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Mercadona has grown so much in Spain that for the US it is no longer just a supermarket chain: it is a “cultural phenomenon”

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The US Government has noticed a growing “cultural phenomenon” in Spain, one especially interesting for its exporting companies and which comes accompanied by millionaire turnover figures. What phenomenon is that? Mercadona. Literally. In your report Retail Foods Annualthe US Department of Agriculture dedicates special attention to Juan Roig’s company and slips that its weight in the retail It already transcends the limits of the retail sector. He even theorizes about the formula for his success. Under the spotlight of Donald Trump. It is not strange that Mercadona makes headlines. After all, it has become a crucial piece of the retail Spanish. Your market share in the sector around 30% (in some regions already exceeds that percentage), far above other competitors such as Carrefour, IFA or Lidl, and has been expanding for the country. What is much less common is for the Valencian retail chain to make headlines because it has caught the attention of US officials, which is exactly what has just happened. Table extracted from the report of the US Department of Agriculture. Attention, USA exporters. Mercadona is cited at least seven times in a report 10 pages published a few days ago by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), a document designed primarily for exporters from the country interested in the Spanish market. In it, the Washington technicians review the billing figures of Juan Roig’s firm, highlight its high weight in the sector (well above competitors such as Carrefour, Lidl, DIA or Eroski) and reflect on the keys to its commercial success. To be more precise, USDA recalls that last year Mercadona recorded sales worth an estimated $34.5 billion. The figure does not exactly match the disclosed by the company, but it is more than double that of Grupo Carrefour (12,000) and well above other well-established chains in the country, such as Lidl (7,500), DIA (6,150), Eroski (5,800) or Alcampo (5,500). “Mercadona occupies first place in the food retail sector in Spain, with sales almost three times higher than those of its second closest competitor,” check the reportwhich theorizes about the bet that has given the chain a market share of almost 30%. The formula for success. USDA highlights two features of the Valencian company. First, its Spanish food offering. Second, its strategic commitment to retail brands, especially Hacendado. “Private labels are very popular in Spain, driven by consumer attention to prices and quality. According to a study by the Aldi chain, Spanish households allocate 44% of their purchasing budget to private label products,” collect the reportwhich goes so far as to refer to the company as a “cultural phenomenon.” Is it something new? No. Washington is not the first to focus on the Valencian chain’s commitment to its own brands. A report from Kandar presented in 2024 by Promarca already pointed out the clear increase in distributor brands in Spanish supermarkets, a general trend that was accentuated in the case of Mercadona. Its external brand offering was cut by 45% between 2018 and 2023, while the value share of white label products reached 74.5%. Other sector reports have highlighted the same idea in recent months: Mercadona’s growing commitment to its brands. Added to this strategy are others deployed by the firm, such as the interest for foods already cooked and ready to eat. Roig himself has recognized openly that he is convinced that mid century Kitchens will disappear from Spanish homes, so people will eat prepared dishes. It is so sure of this that Mercadona has been betting on its section for years. “Ready to eat”. X-raying the sector. Beyond Mercadona, the report from USDA reveals some reflections on the food distribution sector in Spain. Its technicians are struck by, for example, the pace of opening of new stores (244 only between January and April of this year), the promotion of self-service stores and regional super chains (key piece of the national sector) or “the growing popularity” of healthy and convenience products. “Consumers are combining physical and online channels, favoring digital platforms for larger purchases and in-person purchases of fresh products. Retail strategies focus on efficiency, AI technologies, personalization and healthy products,” he comments. the USDA studywhich draws attention to the high “fragmentation” of retail trade and the concentration of the food sector, with Mercadona leading the way. Images | Mercadona, Gage Skidmore (Flickr) and USDA In Xataka | The shadow companies that are making gold with Mercadona: the silent success of Familia Martínez or Profand

AI is turning us into editors of ourselves. We approve what we no longer know how to create

