houses

“3D prefabricated houses can help alleviate the housing crisis, but they are not a structural solution”

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When the mayor of Madrid, José Luís Martínez-Almeida, presented his first promotion Built “in wood with prefabricated 3D modules” it defined its objective in a simple way: to make housing cheaper by “reducing deadlines.” The Municipal Housing and Land Company (EMVS) stated that they would promote the “construction of 800 homes developed with this system” in the community. The question is obvious: is this system really scalable and a solution to the housing crisis that Spain is experiencing? Tenders for multi-family buildings like the one in Madrid with industrialized systems are beginning to become common. “There are similar cases in Andalusia and the Valencian Community, with different industrialization systems, both in 2D and 3D, with wood, concrete or steel,” says Gerardo del Río, civil engineer, commercial director at the Guerola construction company, which has a 3D industrialized building factory. For Margarita de Luxán García de Diego, architect and emeritus professor of Graphic Expression at the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM), this technique “is practically in an experimental phase.” still must move forward to improve and avoid limitations that condition it and “rigidize its use,” he clarifies. While industrial warehouses and single-family homes have been built with industrial systems for many years, high-rise construction such as hotels and educational centers is more recent, clarifies Gerardo del Río At the level of Spain there are very few buildings built and completed completely, with the enclosure and partitions with “3D printers in situ”. So far it has been done comprehensively in buildings up to two stories high. It also requires particular conditions so that the 3D printers can be placed and maneuvered. Regarding whether printed buildings can lower the final price, the architect points out that it is possible if the client is the developer, which is unusual. On the other hand, whether a builder or a real estate company sells them depends on the final price they want to set. Of course, they shorten construction times “as long as the project is very well resolved and decided in all its parts, including details and installations.” The challenge of making cheaper Carmen Díaz López, architect, doctor in Civil Engineering and professor and researcher at the Higher Technical School of Architecture of the University of Málaga, has the same opinion: “Industrialization makes processes cheaper, reduces uncertainty and improves efficiency, but that does not always automatically translate into a drop in the final price for those who buy or rent. The savings are clearer in time, management and cost control than in market price, unless there are measures that guide these solutions towards affordable housing.” In a town in Soria They have carried out a pilot construction test of seven industrialized homes. According to the mayor of Langa de Duero, “the homes are divided into modules, which means they can be practically assembled in three days.” Of course, the final shots would still be missing. While the Madrid project used wood, here the prefabricated elements are made of concrete. “They are different systems. The first consists of a multi-family building intended for an urban environment and the second is single-family homes for a rural environment,” explains Gerardo del Río. “It seems to me to be a good initiative in the face of the housing crisis, especially in areas as depopulated as Soria, and even more so being from Soria,” he adds. “These projects can help alleviate the housing crisis because they allow us to build faster and with greater cost control, something very relevant in a context of lack of supply,” highlights Carmen Díaz López. But the expert warns that “they are not a structural solution on their own: the housing crisis also has to do with land, regulation, financing and the functioning of the market. They are a useful tool, but they must be part of a broader housing policy.” “The ideal is for the initiative to be taken by the public sector, making land available to the private sector to build or construct housing directly, which can subsequently be managed by the administration itself or by the private sector through concession contracts,” says del Río. Margarita de Luxán highlights that industrialized homes They are not a panacea either. to housing prices and the lack of houses to live in. “The housing crisis and its solutions depend on many and very complex things, not only on construction techniques or materials,” he explains. For her, printed buildings are “a small part of the many approaches that must continue to advance.” In the current circumstances “they are marginal to define them as a generalized solution given their scale and conditions.” Render of the Loreto development, in Barajas, prefabricated in 3D. To address rural depopulation, projects like the one in Soria have, for Díaz López, potential if they are integrated into a territorial strategy. “Their main advantage is that they allow housing to be activated in places where today it is barely built, which can facilitate the arrival of new profiles: from young people to people who telework. But housing, by itself, does not fix the population: for there to be a real impact, services, connectivity, employment and a certain demographic stability are needed,” he highlights. “Its impact will depend on how it is scaled and, above all, if it is linked to a public strategy capable of converting that construction speed into truly accessible housing,” he adds. From the point of view of sustainability, the industrialization of housing has clear advantages for the professor at the University of Malaga: less waste, greater energy efficiency, better quality control and more precise execution. But the underlying debate is not only technical. “Industrialization can change how we build, but it does not solve on its own why housing remains inaccessible. The challenge is no longer so much technological as it is one of scale, governance and access model,” he concludes. In Xataka | Luxury homes in the US are selling like hotcakes and experts think they know why: AI In Xataka | In Vancouver they are building a … Read more

We believed that air conditioning was the only way to beat the heat. A Mexican architect has been cooling houses with paint for decades

