move

If you want to buy a mansion at a bargain price, it’s easier than ever. The only thing is that you will have to move to Dubai

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Dubai and Abu Dhabi have positioned themselves as the favorite destination of the richest people on the planet thanks to very lax taxation and great possibilities to obtain profitability with a rising real estate market. Luxury apartments on the artificial island of Palm Jumeirah, penthouses with views of the Burj Khalifa or luxury mansions on the seafront They were sold in hours to newly arrived millionaires. The Iranian missile attacks on airports, ports and residential areas of the United Arab Emirates have suddenly shattered the image of a safe haven that the region had built for decades. The real estate market, which seemed bulletproof, faces your first challenge: not to sink in the face of the uncertainty of war. ​The boom that no one wanted to stop. The real estate boom in the Emirates is supported mainly by the investments that foreign millionaires have made in the country to obtain your residency. The UAE offered zero income taxes, long-term visas for investors, and political stability that few countries in the area could boast. By 2025, nearly 90% of the UAE’s more than 11 million residents were expatriates, according to data collected by Reuters. The result was an off-plan apartment sales machinery that worked at full capacity. According to the report ‘Dubai Residential Real Estate FY 2025‘ the consulting firm Betterhomes, 65% of real estate transactions in Dubai in 2025 corresponded to off-plan homes that did not yet exist. Promoters launched projects and sold them out in hours. In Abu Dhabi, real estate prices rose by around 32% in 2025 alone from the previous year, according to the report ‘UAE Real Estate Market Review Q4 2025‘ from CBRE. And then the missiles came. On March 4, the markets of Dubai and Abu Dhabi reopened after two days closed due to missile attacks launched by Iran against US interests and its allies in the area. Shares in Aldar Properties, Abu Dhabi’s largest listed developer, and Emaar Properties, the company behind the Burj Khalifa, fell 5% in a single session. The bonds of large developers also collapsed and the debt market, key to financing new developments, was practically blocked for new issues. A senior banking manager in the sector explained to Reuters that his firm canceled that same week a capital raising operation for the UAE real estate market. “Investors are not thinking about investing in the region at the moment,” he said, adding that the risk associated with property in the UAE had become “much higher”. Records and sales at the same time. In the midst of the confusion of the bombings, Dubai closed one of its most striking operations of recent years. A 2,900 m2 apartment in the Aman Residences Dubai project, in the coastal neighborhood of Jumeirah 2, was sold for 422 million dirhams (about $115 million), becoming the third most expensive apartment sale in the history of the emirate. It is only surpassed by an operation of 550 million dirhams in Bugatti Residences in 2025. But at the same time, the platform PanicSelling.xyz, that monitors prices on more than 20,000 luxury properties in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, detected 82 discounts that totaled 14.3 million dollars in just a few days after the Iran attacks. Dale Buckner, CEO of Global Guardian, explained to CNBC that the exodus of expatriates showed no signs of slowing down and that just that morning his company had seven corporate clients looking to evacuate between 1,000 and 3,000 employees. “This situation is similar to Ukraine,” Buckner said. The storm that was already seen coming. What aggravates the situation is that the problems do not only come from outside. JPMorgan analysts they already warned before the attacks that Dubai’s population growth would likely not absorb the 300,000 to 400,000 new homes expected by 2028. The market already had an oversupply problem on the horizon before the missiles arrived. Ryan Lemand, co-founder and CEO of Neovision Wealth Management in Abu Dhabi, summed it up: “Real estate investing depends on stability, visibility and investor confidence, and all of these factors tend to weaken during prolonged periods of geopolitical uncertainty.” The excess real estate supply and a complicated geopolitical situation have kept the interest of investors for properties in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, suggesting the best time to invest in the area. The risk in this case is not in profitability, but in the precision of the missiles. In Xataka | While NEOM builds ski slopes in the desert, Dubai is going in the opposite direction: attracting tourism without going bankrupt Image | Unsplash (Duane Mendes), Wikipedia