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Some time ago Spark, my email clientintegrated an AI response generator that learns from your style. It works surprisingly well. Since then I follow a simple rule: if the email comes from a human, I respond by typing. If it comes from a bot or mass mailing, I let the AI ​​answer for me. The fact is that it is increasingly difficult to distinguish which is which. And that’s where the real problem begins. Because it’s not about efficiency. It is about we have accepted, without realizing it, that communication can be symmetrical in its mediocrity. You write to me with AI, I respond to you with AI. We all save time. Nobody says anything quite real. I know too many people who have crossed the line: using AI not just for generic emails, but for everything: Tweets that sound like a corporate manual. LinkedIn posts with that unctuous and necessarily inspirational prose that smells of prompt wander from three paragraphs away. Proposals to clients. Reports to the boss. Slack messages that you used to write in seconds and now go through ChatGPT. They have become editors of their own communication. Creative directors of words that they no longer search for. And in a way it works, you have to admit. The report arrives on time. The proposal sounds professional. The tweet, for reasons unknown to me, achieves engagement. If the result is what counts, and it saves you time, what’s the problem? The problem is subtle. So subtle that almost no one notices it. Writing was never just about producing readable text. It was the friction of searching for the exact word, and in that search better understanding what you wanted to say. Writing was thought becoming visible, even to oneself. The effort to articulate was the effort to think clearly. I remember some articles in which I noticed that effort until I reached the result I wanted. An example is this 2019long before ChatGPT. That process matters. Now we delegate that friction. We give the AI ​​a vague idea and it articulates it for us. We just need to recognize if it sounds good, not generate it from scratch. We have gone from being authors to being approvers. Something atrophies when you stop looking for your own words. It’s not just personality or style. It is the ability to think accurately, because thinking well and writing well were always the same thing. When you externalize articulation, you externalize thinking. The worst thing is that it is invisible. There is no dramatic moment in which you stop knowing how to think. You just start to need a little more help each time. A little push to find the words. Then a full draft that you just “revise.” Then you don’t even check carefully because “AI makes it cool.” The argument is always the same: “but the result is good.” And yes, it may be. The report is understood. The proposal convinces. The tweet works. But There is a difference between a text that works and a text that you really thought. The first can get you a client. The second can make you understand something you didn’t know you thought. This is how an entire generation can lose the ability to articulate complex ideas without realizing it. Because each individual step seems reasonable. Every shortcut seems harmless. And the results, indeed, are acceptable. But “acceptable” has become the new standard. And in the process we have forgotten that writing was not just a means to communicate ideas that were already clear to us. It was the very mechanism to keep things clear.. AI is not making us worse writers. It is turning us into non-writers. And without writing, without that struggle to find the right words, pWe also lose the ability to have ideas worth writing down.. We have normalized an existence where we monitor our own communication instead of generating it. Where we approve instead of create. Where language is something that we recognize when we see it, but that we will no longer know how to produce from silence. And we call it productivity. In Xataka | I increasingly like technology that doesn’t want anything from me: the one that has a purpose and leaves you alone Featured image | Xataka

The clothes you no longer wear have a price. For Vinted that price is 8,000 million euros

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At the beginning of the year We marveled at Vinted’s trajectory. They closed 2024 with more than 800 million euros in revenue and a valuation of 5,000 million euros. 2025 looks even better and they are also planning a share sale that will skyrocket its valuation even more. What is happening. They tell it in Financial Times. The Lithuanian second-hand sales company is exploring a share sale that will increase its valuation up to 8,000 million euros. It is a ‘cash out’ operation, very common in cases like Vinted in which a company has grown a lot in a short time. The objective is for investors to sell their part and recover their initial investment. At the moment the operation is not closed, although there is talk that it could be completed at the beginning of 2026. Why it is important. The second-hand items market has been transformed with the appearance of platforms such as Wallapop, Milanuncios or Percentil. However, none can boast Vinted’s figures. The company has managed to stand out with a clear strategy focused on clothing and the promotion of its own payment system, Vinted Pay. Benefits. Vinted reached 813 million euros of revenue in 2024. According to Thomas Plantega, CEO of the company, they expect to close 2025 with record revenues that will exceed 1,000 million. The gross sales value of items on the platform could exceed 10 billion euros. As for net profits, they have not given forecasts, but in 2024 they have already tripled compared to the previous year, reaching almost 77 million euros. Diversification. Vinted was born with a clear focus on the buying and selling of second-hand clothing, that is where it made a name for itself and managed to differentiate itself from other more general second-hand platforms such as Wallapop. Recently the company has begun to open its categories and today we can now find electronic devices, video games and home furnishings, among others. The plan is to continue expanding. Target: USA. Vinted already operates in a total of fifteen countries, although not all of them are connected. Specifically, the United Kingdom is not connected to the rest of Europe, so they can only buy and sell within their borders. The next step will be to jump into the US market and the idea is to connect it precisely with the United Kingdom. Speaking to Bloomberg TVthe company’s CEO assured that the second-hand market is very underdeveloped in the United States, which represents a great opportunity for Vinted. Image | Vinted In Xataka | The second-hand luxury watch market was in crisis. US tariffs are reviving it