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In 1973, during the oil crisismany countries suddenly discovered that cooling buildings had become an energetic luxury. Bioclimatic architecture then returned to the center of the debate and many looked to old solutions: patios, thick walls, shade and cross ventilation. Curiously, decades before, an architect had already built houses following that logic, obsessed with something that today sounds strangely modern: that a home should offer serenity and refuge from the aggressiveness of the outside. Heat also enters through the eyes. For decades we have assumed that fighting the heat at home involves a almost automatic gesture: lower blinds and turn on the air conditioning. It is a mechanical, direct and, above all, solution. face. Long before that became the norm, the architect Luis Barragan Another idea was already working in Mexico City: that the temperature of a house does not depend only on its degrees, but on how the body perceives it. Its architecture, built between pink, yellow, blue walls and dense shadows, had spent decades exploring something that neuroarchitecture is beginning to support today: color, light and matter. alter physical sensation of space. They don’t cool the air, but they can cool the experience. House-Workshop of Luis Barragán Barragán understood the importance of color. In the Barragán’s workcolor was never decoration. Studies on his architecture show that he treated it the same as a wall or a window: as a structural tool of perception. Its pink, ocher or blue surfaces were designed to react to changing light of the day, transforming the depth, closeness and visual temperature of the space. A pink wall under the intense Mexican sun seems to radiate heat, while a deep blue patio prolongs the feeling of sky and distance. That rrelationship between color and light It was a central part of his work. The architecture moved with the sun, and with it the sensation of the inhabitant also changed. House-Workshop of Luis Barragán The house as a sensory laboratory. His best example remains the Luis Barragán Studio Housebuilt in 1948 and today protected by UNESCO. There everything is designed to modulate the bodily experience: thick walls, closed patios, interior gardens, water, darkness and color. UNESCO stands out precisely that deep dialogue between light, space and matter as one of the great contributions of the 20th century. The house is almost a manifesto of how a home can appeal to all the senses at the same time. Barragán saw it as a living organism, constantly evolving, and in that organism comfort did not depend on technology, but on balance. nterior of the Gilardi House, in Mexico City The half light as a refuge. Barragan distrusted of modern glass architecture and total transparency. While much of the 20th century celebrated large windows and abundant light, he argued for the opposite: the “half light”. He believed that human beings need spaces with shade and darkness to rest, think and concentrate. He said that too much light generates anxiety. In their houses, the windows are reduced, hidden or filtered with colored glass. The light never enters all at once; is dosed. This decision not only changes the emotional atmosphere, it also reduces the thermal load and softens the visual harshness of summer. It is an old and simple solution, almost forgotten in many contemporary homes. Patio of Barragan’s studio house The colors of the weather. The famous Barragán palette It did not come from an abstract theory. Its colors were born of the Mexican landscape. The pink of the bougainvillea, the red of the tabachin, the violet of the jacarandas, the ocher of the earth and the blue of the sky. Everything was part of a natural continuity between architecture and environment. In fact, the call “Mexican pink”developed together with the artist Jesús Reyes, became one of his most recognizable signatures. That color, present at the entrance to his studio or in patios like those of the Gilardi Housegenerates a feeling of calm and depth that continues to surprise those who visit it. Its architecture demonstrates that color can be an emotional regulator of space. Eduardo Prieto Lopez House Tradition already knew this trick. In reality, Barragán did not invent all this from scratch. Much of his work includes centuries of vernacular architecture in Latin America. Painted stucco houses, interior patios, thick walls and breathable materials were part of a climatic logic before electricity. Stucco, for example, allowed the walls they will breathe better in hot climates. Painting them prevented the glare of the white surfaces under the harsh sun. In many places, color not only gave identity, it also helped to better inhabit the heat. Barragán took that tradition and brought it to modern language. San Cristobal block Science explains it. Yes, because recent studies about emotional architecture and embodied perception help put words to what Barragán intuited. Today we know that light regulates circadian rhythms, affects mood and modifies thermal perception. We also know that certain colors can make a room feel cooler or warmer without changing its real temperature. The body first processes a sensory impression and then translates it into comfort or discomfort. Barragán worked precisely on that point. He designed spaces where perception and physiology intersected. An old idea for a new problem. Thus, in the era of air conditioning and skyrocketing thermometers, when cities overheat and energy consumption skyrockets every summer, Barragán’s architecture returns to read with other eyes. Their houses remind us that cooling does not always mean cooling the air. Sometimes means control the light, tame the shadow, reduce glass, use appropriate materials and choose a color well. Are slow solutionssilent and long before modern domestic technology. In that sense, his work seems less like an aesthetic relic and more like an open conversation with the present. Image | Anna BerthoFrancesco Bandarin, Ulysses00, Ymblanter, Steve Silverman, Sarunas Burdulis In Xataka | In 2020, a Chinese billionaire bought the most expensive and luxurious home in London. Then his nightmare began. In Xataka | In 1972 Italy wanted to put an … Read more

In Japan there is no doubt that they live worse than 30 years ago. Houses are literally getting smaller.