he preferred not to move

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Despite having built two business empiresAmancio Ortega does not live in a luxury skyscraper in London or in a penthouse in Miami. Not even in a big capital. Ortega has preferred to settle his residence in La Coruña, the city where he opened your first Zara store in 1975, marking the beginning of what would later become Inditex. Staying in La Coruña reflects not only a personal rootsbut also his taste for stay away from the media spotlight and keep a low profile in front of the press. With just over 250,000 inhabitants, La Coruña has become the refuge of ninth greatest fortune of the world with a heritage of 149,000 million dollars who, instead of living in an ostentatious mansion, has resided for decades in a luxury apartment in the Avenida da Marina area of ​​La Coruña, on the city’s seafront. How much does it cost to be a neighbor of Amancio Ortega? According to published AD, Amancio Ortega’s usual residence is a large duplex in a classic-style residential building in the historic center. The façade with glass galleries, typical of the city, let in natural light and offer open panoramic views over the marina and the bay. It is not an isolated house or a private chalet, but rather a luxury apartment integrated into an urban fabric with daily activity. There is no record of the size of the house, but estimates based on other nearby properties suggest that it would be in a range between 180 or 220 m2 on several floors. Entering the same residential segment as Ortega’s home means placing yourself in the most exclusive part of the real estate market in La Coruña. In 2026, data from specialized portals show that prices are not uniform within the city. According to data from real estate portals such as Idealista, they establish that the average price of housing in the city is around 2,974 euros/m2 in 2026. However, when we focus on areas of high demand such as the area around Ciudad Vieja, where Amancio Ortega resides, its price shoots up above 3,985 euros/m2. In some cases of buildings with recent rehabilitation, dominant height and direct views of the sea, offers can exceed 4,200 euros/m2. If we take a home of comparable size to that estimated for Ortega’s residence, the purchase price in 2026 would be in a range of between 760,000 euros and more than 850,000 euros. To put it in perspective, that amount would be the equivalent that Amancio Ortega would earn in two hours and 25 minutes of your time. Living on rent would also not be a cheap solution to being a neighbor of a billionaire of the stature of Ortega. The municipal average of La Coruña is around 11 euros/m2 per month. However, in the heart of the historic center and the seafront, rents frequently exceed 14 euros/m2 per month. For a home similar to that of Amancio Ortega, the monthly price could be around 2,800 euros per month. That fee is high for Galicia, but it may even seem cheap when compared to the rents paid in exclusive city neighborhoods like Madrid or Barcelona. The country house and its visits to Madrid In addition to his urban residence in A Coruña, Ortega is owner del Pazo de Drozo, a stately property located in the municipality of Cambre (Anceis), about 17 km from the center of Coruña. The manor is a traditional Galician construction from the 17th century, located on a 4,500 m2 plot with large gardens and a more private and country character. The Anceis property has served as the setting for family events such as the wedding of his daughter Marta Ortegatoday the highest representative of the Ortega family at Inditex as non-executive president of the firm from 2022. Amancio Ortega has built a real estate empire all over the world thanks to dividends obtained from Inditex managed by Pontegadea. However, when the millionaire must travel to the capital to fulfill his business agenda, he stays at the residence that, as as I pointed out Vanitatisthe millionaire bought in the exclusive Milenium building, in front of Madrid’s Puerta de Alcalá. According to collected The Confidentialthe approximate price of the homes on that property was between 15,000 and 20,000 euros per m2, achieving the dubious record of positioning itself as one of the most expensive properties in the capital. In Xataka | Seven of the ten largest fortunes in the world in 2026 are due to AI: this illustrative graph makes it very clear Image | GTRES

Intel refuses to be left out of the AI ​​race. Your next move points directly to NVIDIA’s territory

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The AI ​​fever is not only redefining software, it is also turning the map of power in the chip industry upside down. On this new board, the GPU has become the essential engine for building models and scaling data centers, to the point that demand has skyrocketed and placed its main manufacturers in a dominant position. For Intel, the diagnosis is difficult but evident: if the next decade of computing is decided in this area, it is not enough to protect the kingdom of the CPU. Intel’s move. The Santa Clara company has chosen a very specific setting to begin organizing its speech. During an AI Summit organized by Cisco, the company’s CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, said that Intel will start to produce GPUs and has just hired the “chief GPU architect” who will lead that effort. The manager avoided giving details about the name, but he did leave a message consistent with the moment in the sector: the GPU matters and will continue to matter. The missing piece. According to Reutersthe talent hired by Intel is Eric Demers, from Qualcomm. On the other hand, the initiative would fall under the umbrella of Kevork Kechichian, executive vice president and head of Intel’s data center business, incorporated in September within the framework of a series of hires aimed at strengthening the company’s technical profile. AI, before gaming. The nuance is important, because talking about GPU can automatically activate the imagination of graphics cards for gaming, but reality goes in another direction. Intel already has a presence in graphics on the PC, with its Arc productsbut the announcement targets GPUs for AI and data centers. The initiative as a still early plan, with a strategy that will be developed based on customer demand, a coherent approach with an AI infrastructure market where the most intense battle is being fought today. Intel’s corporate moment. According to CNBCthe stock market value has risen in the last year in the heat of optimism about your business foundrybut the company is still mainly dedicated to manufacturing chips for its own catalog. It’s no secret that Intel has lost ground to companies driven by the AI ​​data center wave, and is now taking steps to respond. No relief until 2028. In the same forum, Tan slipped in another element that helps dimension the challenge of AI infrastructure. He spoke of the memory chip shortage which is disrupting the market due to the mismatch between supply and demand, driven by the construction of AI-oriented data centers. That environment is giving manufacturers room to continue raising prices, and Tan was blunt in describing AI as the “biggest challenge” to memory. He also released an estimate that leaves little room for optimism: he stated that he does not expect “no relief until 2028.” Images | Brecht Corbeel In Xataka | Goodbye to the duopoly of Intel and AMD in Windows: the arrival of NVIDIA processors is imminent and brings 8 laptops under its arm