Facebook loads ‘Likes’ and comments on external websites. The surveillance tool par excellence is no longer necessary

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Meta announced this week that Starting in February 2026, the “like” and “comment” buttons will be removed of Facebook on external websites. The official explanation is so polite it almost hurts: its use “has naturally declined with the evolution of the digital landscape.” But that phrase hides two implicit admissions: The first is known: we barely leave the platforms anymore. The second, more subtle, is devastating: Meta no longer needs to follow us to know us. Let’s think about what that button really was. like external. It was not an innocent social accessory. It was distributed surveillance: Every time you gave like to an article about vintage guitars in a lost blog, Facebook took note: this guy likes guitar playing. Every comment on a recipe website, every interaction outside your garden, fed your profile. Meta built the perfect panopticon: millions of websites working for free as sensors, reporting your interests, your obsessions, your clicks. And in exchange, those websites received crumbs of viral traffic that It stopped coming a long time ago. But today, almost in 2026, that spy system is obsolete. Why track yourself on the Internet when you spend three hours a day on Instagram? Why deduce your tastes when Instagram knows which videos make you stay to watch them until the end, and which videos you send away after two seconds? AI has made extensive surveillance unnecessary. Now it is enough to observe you in its territory. It is more efficient, more precise and cheaper. He like external was Big Brother. AI is a confessor that listens to you voluntarily, interprets and codifies your tastes (the declared and the inferred) and with that it has more than enough to know who you really are, above who you say you are on social networks. And there is something else. These buttons not only gave data to Meta: they also gave certain power to external websites. An item with 50,000 likes Facebook had authority, reach, and negotiating capacity. It was validation. Small media could go viral, specialized blogs found audiences, there were cracks to slip through. Meta is closing those cracks. And not out of malice, but out of business logic: why fertilize a foreign ecosystem when you can focus all your attention—and all your money—on your own land? The “natural evolution of the digital landscape” that Meta mentions is real. Only it has not happened in a vacuum or in a foreign way: they were the ones who designed it, they were the ones who executed it and they are the ones who now certify it. First they locked us in there. Now they know us so well that they no longer need to look at what we do outside their domains. The button like He dies because he has already won everything he could win. And there is nothing left to watch beyond the walls. In Xataka | The new Ray-Bans from Meta will allow you to cross a line: seem present while you are completely absent Featured image | Mariia Shalabaieva

The war in Ukraine has crossed a red line in Europe. They are no longer drones violating airspace, they are nuclear plants