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The demographic crisis that drags Japan comes long. In 2024 we say that it is the great challenge of the nation, the same one that we could summarize with one fact: if we continue like this, By 2531 all its inhabitants will have the same last name. That’s why we have seen all kinds of ideas and proposalssome with more common sense than othersbut all with the idea of ​​raising birth rates and combating aging. Now there is another fact that aggravates the situation even more: the houses are smaller. The house shrinks. The data is official and comes from a study that is carried out every five years in the nation. The average housing space in Japan has reached its lowest level in 30 years, with an average of 90 square meters at the end of 2024three square meters less than the 2003 peak, according to the government study. The change reflects a trend towards reduction in the size of homes, evident in the last five years. Additionally, in both single-family homes and multi-family units, including rentals and condominiums. Multifamily, in particular, average only 50 square metersfive less than what the government considers adequate for two adults in urban areas. It’s the economy, friend. They counted on a report in Nikkei that the increase in construction costs, which has shot up 30% since 2015 in the country, is the main driver of this reduction of space in homes. To keep prices affordable and protect their profit margins, builders are downsizing homes, a practice known as “hidden price gouging.” Not only that. In addition, land prices in popular residential areas are also on the rise, which further aggravates the situation. This increase in prices has reduced the demand for larger, more expensive, personalized homes in favor of smaller, cheaper units. Impact on quality of life. It is another of the legs that slips from the problem. The reduction in living space creates discomfort, especially in small homes. For many people, like a 50-year-old woman who lives in a 30-square-meter apartment with her husband, the situation is described as suffocating. Even single-person homes, which They represent 38% of households according to the national censusare often considered too small for a comfortable lifestyle. And then there are young people, who face greater barriers to accessing larger homes, with prohibitive prices even on the second-hand market. Young people and birth rates. All this leads to what we indicated at the beginning. The reduced living space and the impossibility of purchasing larger homes discourage young couples from, for example, starting families, exacerbating the already worrying drop in the birth rate. Housing policies alone do not seem sufficient to reverse this trend, and experts such as Masayuki Takahashi emphasize that The key is to increase salaries in a sustained manner. During the period of high economic growth in Japan, rising wages allowed more people to access spacious housing, something that is not the case today. The elderly and housing. The housing problem goes much further. In fact, every time More seniors in Japan face difficulties renting housingeven if they have financial means. Cases like that of an 88-year-old man in Tokyo, who, with more than 100 million yen in savings after planning to sell his apartment, experienced multiple rejections for not being able to provide an emergency contact under 70 years of agea common requirement among homeowners in the nation. After four months of searching, he managed to find an apartment, but the case reflects a broader problem. Rent and the veto for older adults. According to 2020 census data, Japan had 6.7 million single-person households with residents aged 65 or older, accounting for 12% of the total. By 2030, it is estimated that this number will reach 8 million. Again, even though there are approximately 9.3 million of vacant homes, landlords’ reluctance to rent to seniors is a significant obstacle. In August 2025, the Ministry of Infrastructure published a survey specific about owners of the akiya which revealed that approximately 60% of these properties were inherited, with more than 70% built before 1980, and that more than 70% show signs of deterioration or damage. Reasons? 66% of landlords expressed reluctance to accept older tenants, in a ministry survey. The main fear: the risk of death of the tenant alone of which we have talked beforewhich can require costly cleanups and require reporting to future tenants for three years. This situation is worsened by the increasing loneliness of older people and the lack of close family members throughout the nation. Ultimately, and with official figures and data In hand, it does not seem that the housing problem in Japan has improved for three decades. In reality, and sticking to those numbers, houses are literally smaller and more expensive, both to buy and to rent. a problem that we see in many other nationswhere the practice of downsizing in homes to maintain competitive prices ends up affecting the stability of the real estate market and the residents’ own quality of lifewith special emphasis on the case of young people and the elderly. A version of this article was published in January 2025 Image | Ted McGrath In Xataka | Japan has known for many years the secret to cleaning dust less frequently at home In Xataka | If you thought that living in Japan was already a luxury, wait until you see the latest house signed by Aston Martin

Two men thought it was a good idea to lend their houses to a North Korean laptop farm. It went wrong

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Teleworking has accustomed us to a very comfortable idea: if someone delivers work, attends meetings and responds to messages, perhaps it doesn’t matter too much where they do it from. The problem appears when that distance becomes an advantage to hide identities, move money and enter companies that believe they are hiring a legitimate professional. North Korea has been exploiting precisely that rift. And the case of two men convicted of hosting laptops in their homes shows the extent to which the plot could rely on domestic infrastructure. Two men condemned. Matthew Isaac Knoot, of Nashville, Tennessee, and Erick Ntekereze Prince, of New York, have been sentenced in the US to 18 months each in prison for their role in fraudulent schemes involving remote IT workers linked to North Korea. according to the Department of Justice. The house as a piece of the plot. The mechanism was more domestic than one might imagine. Companies shipped corporate laptops to American addresses because they believed the contracted workers were there. Once received, the computers were housed in those homes and configured with remote desktop applications installed without authorization. This allowed the fake workers to operate from abroad while, to the companies, the connection appeared to come from an address within the United States. What did each one do?. Prince, according to official information, facilitated at least three North Korean IT workers to obtain remote employment in US companies between June 2020 and August 2024, and used his company Taggcar Inc. to fraudulently supply “certified” workers, despite knowing that they were outside the US and using false or stolen identities. Knoot, for his part, operated a laptop farm from his Nashville residences between July 2022 and August 2023. Money, companies and damages. The Justice Department maintains that the two schemes together generated more than $1.2 million for North Korea and affected nearly 70 U.S. companies. In the Prince case, the companies paid more than $943,069 in salaries to IT workers linked to the file. In Knoot’s case, the payments exceeded $250,000. More than labor fraud. The US justice system presents the sentences as part of a specific line of action against facilitators located in the US. The note itself highlights that these are the seventh and eighth convictions of “laptop farmers” obtained in the last five months within their efforts to interrupt North Korea’s illicit generation of income. It is an important nuance: the focus is not only on those who connect from abroad, but also on the local network that makes the operation viable. Expansion into Europe. As we have seen in the pastthese cases are also present outside the United States. The Record discovered in April 2025 an investigation by Google Threat Intelligence Group according to which North Korean operatives had increased their activity in Europe following US police actions against laptop farms and financial networks. At the center were job searches linked to the United Kingdom, Germany and Portugal, in addition to the use of local facilitators to support the alibi of a work presence in the corresponding country. AI and fake identities. One of the most current layers of this story is not only in the laptops, but in the ease of building increasingly credible profiles. BISI points out that North Korean operations combine stolen identities, manipulated professional profiles and AI tools capable of writing localized CVs and cover letters. In the Old Continent, platforms such as Upwork and Freelancer are usually used, in addition to Telegram. The consequence is obvious: detecting the fake candidate can become much more difficult before the company even ships the equipment. What started with laptops housed in private homes ends up having something much bigger than a criminal conviction. The companies were not attacked from outside in the classic sense, but ended up opening the door to workers they believed to be legitimate. So everything seems to indicate that in these times it is no longer enough to protect servers, credentials or repositories, but rather to review the processes that we consider normal, such as the hiring of personnel. Images | Xataka with Grok In Xataka | The ‘vibe coding’ promised to democratize software. Your first gift is 5,000 apps with open sensitive data