monitor every move of Russia and China in the Arctic

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First World War II and then the Cold War turned Greenland into a magnificent surveillance platform belonging to Denmark but granting the United States a VIP pass that it now wants to switch to annexation. Because that piece of frozen land (less and less) has rare earthsbut the most attractive thing has always been its strategic location. Old radars are not enough. The melting of Greenland has opened new sea routes that Russia and China have welcomed with open arms. the advantages it offers compared to traditional routes. Of the 15 military bases that the US had in Greenland in 1945, now only one remains: the Pituffik Air Base or Thule. And a problem: outdated and insufficient systems to monitor what happens there, such as acknowledged the Pentagon first and the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies after. So they have gotten to work to solve it: the United States Department of Defense agency responsible for the development of cutting-edge technologies for military use (DARPA) has requested a new technology collected in Frosty. This program aims to develop new radars that operate reliably in the harsh Arctic environment. DARPA is seeking proposals capable of detecting aerial targets at least 75 kilometers away with a detection probability greater than 90%. The coveted new polar “silk road”. The launch of this new radar is important because it would mean having a real lookout in the Arctic and on the new route that has appeared so that the great world powers can gain commercial and military advantage. China has already made clear what do you want be a “great polar power”“. The immediate advantage is reduce shipping times to Europe from up to 50 days to less than half (on its route through Suez). This recent academic article In its security report, the United States Coast Guard reviews other possible risks such as the expansion of its fishing grounds, access to natural resources for scientific cooperation and mentions the existence of its advanced fleet of modern icebreakers and Chinese submarines capable of operating under the ice. Spoiler: With current technology, they are difficult to detect from the surface. For Russia, the new passage route that is being opened is a threat to the current North Sea route, which operates under its jurisdiction. Furthermore, Greenland is part of the GIUK bottleneck (shared with the United Kingdom and Iceland) that its northern fleet must pass through to reach the open waters of the Atlantic, at the gates of the United States. We are talking about nuclear submarines as advanced as the Borei-A class and the Yasen-M. Also at stake is the sovereignty of the Lomonosov Ridge, an underwater mountain range that links it to Greenland, which could eventually give it exclusive rights to vast hydrocarbon reserves. And that’s without talking about the massive rare earth deposits The technical challenge of being so far north. The northern lights are very beautiful, but they generate a huge amount of electromagnetic noise when they occur. Since the Earth’s magnetic field lines also converge at the North Pole, the ionosphere is unstablegenerating scintillation that corrupts the GPS signal and absorption in the polar cap. In short, conventional radars not only fall short, but sometimes also go blind. The DARPA wish list. What the US agency wants It is essentially transforming the electromagnetic chaos of the Arctic into a detection tool with a brain in the form of processing software with advanced algorithms that dynamically “filter” interference from geomagnetic storms to isolate potential threats. Furthermore, it would not be a single giant antenna, but rather a mesh of small mobile nodes that share data to triangulate targets. These are the radars you request: A passive environmental noise radar that does not simply emit a signal and wait for the bounce, but uses natural radio frequency noise from the environment to detect objects. That is, it does not treat noise as an interference, but as a source. If a ship passes through that noise, it generates a disturbance that can be detected. Radars Over-the-Horizon that, unlike line-of-sight ones, which travel in a straight line and collide with the curvature of the Earth, these are capable of bouncing waves off the ionosphere to be able to detect objects beyond the Earth’s curvature. They are indicated to detect maritime vessels or aircraft flying at low altitude, thus evading conventional radars. An externally illuminated radar with high-power transmitters located at great distances as power sources, like Alaska’s HAARPwhich allows objects to be illuminated indirectly. For when. As mark your roadmapthe receipt of industry proposals for the tender ended on January 30 and the next 18 months will focus on algorithm development, offline implementation and laboratory testing. Between 2027 and 2028, the integration of the software into real hardware would take place, with field tests in Point Barrow and Poker Flat, Alaska. Therefore, to see this new and ambitious radar network in action we will have to wait until 2028. In Xataka | Russia and China already had an advantage over the US in the Arctic. After Greenland, it has multiplied In Xataka | Now that Europe has sent its troops to Greenland, a question emerges that no one wants to ask: what happens if the US invades it? Cover | JoAnne Castagna / US Army Corps of Engineers (Public domain)

Meta was the big loser of the AI ​​race in 2025. She was actually preparing her big move