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Ukraine has once again placed the nuclear alarm at the center of the European conflict after denouncing that Russia is deliberately attacking the electrical substations that feed the Khmelnitsky and Rivne power plants. According to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, drone attacks are not isolated incidents, but planned operations to endanger continental nuclear security. It happens that drones are reaching European power plants. The drone offensive. Over the past weekend, Moscow launched more than 450 drones and 45 missiles against various regions of Ukraine, causing at least seven dead and damage to critical infrastructure. In Dnipro, a drone hit a residential building, killing three people, while other attacks occurred in Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia. kyiv accuses Russia of instrumentalizing the atomic risk as a psychological weapon and trying to cause an accident in plants that still depend on external electricity supply to avoid a collapse of the cooling system. Nuclear risk. In parallel, Moscow is advancing with its own nuclear agenda: the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, confirmed that the Kremlin is working on proposals for a possible nuclear test on the direct order of Vladimir Putin, a response to US President Donald Trump’s recent statement that Washington could resume their own tests. The atomic stress between both powers, exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, has plunged Europe into a scenario of unprecedented vulnerability since the Cold War. The epicenter of the threat: Belgium. While Ukraine try to contain the Russian offensive on its own territory, Western Europe has begun to feel the echoes of a hybrid war that expands beyond the front. In Belgium, one of the countries with the highest density of critical infrastructure on the continent, there has been a wave of raids of drones over strategic installations. The most alarming took place at the Doel nuclear power plant, located next to the port of Antwerp, when three drones were initially detected at dusk on November 9, which were later confirmed as five different devices flying over the complex for almost an hour. The energy company Engie, which manages the plant, assured that operations were not affected, but authorities activated the National Crisis Center and reinforced security in the area. Belgium nuclear plant near Doel And more. Hours before, air traffic at Liège airport was had suspended briefly after multiple reports of drones, and in the previous days both Brussels airport and the Kleine Brogel air base (where NATO nuclear weapons are stored) had been targeted of similar sightings. Research points to a coordinated pattern affecting several northern European countries, including Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands, where unidentified aerial intrusions have also been reported. Suspicions of espionage. Belgian Defense Minister Theo Francken has linked sightings with possible foreign espionage operations and pointed to Russia as the most plausible suspect, although without conclusive evidence. The country’s intelligence services consider that drones could be part of a recognition strategy aimed at evaluating the European response capacity to combined attacks on critical infrastructure. The accumulation of incidents led the Belgian government to convene a National Security Council, after which the Minister of the Interior, Bernard Quintin, assured that the situation was “under control”although he recognized the seriousness of the incursions. The United Kingdom, France and Germany announced sending specialized personnel and equipment to assist Belgium in the detection and neutralization of hostile drones, a gesture that underlines the shared fear that the border between visible war and covert war is becoming dangerously blurred. Technological epicenter. Faced with this new dimension of the conflict, Ukraine has positioned itself as a key actor in the technological response. President Volodymyr Zelensky advertisement the upcoming opening of defense production offices in Berlin and Copenhagen before the end of the year, with the aim of strengthening industrial cooperation on drones and electronic weapons. These “export capitals”, according to his wordsthey will finance the domestic production of scarce equipment and help European allies build their own defensive systems. kyiv, which has made the use of drones one of the pillars of its military strategy, now offers your experience to countries that are beginning to suffer firsthand the effects of the Russian hybrid war. Ukraine as a test. In parallel, Ukrainian creativity in the improvised field of defense is reflected even in unusual solutions: old fishing nets French drones, made from horse hair, are being reused to create tunnels where the propellers of Russian drones become trapped. In contemporary warfare, technology intersects with craftsmanship, and ingenuity has become a form of national survival. Nuclear vulnerability. The incidents in Belgium and Ukraine reveal the same constant: the European nuclear infrastructure (plant, wiring, energy, logistics) has become a target symbolic and strategic. The attacks on Ukrainian substations that feed power plants and the drones that fly over Belgian reactors expose the fragility of a continent that depends on complex systems where any sabotage can multiply its effects. The threat no longer comes only from missiles, but from invisible swarms of drones, of disinformation, of political and technological engineering that undermines stability from within. Russia, faced with isolation and with a still powerful military industry, seems willing to use this asymmetry as an instrument of prolonged pressure. The European responsestill fragmentary, is beginning to be articulated between military cooperation, technological innovation and civil defense. Plus: the lesson left by this sequence of attacks and suspicions seems clear. In the Europe of 2025, the border between energy security and military security has fadedand the future of continental stability could depend less on the size of armies than on how quickly a drone is detected on radar before reaching a nuclear power plant. Image | Trougnouf, Wwuyts In Xataka | The latest tactic of the Russians in Ukraine breaks with the previous one: they have gone from appearing “out of nowhere” to directly disappearing In Xataka | Orion was the Russian version of the US’s most lethal drone. Ukraine can’t believe it when it opens: it’s not a version, it’s the work of the US