There are so few bees that there is a law in the United Kingdom that requires new houses to have “rooms” for them.

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On a global scale, humanity is facing a natural disaster that we have not yet come to terms with: the “insect apocalypse.” Science takes years showing its decline and although without careful thought the first impression may be “how nice to get rid of mosquitoes”, that loss threatens ecosystems essential for human life. In this collapse there is a most critical and weakest link if possible: pollinators. Its disappearance not only affects the flora, but also the food. Faced with progressive urbanization and the loss of its natural habitats, current architecture in the United Kingdom has begun to integrate microconservation solutions into the buildings themselves: the Bee Bricka brick that, in addition to supporting walls, houses bees. What began as a sustainable design project has become an urban policy phenomenon that is spreading around the world. bee bricks. As you can see below these lines, a bee brick looks quite similar to a normal brick, but with one particularity: on its front face it has 18 cavities of different diameters. The back is solid, which prevents insects from entering the interior of the building. It is made from precast and largely recycled concrete (75% granite waste from the Cornish kaolin industry and 25% granite aggregate and cementitious material as a binder). Behind the choice of design and materials used are years of testing and research not only by engineering professionals, but also by biology, such as collect research log from Falmouth University. This Bee brick can be integrated directly into the masonry of a new building, replace an existing brick in a renovation or placed independently in a garden or orchard. As a presentation, the British company Green&Blue came up with the idea and the first brick hit the market in 2014. This is what a brick for abjeas looks like. green and blue Why it is important. Because bees are one of the main engines of pollination of terrestrial ecosystems. According to the IPBES Thematic Assessment on Pollinators, Pollination and Food Productionmore than three quarters of the world’s major crops benefit from animal pollination and approximately one third of the global volume of food produced depends on it directly. That same report indicates that 87.5% of the planet’s flowering plants are pollinated by insects or other animals. And although in the collective imagination we associate this function with honey bees (Apis mellifera), this is actually an exception: they are a social species, domesticated and exploited by humans. In short: they are an overwhelming minority. Most bees do not produce honey, do not have a queen, and do not form colonies. Of course, they are first-class pollinators and some are specialized in specific species. Their decline has no substitute: if they disappear, there will be plants that will be left without a pollinator. Context. In the UK there are approximately 270 species of bees and 90% of them are solitary, such as collects the British National Bee Unit. And it is not an isolated case: on the European red list of bees of the IUCN are also the majority and on a global scale the Journal of Applied Ecology establishes that more than 75% of the more than 20,000 described species of bees are solitary. In other words, it is not an isolated case of the islands. And the problem of British bees is not exclusive either: they are losing their nesting habitat at stratospheric speed. Historically, they made their nests in cavities provided by construction, such as dead wood, cracks in the mortar in old buildings, gaps between stones and also in slopes of unpaved earth, in gaps between stones… spaces that with modern construction, so homogeneous and sealed (compared to the previous ones), have disappeared. The large-scale use of pesticides, the disappearance of grasslands or the effects of climate change, which are pushing species adapted to lower temperatures to the margins, do not help either. And that this study from Anglia Ruskin University evidence that solitary ground bees nest in a wider range of habitats than previously believed. Rooms for bees by law. The southern English coastal city Brighton & Hove was the first to turn the Bee Bricks into a legal requirement for new buildings. From January 2022 all new buildings over five meters high must include both Bee Bricks as nest boxes for swifts. Out there, Cornwall adopted in 2018 an official planning guide that includes bee bricks as a prescriptive biodiversity measure and several construction companies in the south of England they integrate them voluntarily in their projects for more than a decade. And do they work? Trials in Cornwall between 2019 and 2021 demonstrate modest results: occupancy rates were low, although nesting activity was recorded in bricks of all colors and in both urban and rural environments. The species that used them the most were the red mason bee (Osmia bicornis) and leaf cutters of the genus Megachile. He Conservation evidence from the University of Cambridge systematizes the available studies on artificial habitats for bees and concludes that nest boxes and cavity systems are used by solitary bees, as long as they are well designed and located. To work, the bricks need to face south, more than a meter off the ground and near flowering plants. Without those conditions, the probability of a bee colonizing them drops dramatically. Yes, but. In addition to the modest results precisely due to unsuitable designs and arrangements, there are experts such as Dave Goulson, professor of biology at the University of Sussex and one of the most renowned bee researchers in the United Kingdom, warns for The Guardian that the holes in the Bee Bricks are too small and shallow for most solitary bee species and that the initiative risks being greenwashing for the real estate sector: “We are kidding ourselves if we think that having one of these in every house is going to make a real difference to biodiversity. Much more substantial action is needed.” On the other hand, other ecology professionals they point out … Read more

