owner

the richest man in Germany and owner of Lidl

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The name “Dieter Schwarz” may not sound familiar to you right away, but if we talk about Lidl, things change. Well, Dieter Schwarz is the head of the family emporium of Lidl and Kaufland. And it is normal that neither the name nor the face is familiar to you, because the “German Juan Roig” He is extremely jealous of his privacy in a globalized and permanently connected world like the one we live in thanks to big tech like Google, Meta or Amazon. Precisely at that table is where the group wants to sit. Schwarz Digitsits technological side responsible until now for the IT of the almost 15,000 supermarkets that the chain has around the world. As synthesize Bernd Wagner, their sales manager: “If you don’t sit at the table, you end up being part of the menu.” From the supermarket to the cloud. It seems like a huge leap because in fact it is, but the Schwarz have been making their first steps for years. In 2018 they began developing their own internal cloud (called Stackit) to manage the critical infrastructure of its supermarkets independently. In 2021 they acquired the Israeli cybersecurity company XM Cyber ​​for about $700 million. In 2023 the group announced the creation of Schwarz Digits combining the cloud, cybersecurity and e-commerce and at that time they already had 7,500 people on staff. Originally this infrastructure was designed for internal use, but the next step has been to open it to external clients. A specific type of client: who seeks digital sovereignty. Companies and public institutions that want to process their data exclusively in Europe, with high standards of data protection and legal control. And now has important clientssuch as the government of the Netherlands, some German ministries, the KPN telecom or the Dutch Central Bank. Why is it important. This step forward comes at a time when Europe is missing the boat on artificial intelligence and the United States, the official supplier of the old continent, is converting its most valuable asset (the most advanced AI models) into export technology subject to controls, such as we have already seen with Claude Mythos. In fact, the CEO of Mistral has already warned that Europe only has two years to catch up if it does not want to be a vassal. In short, Europe has to put the turbo in models, but also chips and infrastructure such as data centers. And it’s in it. The institutional plan is ambitious and considers private collaboration as essential, but the fact that it is one of the largest retailers in Europe and not a newly arrived startup provides a plus: own capital on a large scale and without depending on external investors, as Stackit herself emphasizes by presenting itself as a company “without external shareholder interests, without changes in ownership.” Context. Currently, three American companies hold 70% of the European cloud infrastructure market, according to Synergy datacompared to a paltry 15% from European suppliers. In short: the market that Stackit is targeting is succulent and its room for growth is enormous. And your work in the old continent and the country that has historically been the engine of Europe, more than welcome: in the words of the German Minister of DigitalizationKarsten Wildberger: “Germany needs processing capacity if it wants to compete in the first division in artificial intelligence.” In detail. Today Stackit manages several data centers in Germany and Austria and has relevant alliances: it hosts models from the German AI firm Aleph Alpha (where the Schwarz group has invested) and has a system called AuditGPT that uses Deutsche Bahn. Additionally, Google Workspace has been hosted since 2024 in data centers operated by Schwarz. Its most visible upcoming project is the Lübbenau data center, built on a former lignite thermal power plant. With 11 billion euros of investment and a first phase planned for the end of 2027, it is designed to work with renewable energy and will have the capacity to house 100,000 GPUs. Yes, but. Although the vision and business and industrial capacity of the Schwarz Group is beyond doubt, the big bet of the richest man in Germany is a complicated adventure because it has hyperscalers such as Google, Amazon or Microsoft in front of it, which implies economic muscle at another level, decades of advantage in software and technological experience that the German company does not yet have. Furthermore, American big tech companies are not willing to give up ground on the old continent: in November 2025 Google announced a €5.5 billion investment in Germany, including a new data center in Dietzenbach. And although digital sovereignty is a very strong claim, Stackit still depends on open source technologies and partners like CrowdStrike or Aleph Alpha for its catalog of services, so it is more aspirational than a reality. In Xataka | Who can do more, Google or seven small Dutch companies together? Europe is on the verge of discovering it In Xataka | To become technologically “independent” from the US, the European Union already has a plan: four desperate measures Cover | Xataka with Magnific

“They considered those lands as if they had no owner, since they counted their inhabitants as nothing”