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Meta wasn’t dead, but she wasn’t partying either. He was working hard on a new AI model for which there are huge expectations. Now we know a little more about that project, but one thing doesn’t change: it better not fail. what has happened. Andrew Bossworth, CTO of Meta, has confirmed during the World Economic Forum in Davos that the Superintelligence Labs division already has a first internal version of its new AI models. This is an important and long-awaited milestone that they have been working on for six months. “Very good”, but not ready yet. Bossworth did not want to give too many details, but he did indicate that preliminary tests show that the models perform very well. These models will still take time to come to market: Meta is currently in a critical post-training phase for these models to be truly useful for both internal developers and end users. Two great models. Although the names of those models were not specified, rumors and leaks point to two major developments. On the one hand, Avocado, focused on text and which could be launched in the first quarter of 2026. On the other, Mango, focused on image and video generation. A 2025 of transition. The manager described the year 2025 as “tremendously chaotic”, and it was certainly a very complicated year for Meta. He Llama 4 failure It made the company completely change its philosophy and strategy. Zuckerberg did not stop hire talent with a exorbitant costespecially when it acquired Scale AI and signed its CEO, Alexandr Wangnow head of Superintelligence Labs. That investment has also been allocated to acquire companies like Manusthat could become another key component of Meta’s strategy going forward. Glasses as an AI device. If they behave as expected, these models will probably also end up being used in smart glasses from Meta, which has been collaborating with Ray-Ban for years and which you have just seen its second version accompanied, of course, by the striking and even more versatile Meta Ray-Ban Display. Interaction with AI models is one of the most striking features, and these models could take it to new limits. The mystery of Open Source. In July 2024 Mark Zuckerberg indicated that “Open Source AI is the way to go.” Llama was at that time the clear reference, but the disappointing launch of Llama 4 and above all the push for open models from various Chinese companies has made this panorama change significantly. It is not clear that Meta will launch its new models with open versions, and if it did not do so, Chinese hegemony would be even more notable. Will it be worth the investment? Meta is one of the companies that has spent (or bet) the most money on the future of AI. Mark Zuckerberg said that I was willing to lose “hundreds of billions of dollars in AI” because not investing them would be even more dangerous for Meta. He has been consistent with that statement, but It remains to be seen if it ends up working.. The company certainly has the resources to be a protagonist in this market, but today its solutions—with Meta AI at the head—have a very reduced role compared to that of their competitors. Image | Goal In Xataka | China’s best kept weapon in AI is not Qwen: it is the more than 100,000 variables created by other companies

now they don’t even move

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For decades, the tank was the indisputable symbol of modern land warfare, a centerpiece in doctrines designed to break fronts and decide campaigns in a matter of hours. However, the massive drone outbreak cheap sensors and precision ammunition has gone eroding that role to turning today’s battlefield into an environment where moving or even shooting involves unprecedented risks, forcing major military powers to rethink how (and if) heavy armor can remain relevant. Russia is clear. Drones and stagnation. Despite the diplomatic contacts and rhetoric about a possible negotiated solution, Russia has maintained an offensive sustained to seize key territory from Ukraine, although yes, from a position of clear operational friction. Over the past year, Russian attacks have come in waves dismounted infantrysupported irregularly by motorcycleslight vehicles and even horsesan image that reflects the extent to which heavy armor has been sidelined by the constant threat of FPV drones and Ukrainian bombers. we have been counting: the attempts to return the tanks to the front using nets, improvised cages and other protections have produced limited results. Without effective armored support, assaults progress more slowly, become more exposed to defensive fire, and rack up high casualties with modest territorial gains, pushing Moscow to seek a tactical solution that allows the reintroduction of the armored weapon without repeating recent failures. The last tactic. And here appears the latest russian responsewhich involves a more fragmented and dynamic use of armor, articulated in pairs of tanks continuously supported by drones. In this scheme, the tanks act from a more rearward position, completely stopped and providing fire, while the drones execute a move towards the line of contactresponsible for detecting targets, correcting shots and offering a situational idea in real time. The roles are then alternated to prevent any tank from remaining static long enough to become a predictable target. The objective: to desynchronize enemy sensors and attack systems, generate brief windows of local superiority and force rapid penetrations before the Ukrainian defense can fully react, partly replacing traditional paper of the artillery for a binomial direct fire and persistent aerial surveillance. The breakdown of Soviet doctrine. This approach contrasts sharply with the doctrine inherited from the Soviet era, based on large concentrations of tanks and artillery advancing after massive bombardments to crush weakened defenses. On the current battlefield, dominated by reconnaissance dronesthese types of movements are detected quickly and punished with precision. Furthermore, in urban or semi-urban environments, bottlenecks abound, where the destruction of a single vehicle can block an entire column and turn the rest of the tanks into easy targets, as observed in failed attacks near Pokrovsk at the beginning of 2025. The new tactic recognizes that reality and tries to adapt, but it also highlights the extent to which the drone has gone from being a prop to becoming in the central axis of modern combat. Sensors, communications and logistics. Despite its innovative nature, the new method does not solve structural problems that continue to burden Russian forces. Even dispersed and moving, the tanks remain vulnerable to drones operated from outside their direct fire range, and each shot reveals their position by increasingly easy-to-detect acoustic and visual signals with advanced sensors. The tactic also depends on reliable communication links between tanks, drones and infantry, a weak point compared to Ukrainian capabilities. electronic warfarecapable of degrading or interrupting those connections and increasing the risk of isolation. Added to this is the already fragile logistics, since tanks consume large amounts of fuel and resupply vehicles are priority objectives for Ukrainian drones, making it difficult to sustain armored operations under constant surveillance. Immediate impact and adaptation. In the short term, this controlled reintroduction The armor can provide Russia with the necessary firepower to support limited advances in critical sectors of the almost thousand kilometer front, where it tries to pressure strategic nodes such as Pokrovsk, Kostiantynivka, Chasiv Yar or Toretsk. The infantry assaults have achieved punctual penetrationsbut they usually lack the muscle necessary to consolidate them, and tanks could partially cover that deficit. However, conflict experience suggests that Ukraine will react quicklyfitting their drones with better sensors and prioritizing not only the destruction of tanks, but also their supply lines, in addition to reinforcing obstacles, mines and barriers on foreseeable routes of advance. Thus the probable result is a ephemeral tactical advantage which is unlikely to translate into a lasting change in balance. A scenario that redraws a duality that has been repeated before: that of the Russian capacity for adaptation in a battlefield dominated by drones, and the limits of that adaptation in the face of vulnerabilities that remain unresolved. Image | Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, RawPixel In Xataka | “Robots don’t bleed”: the Ukrainian drone that stopped Russia for six weeks with a machine gun and not a single human soldier In Xataka | Russia has reminded the planet that the war in Ukraine is a ticking bomb. And for this he has pressed a nuclear button: Oreshnik