a building that houses treasures inspired by Goya

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they call it the ‘Palace’ and it makes sense if we take into account that it is one of the most stately buildings at the Cuatro Vientos airfield, in Madrid, and perhaps in the entire Air Force. The Officers’ Pavilion (that is its official name) is an architectural jewel built around 1916 to host the pilots and students of the first Military Aviation school in Spain. More than a century later, its rooms and offices are still full of artistic and historical treasures, but they have not been immune to the passage of time, something that Defensa wants to solve now. For this he has used his checkbook. What has happened? That the Ministry of Defense wants to rehabilitate the Historical Officers’ Pavilion (the ‘Palace’), an architectural and historical jewel located at the Cuatro Vientos air base. In fact, it is usually presented, along with the Tower, as its most emblematic property. At the beginning of 2026, Margarita Robles’ department published a tender notice in the BOE to carry out “renovation and restoration” works in the old pavilion. The total amount of the work, including VAT, amounted to about 3.49 million of euros. After passing several procedures, the final award announcement was posted on the State Contracting Platform a few days ago and details that the agreement has been closed for 3.46 million (including VAT). The execution period is 14 months, so in theory the work will not be ready until well into 2027. What will they consist of? The idea is to get the ‘Palace’ ready, which, as you remember the specialized portal Infodefenseundergoes a complicated task: modernizing the building to make it more comfortable and functional while preserving its historical and artistic identity. In practice this will translate into works to rehabilitate the façade, a redistribution and the renovation of facilities. The technicians hired by Defense will eliminate the lichens and dirt accumulated on the exterior, recover the original tones of the façade, restore the cornices, stairs and balustrades, solve water leaks and replace pieces damaged by time. To prevent the bars and other metal elements from being ruined, the specialists will clean them up. The idea is not only to rehabilitate the pavilion. Defense wants it to be more functional. Hence, the project includes some distribution changes and the installation of services such as an elevator and a dumbwaiter. The reorganization of spaces will also increase the building’s capacity to accommodate tenants and reinforce their comfort, focusing for example on thermal insulation, waterproofing and electrical installations, pipes and wiring. Is the pavilion so important? Yes. And for several reasons. One of them is its historical dimension. The Officers’ Pavilion was built between 1914 and 1918at a key historical moment in which, remember from Defensethe old Cuatro Vientos airfield became “the cradle of Hispanic aviation.” As it grew, it became necessary to build a specific building to house the pilots and flight school students. The building began to be built around 1915 and from very early on it played a fundamental role. In fact its nickname, ‘Palace’, is probably explained because it welcomed the infant Don Alfonso of Orleansaviator from the school’s first class of pilots. What role did he play? In an article published for the centenary of the pavilion, the Spanish Defense Magazine He recalled in 2016 that the ‘Palace’ was in a way the “center of teaching, debate, analysis and planning of the ‘Great Flights’”as the first great feats of Spanish aviation are known, such as the ‘Plus Ultra’from 1926, during which the South Atlantic was crossed. Prototypes such as the one with the autogyro and aeronautical workshops and an aerodynamics laboratory were installed. Is it the only reason to reform it? The truth is that no. Another reason why Defense probably wants to take care of the ‘Palace’ is its heritage and architectural value. Beyond its age (it was built between 1915 and 1918), the pavilion was designed from the first moment as a noble building, equipped with coffered ceilings, tiles and stained glass with considerable artistic value. A residence worthy of an infant of the Orleáns-Borbón house. Infodefense stands out specifically the wooden frieze and ceiling of the Noble Hall, the plasterwork of the Officers’ Hall and Weapons Room or the marquetry of the dining room, in which the architects wanted to make a nod to the history of Spain: the pieces are inspired by the engraving ‘Modo de Volar’ by Goya. Also notable is the leaded stained glass window that preserves the original shield and was restored in the 90s. “To the right of the main entrance, is the ‘chiefs’ dining room’, today called ‘Los Pajaritos’. The room is surrounded by a wooden frieze, in the upper part of which appear, reflecting Goya’s engraving ‘Modo de Volar’, different birds in the attitude of flight”, details the Air Force. Images | Ministry of Defense of Spain and Air Force (Facebook) In Xataka | Spain in the 1950s, seen from the air: the pioneering photographs of the US army

Beyond prices and vacation rentals, housing in Madrid faces a huge problem: irregular houses

