More than 200mm are expected at the head of the river and a homogeneous average of 100mm in the basin. That, added to the fact that “The soil is clay and its use is agricultural.“, the filtration is very scarce. This has turned the flooding of the rivers and streams in the Guadalquivir basin and adjacent areas (such as the Guadalete or the Mediterranean basins of Granada) into a ticking bomb. “The highest hydrometeorological impacts in the world”. As Martín León explainedis not a figure of speech, it is an enormous risk: the highest impacts in the world are expected. In fact, as the hours pass, the predictions they seem to get worse and floods, overflows and landslides seem inevitable. The first symptoms of flooding, in fact, have already been detected in Andalusia via satellite. How normal is this? To emphasize that we are not facing a normal situation, it is enough to take a look at the ECMWF EFIthe index that measures how extreme the atmospheric phenomena are: the entire south-southwest of the peninsula is in red, the highest level. Rain on wet. But, as I say, that is not the main problem. The main problem is that, after these days of heavy rain, the soil is extremely saturatedthe reservoirs are being forced to drain and the system’s retention capacity is at minimum levels. In mountain areas, water it’s starting to flow directly from the ground. To this we can add that the Pyrenees and the rest of the northern mountains they have a historic snow pack. We are, as all models show, in the middle of a perfect storm. This means that the Hydrographic Confederations will have a lot of work and the problems have only just begun. Special attention will have to be paid to rivers, streams and areas at risk of land displacement. Complicated hours are approaching and any precaution will be insufficient. Image | WXCharts In Xataka | Spain is preparing for a “festival” of storms in February: with more rain than normal and hardly any cold

we have the highest unemployment in the EU and also the lowest number of job vacancies

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Spain presents a phenomenon that at first glance seems contradictory: although it maintains one of the highest unemployment rates among advanced countries, it also registers one of the lowest proportions of vacancies in the EU. Understand this paradox It requires looking beyond the numbers and analyzing how employment supply and demand really work in the Spanish labor market. According to According to the INE, the unemployment rate in Spain is 10.5%, being the highest in the OECD compared to other developed countries, where the average is around 4.5%. At the same time, according to data According to Eurostat, the vacancy rate in Spain is only 0.9%, well below the European average of 2.1%. What is a vacancy? To understand why this combination occurs, it is helpful to define what a vacancy is. In the Eurostat definition This does not equate to “positions that the country would generally need to fill”, but to “newly created, vacant or about to become vacant paid position for which the employer is taking active steps and is willing to take additional steps to find a suitable candidate outside the company, and which the employer intends to fill immediately or within a specified period for which there is an active search and with an intention to fill soon.” So it is not “everything that would need to be hired in general”, but rather what is open at that moment. It’s like a photo of that exact moment, but it doesn’t show its reality. The “logic” behind the paradox. When a labor market grows, many vacancies can be expected to arise because there is more demand for workers. If, in addition, there is little unemployment, that demand tends to translate quickly into contracts. However, in Spain the reality is different. Although employment has grown in recent years, and there are busier people than ever (with membership records to Social Security), unemployment remains high compared to the EU, and vacancies do not increase at the expected rate. Mismatches between labor supply and demand. A key factor noted in the official reports is the mismatch between the skills that companies demand and those offered by unemployed people. That is, it can there are positions availablebut not that they correspond to the skills of those seeking employment. This type of mismatch is reflected in specific sectors (technology, engineering, health care) where companies claim to have difficulties find suitable profileswhile at the same time there are workers who cannot find a job. Some economists also highlight that the available offers tend to concentrate in sectors with high seasonality and little stability, such as services or tourism, where many vacancies are seasonal or short-term, which does not encourage all the unemployed to join immediately. Poorly distributed employment. Another element to consider is labor mobility. In Spain, there is a great imbalance between the territories with the greatest job offer and those with the greatest demand for employment. That is to say, employment is concentrated in large cities and industrial areas, while unemployment figures skyrocket in rural areas and in emptied Spain, contributing to maintaining this mismatch between the location of supply and demand. On the other hand, the stagnation of vacancies can also be explained by the high labor market rotation. Many times the position remains current and what happens is that it is the employees who rotate through that position. The job is still there, but it does not always appear as a “new vacancy” in the statistics, so the vacancy rate may be low, although real employment grows due to the high turnover of that position.​ For example, a waiter position is not listed as vacant, but the restaurant hires a new employee for that position every few months. The position is not vacant for statistical purposes, but the labor market does not stop registering new hires. What does this paradox tell us? That Spain has a lot of unemployment and few vacancies compared to the EU does not mean that there are no jobs available. What it indicates is that the labor market is functioning with difficulties: positions offered do not always fit the profile of unemployed people, there are great differences between sectors and an important part of the employment is temporarywhen many workers seek stability. Therefore, even when there are vacancies, they do not always end up being consolidated in the form of contracts. This situation does not depend only on a specific economic moment of prosperity or crisis, but also on underlying problems in the Spanish labor market. That this paradox continues over time points to the need to improve training, facilitate mobility between sectors and territories, raise the quality of employment and have statistics more adjusted to the reality of the labor market in Spain. In Xataka | In Belgium you could collect unemployment indefinitely. Your government has a new idea: put everyone to work Image | Unsplash (Mika Baumeister)