We joke about porn at ChatGPT, but it’s the most lucid financial move OpenAI has had in a long time

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There are people so hooked on AI who needs professional help to get out of there. Others they fall in love with one and even they cheat on their partners. In the midst of the debate about the effects of AI on mental healthOpenAI took a radical turn: would allow erotic content on ChatGPT. Porn on ChatGPT is on the decline, and it may be the push OpenAI needs to start monetizing its invention. adult mode. They count in The Verge A few days ago the head of OpenAI applications confirmed the approximate date for the arrival of this new mode. The adult mode was expected to be ready for this month of December, but apparently they do not have the age prediction system ready yet, so it will arrive sometime in the first quarter of 2026. Rudder turn. The measure represents a turn in Altman’s speech, which in August of this year He was “proud of not making a sexbot to squeeze profits”, in which many of us saw a swipe at Elon Musk and his competitor Grok. His change of position provoked criticism from many users, to which responded saying that Open AI was not “the world’s moral police” and that “as AI becomes more important in people’s lives, giving them the freedom to use it as they wish is an important part of our mission.” Subscriptions. Only one word is needed to understand the change in position: money. If there is something that OpenAI needs as May water, it is money, a lot of money. The subscriptions They were proposed as the most logical way to monetize AI chatbots, but the reality is that of the 1.8 billion users that ChatGPT has, only 3% pay any of the subscriptions. OpenAI’s plan is that by 2030 the number of subscribers will increase by at least 8.5% and adult mode is part of that plan. A sector that moves millions. Grok is one of the AI ​​chatbots that has fewer restrictions regarding erotic content, but there are more apps like Character.Ai or Replika that also allow sexual content. They count in The Economist that the adult content AI market will bill $2.5 billion in 2025 and is expected to increase 27% annually until at least 2028. It is too juicy a business to be left out, even if that means going against what he said just a few months ago. Something more will be needed. Sam Altman himself recently said that OpenAI’s spending projections over the next eight years amount to $1.4 trillion (European trillions, add twelve zeros). Although the adult mode was a success and they managed to double their subscribers, There is still a long way to go to achieve the desired profitability. OpenAI has other open fronts such as the creation of the highly anticipated “AI iPhone” or robotics, but they are businesses that require a huge investment. The advertising It is emerging as another path to follow and, together with porn, they seem to be the two most realistic and effective ideas of all those that OpenAI has on the table. Image | Unsplash In Xataka | OpenAI has lost $11.5 billion in a single quarter. Sam Altman doesn’t like to be reminded