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Beyond price escalation, the pressure of the vacation rental or the decoupling Between the speed at which homes are created and new buildings built, in Madrid the real estate market faces a tricky challenge: irregular developments. The latest data of the Community of Madrid reveal that in the region there are dozens of settlements of illegal origin that bring together thousands of homes that start from an irregular situation. all one hot potato for administration. What has happened? The data has revealed it The Newspaper. The Community of Madrid has registered almost 200 developments built without the necessary permits, settlements of illegal origin that add up to thousands of homes. The calculation is based on an update of the inventory from the 1980s, when 136 irregular settlements were identified. The figure has changed since then for two reasons. The first, because there were nuclei that have managed to regularize themselves. The second, because the technicians have added to the list others that (for one reason or another) did not appear in the catalog that accompanied the 1985 regulations. What do the figures say? If you walk around Madrid you can find dozens of housing units built without respecting the regulations. Some very populous. Specifically, The Newspaper talks about 184 urbanizations or settlements of illegal origin and some 10,500 homes. The figure is partly explained because the 1980s census incorporated almost a hundred new consolidated residential areas. The Ministry of the Environment clarifies that in most cases they are the result of “urbanization processes outside the law” and “lacking planning”, which explains why they often do not offer “minimum conditions for urbanization.” Are all cases the same? Not at all. Not all urbanizations identified by the Community of Madrid are the same nor do they have the same dimensions. Particularly noteworthy is the settlement of La Vega del Tajuñawhich brings together a large part of the residences in an irregular situation detected by regional technicians. Specifically, there are 5,513 distributed over more than 2,700 hectares. With those dimensions it would be the largest settlement of its kind in the community, although not the only one where hundreds of people live. In Camino Viejo de Madrid and Vega Baja del Guadarrama there are also more than 1,400 buildings and there are others, such as El Rondelo, Pico Valsarón or Dehesa Nueva, with hundreds of homes. The Community has also noted constructions located in locations very close to the capital, such as Improved Field. How is that possible? The circumstances and context are not always the same, but a few days ago EPE visited a nucleus of Mejorada del Campo that helps to understand how settlements like this can be formed in the heart of Madrid. Specifically, the newspaper visited a nucleus that began to form in the 1980s, driven by developers who parceled out rural land and sold the land at affordable prices, offering it as an ideal space for “urban gardens” with access to water. Time, use and the increasing pressure that affect housing prices in Madrid did the rest. What were initially huts designed for tools gave way to more ambitious installations. Is it something new? Not at all. And not only because the history of these settlements can go back a long time. At the end of 2025, the Community of Madrid has already issued a statement in which he recalled that in just four years he had inspected 1,906 “irregular constructions” on protected land. To be precise, the regional government spoke of 5,334.3 hectares “affected by this type of settlements”, also identified in 56 municipalities. “Of them, about 80% are concentrated in the plains of the main Madrid rivers, the majority in the areas of the Tajuña River (2,712.5 hectares), followed by the Jarama (1,019.5), Guadarrama (363.2) and Tajo (150.2)”, explains the Madrid Executive, which warns of the “risk” it represents “both for people and the environment.” Hence, this type of construction appears among the objectives of the Urban Inspection and Discipline Plan. Does it only happen in Madrid? No. Settlements of this type are also common in other parts of Spain, such as Catalonia. “There are many urbanizations that were built in the 60s, 70s and early 80s of the 20th century, which were marketed without the necessary planning, urban management or basic public services,” recognize from the Catalan Generalitat. “Of the 1,433 identified in the 2015 catalogue, there are 730 with urban deficits. Many are concentrated in small municipalities and the tendency to convert housing estates into primary residences aggravates their situation,” acknowledges the regional government. The topic is complex because, as remember EPE When talking about the Madrid case, the legal framework varies over time: if a home built on non-developable land remains long enough outside the ‘radar’ of the authorities, the crime expires and can no longer be demolished. Images | Community of Madrid Via | The Newspaper In Xataka | Madrid believed itself immune to the TukTuk plague in the most tourist cities in the world. Now someone wants to ban them

What happens in some houses so that the power goes out and the leads do not jump?