China no longer plays in its favor

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Apple has closed its fiscal fourth quarter of 2025 with $102.5 billion in revenue, surpassing the psychological barrier of $100 billion in a quarter for the first time. Earnings per share have reached $1.85, 13% more than a year ago. Wall Street expected less, so the stock is up 4% outside market hours It is the best quarter in Apple’s history. It is also the one that best exposes its dependence on China. Why is it important. Apple is already worth more than $4 trillion, the third company to reach that valuation after NVIDIA and Microsoft. Its results affect hundreds of suppliers in its production chain. But the growth of the iPhone, which still accounts for half of its revenue, has slowed. China is both a threat and an opportunity: If you regain traction there, the rally continue. If not, services will have to compensate more and more. And they are not infinite. Yes, but. ‘Greater China’ (a region that includes mainland China, Macau, Taiwan and Hong Kong) is the only region that has fallen compared to the previous year. Revenues in that market have been $14.5 billion, 4% less year-on-year and well below the $16.4 billion expected by analysts. Tim Cook has tried to soften the blow by promising that they will grow again in the first fiscal quarter thanks to the iPhone 17but the numbers sing: Apple is losing ground where it hurts most. Besides, Chinese brands are winning the battle of prestige on their own territory. Manufacturers like Huawei, Xiaomi or Vivo are no longer cheap alternatives and have started to position themselves as premium options, with special emphasis on the former. Apple is no longer the only status symbol in a market that manufactures many of its products. The money trail. The Services division has reached $28.75 billion this quarter, 15% more than last year. It is a historical maximum and the figure that really sustains Apple’s growth. In the full fiscal year, Services have exceeded $109 billion, another record. iPhone: 49 billion (+6%). Services: 28,750 million (+15%). Mac: 8,726 million (+13%). iPad: 6,952 million (practically flat). Home, wearables and accessories: 9,013 million (-0.3%). In this last division are Apple Watch, AirPods, HomePod, Apple TV… Services already represent 28% of total revenues but their very high margin compared to hardware means that they generate close to 50% of operating profit. Services, after all, do not require complex supply chains or rely on product cycles. In detail. The tariffs have cost $1.1 billion in the quarter and are expected to reach $1.4 billion in the next. Kevan Parekh, the chief financial officer who has replaced Luca Maestri, has projected revenue growth of 10% to 12% for the December quarter — the first of Apple’s fiscal year — with iPhone sales growing by double digits. Analysts expected only 6%. Cook has highlighted the “very strong demand” for the iPhone 17, launched in September alongside the iPhone Air. They have also mentioned supply constraints, suggesting that they could have sold more if they had been able to make more. The backdrop. Apple depends on China in two directions: As a consumer market. And as a production center. This double dependence is a geopolitical vulnerability that has become more evident with the trade war. The company has tried to diversify its manufacturing towards India and Vietnambut China remains irreplaceable in the short term. Meanwhile, in China, Apple is no longer perceived as the only aspirational brand. Local manufacturers have improved a lot in design, cameras and software, which leads to an improvement in perceived value. And they’ve done it while Apple navigated years of incremental iPhone updates. Featured image | apple, Li Yang In Xataka | Ode to rounded corners, the visual element that has proven Steve Jobs right once again

The universities of Oviedo and Granada can no longer handle parents complaining about their children.