can’t move forward without it

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Europe speaks increasingly loudly about technological sovereignty, risky suppliers and the need to shield its networks. Brussels, Washington and several European partners They look at Huawei with suspicion. However, in the guts of the energy transition—in the inverters, connected batteries, and management systems that keep the grid stable—Huawei’s name appears again and again. And that dependence is so deep that no one in Brussels wants to say it too loudly. The Spanish case triggered everything. It all started with a 12.3 million euro contract for Huawei to provide the storage hardware for the Interior’s judicial wiretapping. What could have remained a technical file became a political earthquake after the formal warning from Brussels, which according to elDiario.es recalled that Huawei and ZTE “present higher risks than other suppliers.” The second blow came from the United States. As detailed by the Financial Timesthe presidents of the intelligence committees of the House of Representatives and the Senate asked to review the exchange of information with Spain for this contract. An unusual diplomatic signal between allies. The Spanish Government defended that “there is no security risk” and that the equipment complies with the National Security Scheme. Huawei, for its part, insisted that it does not have access to the data and that storage is “exclusively the customer’s.” Europe discovers its technological heel. According to an analysis by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), Europe has delivered more than 220 GW of solar capacity to inverters manufactured by Chinese companies, with Huawei as the dominant player. In fact, from POLITICO they reaffirm it with the fact that 65% of the solar power installed in Europe depends on Chinese technology, and that Huawei is the largest supplier of inverters on the continent. The concern is no longer just economic: it is structural. Inverters are the digital brain of the energy transition: they regulate voltages, stabilize frequencies, process data, receive firmware updates and can be turned off—or altered—remotely. According to experts cited by POLITICOsimultaneously manipulating thousands of these devices could generate serious disturbances in the electrical grid. Researchers consulted by the ECFR They warn that, if compromised, these devices could “optimize the impact” of failures and amplify them within the network. Added to this is a detail that highlights European analysis: China keeps its market practically closed to Western investors thanks to a network of cybersecurity regulations that function as a trade barrier. Europe, on the other hand, completely opened its own. And this asymmetry has contributed to the loss of share of the European industry compared to Chinese manufacturers. The real cost of trying to cut the cord. This dependence would be manageable if Europe could easily replace Chinese technology. But the reality is different. According to Xataka Mobilereplacing Huawei equipment in Spanish networks would cost 4,000 million euros for telecoms alone. In Germany, according to Article 14removing components from Huawei would mean 1,000 million for Deutsche Telekom and 700 million for Telefónica. The Energy Newspaper collects internal estimates of the sector which speak of cost overruns of 20% to 40% in mobile networks, smart grids and connected energy infrastructure if Chinese suppliers are excluded. And then there are the geoeconomic consequences. Europe knows well the risks of retaliation: when Sweden banned Huawei in 2020, China counterattacked in its domestic market. Ericsson went from having almost 11% share to less than 2%. So with Beijing dominating key sectors such as solar panels, critical materials or batteries, few governments are willing to repeat that scenario. How can you get out of this mess? Europe has written a roadmap for a problem that has no roadmap and that is why the European Commission is moving in several simultaneous directions: Turn the 5G Toolbox into binding legislation. According to Bloombergwould be the largest European regulatory movement in this decade: going from a recommendation to a legal obligation to remove Huawei and ZTE from critical networks. Extend the logic of 5G to the entire connected infrastructure. How POLITICO progressedBrussels is preparing a new “toolbox” for ICT supply chains that will include solar energy, smart grids, connected cars and smart cameras. Condition European funds. Brussels studies denying financing to projects using “high-risk” vendors, and impose mandatory audits of firmware, cloud, and updates. Multi-pillar regulatory shield. According to The Energy Newspaperthe tandem NIS2 + Data Act + Network Code + Cyber ​​Resilience Act will leave little room for companies subject to foreign intelligence laws. Partial vetoes by Member States: Lithuania banned remote access from Chinese manufacturers to installations of more than 100 kW, Czech Republic has issued alerts on Chinese components in energy networks and Germany has been analyzing for a couple of years the Huawei equipment installed in its infrastructure. The message is clear: Europe wants to protect itself. What is not clear is how to do it without slowing down its energy transition. Huawei moves forward as Europe debates how to expel it. While Brussels designs barriers, Huawei is not retreating. It is in full return and as my colleague in Xataka explained: It has returned to manufacturing 7nm Kirin chips without accessing TSMC. HarmonyOS already surpasses iOS in China and is preparing to expand to 60 countries. Its automotive division has become the “digital brain” of several Chinese manufacturers. Watches, headphones and wearables keep the brand alive in Europe, cultivating a loyal base. The more autonomous Huawei becomes, the harder it will be for the EU to limit its presence. The dilemma that will mark the next European decade. The Commission seeks new rules, calibrates sanctions and repeats that it is about “strategic security.” The reality is that Washington is tightening and Beijing is not giving up, but European capitals are trying to navigate between two giants that do not accept half measures. The reality is that the energy core of the continent – ​​those networks that must power millions of electric cars, absorb gigawatts of renewables and sustain a digitalized economy down to the last meter – continue to depend on and be built by … Read more

Europe has been warning for years that firing in Spain is a bargain. Now Congress is making a move with the “restorative dismissal”