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It is a classic scene that has happened to almost all of us at some point, you are at home preparing dinner, you take the opportunity to put on a washing machine and, suddenly, the house goes completely dark. You go to the electrical panel expecting to find the classic switch down, but to your surprise, they are all perfectly up. This is a more common situation than it seems and one that generates deep confusion in homes. Far from being a paranormal phenomenon or a serious breakdown, the answer to this modern enigma is hidden in the technology of our meters. The answer to this everyday mystery has been popularized by Juanjo, an electrician known on the social network TikTok as @juanjo_grounding. According to this professional, when the power goes out but no protection on the house panel goes off, “it is because the meter’s ICP has gone off.” The reason is as simple as it is direct: you have exceeded the power you have contracted for your home. The technology behind the “jump”. To understand it, we must first clarify that electrical power It is measured in kilowatts (kW) and corresponds to the energy that is being demanded at a specific moment. The Power Control Switch (ICP) works as a security mechanism It is fundamental that it cuts off the electricity supply if the power consumed exceeds that power that you have contracted. The key detail is that, since 2009 and with the gradual arrival of smart digital meters, many homes They no longer have a physical ICP (a switch) in your electrical wall panel, but this control function is integrated directly into the digital counter itself. Therefore, when you connect too many powerful devices at the same time, the remotely managed meter detects the excess and cuts off the electricity to avoid overloading the installation. In fact, if you look at your meter at that moment, it is very likely that you will see a solid red light, which indicates that the contracted power has been exceeded and the ICP has intervened. So what needs to be done to get the light back? Recovering power is a very quick process what you can do yourself. First, you should unplug some of the high-consuming devices you had on to reduce power demand. Then, go to your main box, lower the main circuit breaker, wait a few seconds (between 5 and 10) and raise it again. With this simple gesture, the internal ICP of the meter is reset and will close automatically, returning the light to you. To prevent this from constantly happening again, you have two alternatives: The free solution (change of habits): Carry out conscious management of your consumption. It is simply based on not connecting all your high-consumption appliances at the same time. The payment solution (increase the power): If the outages are very frequent despite normal and rational use, it is advisable to contact the electricity company and request an increase in the contracted power. You must bear in mind that increasing the power implies paying the connection, extension and access rights, which has an approximate cost of €50 for each kW you increase. The savings angle. This is where your pocketbook comes into play. In Spain, the average electrical power of homes is between 3.45 kW and 4.6 kW. Often, the fear of “leads jumping” leads us to make the mistake of hiring above our needs, paying every month for power that we are not really using. Keep in mind that each kilowatt you contract represents a fixed cost of about €60 per year on your electricity bill. Jorge Morales de Labra, expert in the energy sector, issues a very revealing warning in the magazine The Furniture: “If you haven’t blown your leads twice in a year, you have more power than you need.” A report from the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC) supports this ideapointing out that if you avoid turning on all the devices at the same time and adjust your contract, you can save between €190 and €260 annually. If you have questions about whether you can lower your power, the answer is in your receipts. Marketing companies have the legal obligation to include on the invoice the maximum powers that you have demanded during the last year. The power of information. In short, that sudden blackout in which the electrical panel seems to mock you with all its switches on high is not a phantom failure, but rather your smart meter protecting your home. Understanding how the ICP works and auditing our consumption habits gives us control over our bill. In the end, understanding the electricity in our home is the first step to stop giving away money at the end of the month and turn on the savings light. Image | freepik Xataka | If Spain believed it had overcome the trauma of inflation, Qatar has just made a decision in the opposite direction

In 1832 Britain realized that it didn’t have much sun. Since then, a law requires that houses have good light

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If there is something that the United Kingdom could blame for its geography and climate, it is the gray days. Rare is the moment when the sun is not covered by clouds in Mary Poppins’ country, where natural light has become a scarce commodity to fight for. So much so, that there is a “right to light” by which homeowners can legally prevent new construction that obstructs natural light rays into their homes. This law is actually an easement established in 1832 by which the owner of a building with windows that have received natural light for more than 20 years has the right to prohibit adjacent constructions that limit it. That is, historically, a person was entitled to this if natural light and air had passed freely through their windows during that time and been enjoyed without disturbance. And these homes protected by the ordinance were marked with the “Ancient Lights” sign. Therefore, if a neighbor tried to violate this by building a structure or planting trees, the owner had the power to sue him for the “nuisance”. Of course, it is important to note that these do not only affect direct sunlight. But it gives the right to a minimum level of natural lighting, not direct rays of the sun. Although this urban planning law has undergone quite a few changes since its inception, the power of property owners to demand natural light continues to be debated in British cities. Nowadays, These “Ancient Lights” signs are still found on buildings around London and other counties such as Dorset and Kent. And the law, more than 100 years later, continues to be the protagonist of all types of litigation, becoming a headache for judges, lawyers and construction companies. The idea of ​​”having the right to light” Let’s go into more detail. A question that arises from this concept is: how much natural light does a person have the right to? And that is precisely where this law has several legal loopholes. Because a building owner’s windows don’t even have to be completely blocked by a neighboring obstruction for that right to be invoked. You simply have to maintain the same level of lighting that the owner has experienced for twenty years, something that is quite diffuse. In the 1920s, Percy Waldram, an expert in this law, proposed a system to standardize the sufficient amount of light that people could claim. He suggested that “common people” required at least one foot-candle (a measure of light intensity) for reading and other work. If the builder, including a homeowner planning an extension, identifies a risk affecting light rights, they must notify the affected homeowner and engage with them to reach an amicable agreement. This could be as compensation or a redesign to rectify or mitigate the problem. However, if there is a dispute, There are two ways to take legal action: damages and/or a court order. The first consists of granting a sum of money to compensate for the loss. The second may require demolition of part or all of the new building unless some other structural change can remedy the problem. The latter is usually too expensive. The idea for many years was that if a property owner did not take immediate steps to obtain a court order, the only remedy available to them was damages. However, a 2010 case left builders stunnedas the court held that it was possible to obtain an injunction even after the completion of the new building. In another more recent case from 2020the court granted an injunction to a property owner two years after the completion of the infringing work. The court found that the builder had proceeded with full knowledge of the risk he was taking. Is there a similar law in Spain? The easements They also exist in Spain. It is the right that the owner of a property has over the adjoining property that limits the proprietary powers of the owner thereof. In fact, it is not so uncommon to find cases in our country (especially in individual homes), in which Your neighbor has one or more windows that face directly onto your property. Is it legal? As regulated by the Civil Code in article 580no party wall can, without the consent of the other, open any window or opening in a party wall. Otherwise, the owner of a wall that is not a party wall and that is adjacent to the back of another owner may open windows or openings in the same wall. to receive lightsas long as it complies with the premises established in article 581 of the Civil Code. Furthermore, as stipulated in the article 582 of the Civil Code: “You cannot open windows with straight views, nor balconies or other similar overhangs, over the neighbor’s property, if there is not two meters of distance between the wall on which they are built and said property. Nor can you have side or oblique views over the same property, if there is not 60 cm of distance.” In Xataka | If your renovation is a pain, think about the house that cost 120 times more than its original cost: a masterpiece In Xataka | If the question is whether they forgot the elevator shaft in the tallest residential skyscraper in Spain, the answer is simple: it was much worse Image | Chris Flexen