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Spanish education delves into a thorny debate. Prickly and striking. Should parents get involved in their children’s university education? If a father accompanies his 19, 20 or 21-year-old son to school to take care of registration procedures, manage an internship or even review an exam, is he doing him a favor or harming him? It may seem like an artificial controversy, but over the last week the debate has been heated by two viral posters posted by two Spanish universities, that of Granada and that of Oviedo. What signs are those? The first one went viral a few days ago. In fact we talked to you about him a week ago. To make it clear how far the students’ parents can go, Pedro Valdivia, vice dean of the Faculty of Educational Sciences of the University of Granada (UGR), prepared a statement which soon became popular: “The Vice Dean of Practices does not serve parents. All enrolled students are of legal age.” The announcement caught the attention (among others) of the economist Daniel Arias-Arandaprofessor at the UGR, who launched a notice to surfers on their social networks who received hundreds of comments. “When it is necessary to put up this sign at the university, something is wrong. Dear student: solve your own problems and don’t boss around mom and dad. Remember, the age of majority in Spain is 18,” the teacher ironized along with a photo in which you can see the poster of the Vice Dean of Practices hanging with thumbtacks from a cork and with the UGR logo printed in one corner. And the other poster? The other, of very similar tone and background, arrives from the University of Oviedo. The news he advanced it The Commercewhich details that at the end of last year the Faculty of Education and Teacher Training decided to hang a poster in which it basically warns parents that they cannot act on behalf of their adult children: “Article 24. – Access by parents to the academic data of their children. In compliance with the Agreement of March 5, 2020, of the Governing Council of the UO, only students will be served.” And in case there was any doubt, yes, the emphasis is from the Asturian university itself. Your warning is interesting because goes further of the one launched by the UGR and delves into details. Specifically, the Oviedo poster quotes the article on which the university is based and which settles any possible debate: “Academic data (related to enrollment, grades or scholarships of each student) constitute personal data whose processing is subject to the provisions of the General Data Protection Regulation. The communication of personal data relating to students to their parents constitutes data processing.” In order for them to access the information, a “legitimate interest” must be proven. Why so much controversy? Because as remember Arias-Aranda himself, it is usual for students who arrive at universities to be of legal age or even (in the case of those who manage internships) to be in their twenties. Thus the spark arises. Should parents be in charge of procedures such as registration, internships, tutoring and exam reviews of students who are already adults and are one step away from entering the labor market as graduates? Should a parent have access to their child’s records to know what grades they get or whether or not they go to class? As the Asturian faculty recalls, the debate may be settled at a regulatory level by the regulations on student data protection, but… Is it justified for a parent to want to go further? There are those who consider that the answer is yes. “If parents are the ones who pay for their children’s university (they must) be informed of the productivity of that investment,” think a user on social networks. “When the bosses don’t listen to reasons at work, you go back to the union member; when the university staff does the same, can’t the student come with the parents?” posed another days ago on LinkedIn. What do the experts say? Come take a look at the reactions to Arias-Aranda’s publication on networks to verify that the topic generates controversy, but it is not difficult to find experts who warn of the risks of overprotecting children and relieving them of responsibilities, especially when they are already adults. Beatriz Valderrama, psychologist and expert in coaching and emotional intelligence, I insisted recently in The Country that this type of behavior on the part of parents is “counterproductive” and limits the development and autonomy of the young person, even when it is done “with the best intentions.” José Ángel Morales, professor of Neuroscience at the Complutense University (UCM), speaks along similar lines, recalling that he has encountered students who attend check-ups accompanied by their parents. “In these cases I explain to the mother that what needs to be promoted is the student’s critical reasoning, that he is the one who refutes a correction, not his parents,” points out. Celestino Rodríguez, dean of the Faculty of Education of the University of Oviedo, recognize to The Commerce who has seen parents who don’t think it’s okay to be prevented from staying at their children’s academic meetings. Is it a widespread problem? Valdivia and Morales assure that these are cases “isolated”not the general pattern, although the truth is that they are enough to have led at least two Spanish faculties to hang posters. In reality, the phenomenon goes beyond Granada, Oviedo or the rest of Spain and connects with a reality about which experts they have been around for a while warning: the “helicopter parents”parents committed to permanently protecting their children, ensuring their choices, education… In other words, they ‘fly over’ their decisions and the overprotect. The trend also coincides with the emergence of a new fatherly profilefathers and mothers of Gen millennialstrained at universities, qualified (sometimes with managerial experience) and who feel legitimate to go to faculties to deal with professors. Images | Victoria Heath (Unsplash) and Priscilla Du Preez … Read more