We already know which country had the highest internet speed in the world in 2025: Spain

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How has the internet changed in 2025? It’s too broad a question, but if there’s anyone trying to answer it, it’s Cloudflare. The company has published an extensive summary of the most important thing this year and among the numerous conclusions there is one that has surprised us: Spain is the country with the fastest internet connection in the world. Spain at full speed. in the studio stands out that Europe was the clear leader in terms of the best internet connection speeds. Here Spain was also the protagonist, because it was the country with the highest download speed in 2025, with 318 Mbps on average (25 Mbps more than in 2024). It was also the best in terms of upload speed, with 206 Mbps (13 more than in 2024). A possible person responsible. Cloudflare indicates that the reason why Spain leads this unique ranking is probably in the program UNICO-Broadband (Universalization of Digital Infrastructures for Cohesion). This initiative has been going for years and the current goal was to achieve an infrastructure capable of providing services at symmetrical speeds of at least 300 Gbps, scalable to 1 Gbps, and achieving 100% coverage in 2025. Achieving everything is almost impossible —Hello, rural Spain— but that effort certainly seems to be paying off. Spain also more than meets the metric of latency under load: even on intense connections, response times are very good. We also enjoy excellent latency. Data download and upload speeds are important, but so is the latency of the connections: the lower it is, the more fluid the communication is, especially in video conferencing, gaming and streaming applications. Here Iceland takes the cake with only 13 ms, but Spain is still among the best with 19 ms. Things are even better in the so-called latency under load, which measures how long it takes a signal to go and return (the ping) when the internet connection is under intense load (playing online, watching 4K videos). In that metric, much more realistic than “resting” latency, Spain is in third place with 89 ms, a truly remarkable figure. Years as leaders. These results may surprise, but in reality Spain already led these rankings in past editions of Cloudflare’s annual summary. It happened in 2024and also in 2023which is undoubtedly great data that shows that despite the problems that may arise, most users have access to an enviable infrastructure. More traffic than ever. Global internet traffic grew by 19% in 2025, and the person most responsible for that traffic was the Googlebot that searches the internet to index it and make it easier for us to find all types of data in the Google search engine. Although crawlers from AI companies are gaining ground, they are still a long way from Google’s activity, and with good reason: all types of websites want to be “crawlable” in order to be “findable.” The same does not happen with AI. The higher the ratio, the less traffic these chatbots send to content websites. Anthropic is the worst here, and Google, of course, the best by far. What happens to AI in 2025. There are many metrics related to AI this year. For example, Anthropic is the platform that sends the least traffic to content websites (ahead are OpenAI and especially Perplexity). This also causes platform crawling bots (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot) to be “blocked” in the robots.txt files of many websites to prevent them from collecting data without permission to train their models. Google continues to reign. The list of most popular internet services Not much has changed around the world: Google leads that ranking, and is followed by Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Instagram. It’s probably more interesting to see what data Cloudflare is reporting on the most popular generative AI services. There the winner is not a surprise (ChatGPT), but the order of the rest of the contenders is striking, because they are then followed by Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and Character.ai. Grok is in ninth place and DeepSeek in tenth, for example. That list will surely be very different in 2026. Image | Sasha Pleshco | Stephen Phillips In Xataka |

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