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Just take a walk through Malaga to come across dozens of little blue signs with two letters, “AT”. That is, “tourist apartments”. This has been the case for a long time, but in recent years tourist pressure has become increasingly intense. Maybe that’s why, on almost every AT poster, you can see stickers that say “Before this was my house”, “Mayor Your dead”, “To Your fucking house”, “I stink like a tourist”. And it is interesting to look at them because they are a very precise x-ray of how the same problem is channeled in completely different ways. That distinction has been written for 230 years and the nuance marks everything. When Kant kicked out all the tourists Königsberg. Anyone who knows anything about Kant You will know that he was not exactly a revolutionary. The German philosopher barely left his city on the shores of the Baltic and, in fact, was famous for following a routine so exact that neighbors could adjust the clock time with their walks. Of course, he didn’t have the blood in his veins to throw anyone out of Königsberg. However, in ‘On Perpetual Peace’ (1795) He developed an idea that, brought to our days, can help us understand the limits of tourism: that of hospitality. Hospitality? Yes and, believe me, it is a slippery concept. Historically, this same concept served the theorists of the School of Salamanca to justify the conquest of America and Kant to drive people out of his city. The devil, as always, is in the details. After all, any philosophically developed concept of hospitality focuses on limits: it focuses on recognizing that the stranger has the right not to be treated with hostility as long as he comes in peace. That is, you have the right to visit, to sightsee in our cities. But (and here is the heart of the artichoke) what you do not have the right to do is to rearrange the site to your liking. Kant uses the idea of ​​’inhospitable conduct’ to condemn the Western powers: ‘visiting’ or ‘trading’ meant for them to treat the lands as if they had no owner and its inhabitants as ‘nothing’. ‘Hospitality’ cannot become a way of remaking the place you arrive at to your advantage. And why are we interested in this? Because Spain Spain broke its record in 2024: 93.8 million international tourists, 10.1% more than the previous year. Only in July 2025 11 million people arrived. That pressure is changing cities to serve tourism. But is that wrong…? To understand the contemporary nuances, it is worth bringing up the philosopher Lea Ypi and her update of the Kantian concept of colonialism. In his works on this topicYpi points out that the problem is not the origin of the visitor, nor that the natives have a kind of ‘ownership’ over the territory: the problem is the dynamics that deny the locals a relationship of equals with the visitors. That is to say, touristification is not bad because it fills cities with foreign tourists, but because it is a phenomenon that, taking refuge in lack of definition, reorganizes the city for the benefit of outsiders and, along the way, expels those who live in it. The moral problem is not the immigrant or ‘expat’ who arrives in a community and integrates into it to strengthen it; The problem is that it erodes it and puts it at its service (even if it is not with armies and cannons, even if it is with an asymmetry in economic relations). As the theorist recalls Margaret Moore“residents” is defined by having a life tied to a place, not by being born there (or having property there). The unfaithful trustee. Because yes, in many cases this touristification is only possible thanks to the necessary collaboration of many ‘natives’ who are enriched by it. However, that argument often forgets that, although these people have concrete property rights that they are entitled to exploit, they also have a fiduciary responsibility for the common good. The owners who indiscriminately put groups of tourists into neighboring communities until they become uninhabitable are not exercising their right, they are ignoring their responsibilities towards the community of owners and the city in which they carry out this activity. That is, it’s not the who, it’s the what. The distinction is fragile, it is true. But it is useful to understand “what is wrong” with touristification. And for something written over 200 years ago by a very troubled guy from Königsberg (who, as far as we know, never set foot on a beach) it’s not bad at all. Image | Xataka In Xataka | What did Immanuel Kant mean when he argued that patience is not “a force of resistance, but rather one that hopes to make suffering satisfactory?”

Every time a rocket ship fails, an industry grows. And China has just decided that it wants to be the owner and mistress