We have plenty of electricity, but we lack cables to build houses and invest more

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Over the last decade, Spain has accelerated the installation of wind and solar farms, especially in “emptied Spain”, with the promise of becoming Europe’s green laboratory. However, upon reaching 2026, the system has hit an invisible but insurmountable wall: the cables. The reason is a “broken bridge”, since clean energy is born in the countryside, but does not reach the cities or factories because the transportation infrastructure does not exist or is saturated. The situation is critical. According to advance The Economistthe Spanish electricity grid has administratively “collapsed” and, for practical purposes, is closed to new projects. There is no longer room to accommodate new connection requests, which means that thousands of homes, data centers and industries are receiving a “no” answer when asking for a plug. Red Eléctrica’s technical documentation confirms this paralysis with endless lists of nodes submitted to a capacity contest, from Algeciras to Arrigorriaga, evidencing a blockade that runs through the entire peninsula. The “D-Day” that never came. The trigger for this crisis has a date and time. The electricity sector was anxiously awaiting February 2, 2026, the day on which the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC) was to publish the new access capacity maps, the “traffic light” that indicates where there is more consumption. But the maps did not arrive. In a last-minute maneuver, the CNMC has postponed the publication until Monday, May 4, 2026. The decision responds to a critical alert launched by the system operator (REE) on January 26: under the new and strict technical criteria, “approximately 90% of the nodes in the transportation network would have zero access capacity.” The problem is deeper. On the one hand, the application of the “dynamic criterion” has revealed that more than 9 GW of already authorized demand—mainly data centers and electrolyzers—might not be sufficiently robust against “voltage dips” (sudden drops in voltage), which forces the tap to be turned off for safety. On the other hand, consensus is non-existent: Red Eléctrica and the distributors they have only achieved agree on the reference values ​​in 26% of the interconnection nodes, a figure that in the case of some distributors plummets to just 11%. A traffic jam with real consequences. Far from being a mere dispatch procedure, it has devastating consequences for the real economy. The energy plug has become the new brake on brick: Last year only 12% of connection requests for new urban developments were granted. The Asprima employers’ association estimates that some 350,000 homes are at risk of not being able to be built, not due to lack of land or money, but due to the simple lack of electrical power. The impact has specific faces. An example that they expose in The Economist is that of the Costa del Sol, where the delay in the construction of a substation in Estepona and its associated line keeps the quality of supply and the connection capacity of a total of 72 families in suspense. The investment war. There is a chronic lack of investment in basic infrastructure. While Europe invests on average 70 cents in networks for every euro of renewable generation, Spain remains at just 30 cents. This has unleashed an open war. The large electricity companies (Aelec) accuse Red Eléctrica (Redeia) of having invested below what was planned, causing the current precariousness. Redeia defends himself forcefullyensuring that it has quadrupled its investment to exceed 1.5 billion in 2025. In addition, the system operator uses devastating quality data to deny the poor state of the network: the average annual interruption time is just 0.46 minutes, a value 30 times better than the 15 minutes required by regulations. The speculative bubble. Amidst the chaos, speculation flourishes. The CNMC is finalizing a complete report—a kind of “forensic” audit—to put order in the system. According to Expansionthere are access requests for 67,100 MW, an exorbitant figure that is equivalent to half of all the installed power in the country. The regulator suspects that there are massive duplications and “ghost” projects that hoard nodes for the sole purpose of reselling permits, blocking access to real industries. Three months of heart attack. Given the seriousness of the scenario, the sector now faces a three-month truce, until May, to try to avoid the total closure of the network. Express legal route. The recent Sustainable Mobility Law has introduced an “emergency mechanism” which allows changing the purpose of positions in substations. That is, unlock spaces reserved for generation that are not used and assign them to consumption quickly. “Amnesty” for Data Centers. To prevent the flight of digital investment, the Government has activated a grace measure for 2026: has eliminated the requirement that forced data centers to consume in “off-peak hours” (at night) to receive aid, recognizing that solar energy has changed the reality of prices and that said requirement no longer made technical sense. Cost for the citizen: fixing the network it won’t be free. The proposal for 2026 includes an increase in tolls (4%) and charges (10.5%) in the electricity bill to finance these investments and the “reinforced mode” of operation, necessary to guarantee stability after the incidents of 2025. Crisis of institutional trust. Despite the extension, legal uncertainty is latent. Electricity companies fear that industries that already had access granted they can lose it when applying the new, more restrictive criteria. Óscar Mosquera, sector expert, warns on LinkedIn about a “regulatory breakdown.” “The network is no longer just infrastructure, it is an institution,” says Mosquera. His diagnosis is lapidary: “A system that invites investment and then does not connect is not prudent, it is incoherent. That is the true country risk.” While the administration looks for solutions, real demand does not wait for the bureaucracy. Joaquin Coronado highlights that the electricity demand It has grown by 3.7% at the start of January 2026, exceeding the official forecasts of the CNMC itself. The Spanish economy tries to accelerate, but physical reality prevents it. A country disconnected from its own future. Spain finds itself at an ironic and … Read more

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