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Unfair dismissal in Spain is a bargain for companies. At least that is what the European Committee of Social Rights (CEDS), dependent on the Council of Europe, has been telling Spain for years. Throughout this time, the Government has turned a deaf ear to the recommendations from Brussels. However, an unexpected turn caused by the mistake of a representative of the Popular Party During a vote in Congress, a Non-Law Proposal (PNL) by Sumar was allowed to prosper, which urges the Government to present a bill to reform the laws that prevent the application of the restorative dismissal that Europe has actively and passively requested. Europe has been warning since 2021. When Spain ratified in 2021 the European Social Charterassumed the commitment to harmonize its labor legislation with its principles. Since then, the European Committee of Social Rights (CEDS), an advisory body of the Council of Europe, has reiterated that the Spanish system, based on a fixed calculation of 33 days per year worked and a maximum of 24 months, does not meet the criteria of said commitment. The problem is that the European Social Charter is a set of guidelines, but it is not binding, and the CEDS is a consultative body, so it cannot demand legislative modifications from Spain. Its resolutions are recommendations, valuable from a legal and political point of view, but without executive force. This lack of obligation has allowed Spain to postpone reforms that would change the way compensation is calculated for employees for unfair dismissal. The cornerstone: article 24. The point of greatest friction to undertake the reforms is found in article 24 of the European Social Charter. It requires “the right of workers dismissed without valid reason (unfair dismissal) to adequate compensation or other appropriate relief.” This means ensuring that compensations to employees for unfair dismissal must be “appropriate and dissuasive”. Something that, as a general rule, does not occur in the system of fixed compensation that is currently applied in all judicial processes for unfair dismissal. This time the request has not come from Europe. Despite having dictated different resolutions and requestsnothing has changed in Europe’s position, nor has it gained power to force Spain to implement the legislative changes. However, what has changed is internal politics. In September, a Non-Law Proposition promoted by Sumar managed to get ahead thanks to the voting error of a PP deputy, repeating the scene that in 2022 allowed approve the labor reform. This NLP does not modify the law itself, but it does urge the Government to begin the legislative process to adapt the regulations to the European framework. This implies the opening of a social dialogue table with unions and employers and, subsequently, the preparation of a bill that must return to Congress to be voted on. The reform of the regulations to legislate unfair dismissals, therefore, is still a long way off, but for the first time the Executive is obliged to put it on the table. “Restorative dismissal” is not a type of dismissal. Among all the CEDS recommendations, none has generated as much debate as the so-called restorative dismissal. The name can lead to confusion: it is not a new category of dismissal as the disciplinarynull or inadmissible, but refers to a proposal to transform How compensation is calculated when a dismissal is declared unfair. Europe considers that the current Spanish system is too predictable and, in many cases, insufficient. The result is that companies can treat unfair dismissal as a more or less easy cost to assume and choose which employees or how many to dismiss based on the cost of the operation. Restorative dismissal causes this calculation to vary from one employee to another and is under the sole discretion of a judge, which would prevent companies from calculating in advance the final cost of the dismissal. What is restorative dismissal?. As its name indicates, restorative dismissal is a model that seeks to individualize the severance payment to the specific damage it causes to the dismissed employee, instead of an automatic calculation based in days per year worked. Judges could assess specific factors in each case, taking into account factors such as the age and social situation of the worker, the real probability of re-entering the labor market, the economic and personal impact of the dismissal, or the size, solvency, or economic capacity of the dismissing company. Based on these factors, for example, a 60-year-old worker with children and a 24-year-old single worker who were fired by the same company in similar positions would obtain different compensation because, statistically, the older one would have less likely to return to the labor market than the young person. Europe understands that this flexibility is essential to repair the real damage of dismissal and to act as a preventive mechanism. Deterrence, protection and less business calculation. The objective of restorative dismissal is not only to better compensate the worker based on the impact caused, but also to discourage the appeal of unfair dismissal and that, if companies really have economic problems that justify dismissals, they do so through dismissals for objective reasons. If the cost is no longer predictable, the company loses the ability to make profitability calculations. This protection measure especially affects precarious groups who, due to their low salary or short seniority, are very cheap to fire: young people, women and precarious workers. Furthermore, Europe insists that the reinstatement after dismissal inadmissible should no longer be optional for the company as it is currently, and should become a real possibility imposed by the court when it is appropriate. Restoration, in this sense, is not only economic, but also labor-related. Justice has its hands tied. Despite Europe’s insistence, the Spanish courts have rejected impose compensation higher than the current scale included in the article 56 of the Workers’ Statute. The reason was not a lack of judicial will, but the absence of a legal framework that would allow additional compensation to be established without generating legal uncertainty. In Xataka | … Read more