Microsoft no longer sells software: it sells inevitability

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OpenAI is no longer an entity with hybrid control and is now a fully fledged company. That is, for profit. Microsoft, which had special rights and a seat on its board, give up that position in exchange for something more stable: Guaranteed and perpetual access to OpenAI models (current and future). Freedom to create your own foundational models without restrictions. Gain independence without losing technology. Why is it important. This does not make Microsoft the owner of OpenAI, but rather the platform that turns its AI into a mass product. OpenAI can continue investigating, but Microsoft remains the one who controls access to users and companies. Distribution defines power today, even above invention. The general overview. Microsoft has been transforming its business from selling licenses to selling continuous dependency for more than a decade: Office 365 eliminated or relegated the option to purchase the software only once. Windows 10 introduced mandatory updates that turned the operating system into permanent service. Azure has tied enterprise infrastructure to its cloud. The pattern is consistent: turning tools into platforms, products into subscriptions, and options into inevitabilities. The agreement with OpenAI is not an exception, it is the culmination. In detail. Microsoft maintains something that no other actor has: Direct integration of Copilot in Office, Teams, Outlook and Windows. Large-scale business contracts that turn AI into the structural cost of digital work. Control over the point of entry: the place where millions of people work every day. The new agreement ensures that OpenAI cannot turn off the tap, and that Microsoft can expand or replace its models without depending on third parties. The strategic background. Until now, Microsoft could not develop its own AGI. Now yes. This allows you two parallel routes: Use OpenAI models in your ecosystem. Develop your own (or integrate with others) if OpenAI gets sidetracked or delayed. Gain technological freedom and commercial stability. But above all, you gain something more valuable: the certainty that AI will not be optional in your software. Between the lines. The move consolidates Microsoft as the main consumer channel for AI at work. Not by contract, but by market position. Millions of users already pay for Copilot without expressly choosing it. Companies assume it as part of the normal cost of productivity. There is no real alternative: if you work in Word, you use Copilot. If you manage emails in Outlook, you use Copilot. If you coordinate teams in Teams, you use Copilot. Yes, but. This is not the traditional technological domain. Microsoft doesn’t need to have the best AI. You just need to have the most integrated one. OpenAI can be brighter, Google can be faster, Meta can be more open (or not so open). It doesn’t matter, because none of them are inside the software where the work is done. AI is no longer an add-on. It becomes invisible infrastructure. The contrast. Other technological giants continue to bet on the excellence of the model: Everyone competes to have the best technology, but Microsoft competes for something else: to be the place where that technology is used, regardless of who created it. In summary: OpenAI is freed to grow as a company. Microsoft makes sure that no matter what happens, AI runs through its software. The rest of the industry competes to invent. Microsoft has won by distributing. Does not sell AI. Sell ​​inevitability. In Xataka | AI works better if you are edge Featured image | Microsoft

Spain no longer knows what to do with its surplus of renewables. So he is going to build a huge electric bridge with Ireland