In 1973 a German dreamed of exploiting Lanzarote. 50 years later no one has been able to move the ruins of his monster

by

Of all the ghost architectures and abandoned to their fate in Spain, few like the shadow that rises in a unique place in the Canary Islands. Its history begins in the early seventies, at a time when Lanzarote was opening up to international tourism in the heat of expansive urban planning, laws favorable to foreign investment and a climate of economic optimism that seemed to have no limits. And then a “visionary” arrived. A hyperbolic dream. In that context, the German businessman Erick Becker imagined a gigantic tourist complexmade up of five hotels, an aparthotel, more than twelve hundred bungalows and a capacity for four thousand people. The emblematic piece, the Náutico hotel (renamed over the years as Atlante del Sol), was to be the gateway to an urbanization in German capital that saw Lanzarote as an ideal territory to attract European visitors. The legislation of the time, headed by the Strauss Law of 1968encouraged German investment in developing countries and helped direct a flood of capital towards the Canary Islands that found an apparently perfect opportunity on the island. However, the choice of location would prove to be a major mistake. Tourism against the landscape. The Rubicon coast It had virulent waves, constant winds and rugged geography without a beach or adequate access. In those decades, Lanzarote’s infrastructure was fragile, and the area even lacked a road that connected the place with the inhabited centers. Despite this, the project moved forward in fits and startsraising the main structure of the hotel before the oil crisis of 1973 paralyzed the European economy and brought with it a promotion that would never open its doors. Since then, the unfinished mass was abandonedconverted into an unused concrete skeleton that began to hint at the ghostly silhouette that would mark its future. Abandonment, illegality and law. After the abandonment of the project, the Atlante del Sol was suspended in a legal limbo that the subsequent evolution of Canarian urban planning ended up resolving against it. The Island Management Plan of Lanzarote from 1991a pioneer in the protection of the island territory, reclassified the area as rustic land for natural ecological protection, nullifying the urban character it may have had under the regulations of the 1950s and 1960s. With the passage of time, the area was also incorporated into the Natura 2000 Network as a Special Bird Protection Area, reinforcing its ecological value and further shielding its non-urbanizable nature. In parallel, Spanish and regional legislation chained new land laws in 1976, 1990, 1998 and 2007, which consolidated environmental regulations. much more demanding than existed when the original license was granted in 1972. Final blow. The Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands made it clear in 2016 that this old license was invalid operational, because an unfinished work loses any right protected by obsolete regulations when subsequent laws come into force. In essence, what may have been legal in the 1970s ceased to be legal decades ago. Added to this was a determining fact: the property it was never finished nor to be used, and its current state (absolute ruin, no services, no access and no technical possibility of becoming operational equipment) prevented it from being considered a heritage work. The court concluded that reviving a license from 1972 was as inappropriate as pretending that the island had not changed in fifty years. That ruling legally sealed the fate of the hotel: either remain abandoned or be demolished. The ghost and watchman hotel. With the passage of time, the Atlantean of the Sun It went from being a frustrated project to becoming a strange element embedded in one of the natural spaces most beautiful and unique of Lanzarote: the natural pools from Los Charcones. There, between the wind, the volcanic rock and the crystalline puddles, the abandoned hotel took on a disturbing, almost sculptural presence. For tourists who discover the area, the semi-ruined structure has become part of the landscapean example of beauty in decay that contrasts with the serenity of natural pools. For others, it is an open wound, a reminder of the speculation of the seventies and the urbanism that was promoted without paying attention to the physical reality of the territory. Chaos tourism. His inaccessibility (the absence of roads continues to be one of the main limitations today) has kept it outside the conventional tourist circuit and has contributed to its degradation. The wind, saltpeter and abandonment have turned the building into a dangerous shell, used occasionally as an improvised shelter by campers since the seventies, especially at Easter, when entire families came to occupy the windowless rooms applying minimum standards of coexistence. The picture is as unusual as it is revealing: a hotel that never opened turned into a sporadic camp for those seeking a unique experience in an isolated place. Between memory, business and protection. Over the decades, different owners tried to recover the building’s destiny, either by giving it tourist use or transforming it into healthcare facilities. Among them, the company Hipercan Don Jersey SL tried to reclassify the land to convert the hotel into a social and health center, claiming that the 1972 license was still valid and that the reform would allow the municipality to be provided with a new public service. But the administrations maintained a firm position: Yaiza already had sufficient equipment, the property was in ruins and the land belonged to a protected natural space whose ecological value should prevail about any intervention. The courts confirmed this position repeatedly. Neither the heritage argument, nor the intention to reconvert the building, nor the appeal to old investments managed to reverse a situation that had been legally closed for decades. Even if there was a will to rebuild, the cost of rehabilitation would be exorbitant. And if demolition were chosen, the operation (valued at more than one million euros) would require facing considerable technical and environmental obstacles. Uncertain future. In recent years, the discussion about the future of the Atlantean Sun has regained … Read more

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