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Spain shines with sun and wind, but is drowning in its own green electricity. Solar and wind farms break generation recordsbut a good part of that energy is wasted due to lack of network, storage and connections with Europe. While the country operates in “reinforced mode”has found a possible solution to dispose of its renewable surplus. An electric bridge. On this path of releasing its excess energy, Spain has found in Ireland the best matches to connect. Irish Minister for Climate, Energy and Environment, Darragh O’Brien, advertisement After a meeting with the Spanish Secretary of State Joan Groizard, both countries are working on the construction of an underwater electrical interconnector between Ireland and Spain. Speaking to RTÉ NewsIrish Minister Darragh O’Brien announced that the project will seek to be co-financed with European funds and be completed in the mid-2030s. It will not be a minor project: the cable, he explained, will allow the buying and selling of electricity between both countries, balancing generation peaks. O’Brien acknowledged that, for now, “Spain is more likely to export energy to Ireland,” because the country usually has a surplus of renewable power that it cannot always take advantage of. We’re going to a wedding. The idea of ​​joining Spain and Ireland with an electric cable may sound eccentric, but it responds to continental logic: countries that produce green energy need to sell it, and those that are isolated need to receive it. In this context, our country is a clear example of the first group. The country has one of the largest renewable capacities in Europe —more than 40GW new since 2019—, but its level of international interconnection it barely reaches 2.8%well below the European target of 15% set for 2030. On the other hand, Ireland belongs to the second group. Its system depends almost entirely on the United Kingdom and France, and the country is, along with Spain and Finland, among the most exposed to blackouts due to lack of interconnections. according to a study by the consulting firm Ember. The analysis warns that 55% of the European electricity system has limits on importing electricity, which increases the risk of supply failures. How will the new cable work? It will be a high-voltage underwater interconnector (HVDC), the same system already used to move clean electricity over long distances between countries. The project is inspired by the Celtic Interconnectorthe Ireland-France link that will open in 2027, and will allow gigawatts of renewable energy to be transported under the Atlantic. There is still no closed route, but the Bay of Biscay appears as the most likely option: there it is already another cable advances between Spain and France, co-financed by the European Investment Bank. The political objective is clear: integrate the networks of the European periphery into an interconnected continental system, less vulnerable to blackouts and more efficient in the use of green energy. Furthermore, both countries recently led a meeting in Luxembourg of the “Friends of Renewables” group, together with 15 Member States and the European Commission. At that meeting, the new European Electricity Grids Package was presented, considered “one of the key pillars to facilitate affordable, safe and clean renewable energy.” Everything starts from the cables. The challenge is not only in producing more, but in transporting and storing energy. Spain invest only 30 cents in the network For every euro allocated to renewables, half of the European average. In this way, the cable with Ireland would fit into a map of projects that aims to break the energy isolation of the Iberian Peninsula. In addition to the Bay of Biscay link, are underway the Navarra–Landes and Aragón–Marsillón connections with France, a third interconnection with Morocco and new links between islands and the continent. If all these cables materialize, Spain will go from being “an energy island” to becoming an energy node between Europe and Africa, capable of exporting its renewable surpluses at competitive prices. The next great leap in European energy could start here: an electrical wire under the sea that connects the Spanish sun with Irish houses. Image | Jules Verne Times Two Xataka | When an undersea cable breaks in Africa, there is only one solution: call the only ship that has been repairing them for more than a decade

The price of chocolate is rising so much that chocolate bars are no longer legally chocolate bars.

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Imagine for a moment that Nocilla, the famous Spanish spread, reduced the chocolate in its recipe so much that they could not use its famous ditty about “milk, cocoa, hazelnuts and sugar” without incurring fraud. Imagine the shock, the controversy, the disbelief. Well, something very similar to that. just happened in the uk and, honestly, it is a warning of the future of chocolate. What has happened? For decades, McVitie’s tried to become in the UK’s quintessential chocolate cookie: “If you like your cookies with lots of chocolate, join our club,” has been their advertising slogan all this time. But that’s over: Pladis, the parent company (one of the country’s largest producers of cookies, sweets and salty snacks), has so limited the chocolate in the recipe for its Club cookies and Penguin bars that, legally, they are no longer chocolate cookies. Now They only have a chocolate ‘flavor’. But why? The explanation is simple: cocoa prices have risen so much (especially, in 2024 and early 2025) and skyrocketing production costs. As we have been warning for months, this pressure was wreaking havoc on the world of chocolate. Manufacturers very quickly realized that they could not transfer all the increases to final prices: demand was going to be savagely reduced. The reduflation and countless other strategies to contain prices. And as both in the United Kingdom and in the European Union, the regulation requires that at least 20% of the product are “cocoa solids”crossing that line requires a change of name. And what does all this imply? Although it may seem strange, the consequences of all this in October 2025 are that although consumption falls due to price, business improves. Although chocolate is 13% more expensive today than at the beginning of the year and almost 19% more than just a year ago; the sector has been able to generate more than 80 million profit than last year. However, the future is uncertain. In a recent report, Produlce (the sector’s employers’ association) recognized that consumption fell last year (according to their calculations, by 8.6%), although spending per person increased by 5.5%. But that is something worrying: because, despite the fact that cocoa is giving some rest, the price is still double what is usual. And everything suggests that will continue to rise in the medium term. Image | Ubcule | Monika Guzikowska In Xataka | A chocolate bar filled with pistachio has become the most desired viral on TikTok: the “Dubai chocolate”

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