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In 2016, a SpaceX’s Falcon 9 exploded at Cape Canaveral destroying Israel’s Amos-6 communications satellite. Luckily, like when you get hit by a car while parking, there was insurance behind it that paid for the mess because the incident cost almost 300 million dollars. Because imagine that your latest and most ambitious project explodes and that as a consequence you end up bankrupt. Insurance is that industry that when everything goes well seems like a superfluous expense and that saves you when there is an accident. Applied to space, they move more than 4 billion dollars a year. Well, space insurance is undergoing a historic transformation: China has decided who no longer wants to be a mere customer, she wants to be the owner of the business. China goes from client to insurer. China had been insuring its satellites for years through the state insurer PICC, but part of the real risk was absorbed by the international market via reinsurance. So when ChinaSat-18 failed in 2019, it was foreign insurers that absorbed part of the hit, according to SpaceNews. China paid the premiums and London and Paris, where space reinsurance business is concentratedthey stayed with the business. Everything changed in March 2025: a consortium from Beijing covered 25 private launches for $1.47 billion in its first year, bringing together domestic insurers so that everything, money and control, stays at home, according to Caixin Global. It is the first consortium dedicated exclusively to the Chinese commercial aerospace sector. Why is it important. Because if there is no insurance, there is no investment and without that financing there are no rockets either. A fact: a geostationary satellite costs between 150 and 400 million dollars to manufacture and launch, according to the Satellite Industry Association. If there is a failure, the economic impact is tremendous and could lead to the bankruptcy of the operator, so having an insurance policy is a condition for any investor to dare to put money into a space project. Controlling space insurance is controlling who can take certain risks and how. The Chinese government is clear: according to the IISSShanghai allocated 300 million yuan in subsidies to the commercial aerospace sector in April 2025, and Beijing has announced targeted insurance premium subsidies for space companies. China replicates the move it has already used in semiconductors or batteries: state push to achieve strategic independence. Context. The space insurance market is growing simply because the commercial space sector is also growing, and because insurance is an essential condition for operating in it: Space Liability Convention of 1972 establishes that states are responsible for damages caused by their space objects. Lloyd’s of London has been insuring satellites since 1965 and for decades, this was a closed market dominated in Europe by companies such as Munich Re, Swiss Re or AXA XL. According to Orbital Radarthis market generates between 500 and 600 million in annual premiums and remains concentrated in London, Paris and Bermuda. SpaceX changed everything: more launches, lower unit cost, new risk profiles… and now new Chinese private launchers such as LandSpace, CAS Space, Space Pioneer bring a new transformation: everything stays at home, China cooks it and China eats it. In detail. As with cars, insurance premiums depend on the history of the rocket and here China has a potential gap to slip through: for new rockets with no history, the premiums are very high. Orbital Radar Explained that launch premiums range between 5% and 15% of the insured value depending on the vehicle and orbit. Therein lies the great advantage of the Chinese consortium: it can take risks where other insurers put their “buts.” A revealing fact: of 10,000 active satellites in orbit, only 300 have insurance, according to Space Insider. In fact, SpaceX does not even externally secure its own Starlink. Yes, but. The market that China wants to enter with everything is in trouble: in 2024 it paid more in claims than it earned in premiums, according to Insurance Business Magazineamong other things due to the loss of Intelsat 33e. And it’s going to get worse: space debris is growing faster than the ability to calculate it and here China is largely to blame. Furthermore, in accordance with the regulations OFAC of the US Department of the Treasury.when a Chinese rocket fails, American and European insurers can’t always pay: Western sanctions legally prohibit them from dealing with certain Chinese assets, so the market is fragmented. In Xataka | SpaceX has always been 10 years ahead of the competition. The problem is that in China that law no longer applies. In Xataka | The race to become “China’s SpaceX”: who’s who in its private space launch sector Cover | Ivan Diaz and zhang kaiyv

In 2014, Larry Page bought two private islands for $23 million. The problem is that they already had an owner and he won’t let them go.

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Buying a private island is not as easy as it seems. Especially if someone had already bought it before you. That is, broadly speaking, what the American justice system has been discussing for more than a decade, when Larry Page bought two of the five private islands that it has in the Virgin Islands area. The case has a little bit of everything: companies that negotiate in the shadows, a furious New York real estate developer and one of the co-founders of Google who, according to the documents that are coming to light in the trial, did everything possible so that no one knew that it was he who bought the island. Twelve years later, the dispute over ownership of the islands is still open, but the islands, meanwhile, remain in the hands of Larry Page. Two islands, two buyers. Great Hans Lollik and Little Hans Lollik are two small private islands in the archipelago of the US Virgin Islands. They are just over two kilometers from the north coast of the main island, Saint Thomas, and are located in a privileged enclave because they are surrounded by coral reefs and practically uninhabited, except for a few herds of invasive goats. In 2014, a company based in Palo Alto (California) appeared out of nowhere and bought the two islands that were for sale, closing a transaction worth $23 million, according to collected Business Insider. The problem is that a New York developer named James Eckel had been negotiating the purchase of the property for months. He had even offered 9 million dollars. The deal had not been closed, but he claimed to have a contract that gave him preference in the operation. When the Palo Alto company put its generous offer on the table, the seller chose 23 million and the developer was left hanging. That didn’t sit well with him. Trial for negotiating behind his back. From Eckel’s perspective, the seller (a company called Liberty Bankers Life Insurance Company) had committed to him in a sales contract, which he then ignored when a better offer appeared. So he went to court to claim ownership of the islands. What came next has been a decade of pilgrimage through the courts of Texas and the Virgin Islands. In 2019, a court of appeal of Texas ruled that Eckel was only entitled to compensation for economic damages, but not to ownership of the islands. But that didn’t close the case. The family office which manages Page’s estate and through which the purchase was made, sued Eckel’s company (called Great Hans LLC) to have the courts officially declare that the islands belong to him without any legal burden, so that the developer could not claim ownership again in the future. That process remains unresolved today, despite the fact that Page’s lawyers have been asking the judge to act for years. The opacity of fortunes. The most striking thing about the case is not only the dispute over the ownership of the islands. This is the time it took to find out who the real buyer of the properties was because they found themselves behind a thick corporate framework that protected his identity. The company that acquired the islands was Virgin Island Properties LLC, a limited liability company without a name behind it to reveal who put up the money with which the purchase was made. In fact, as as highlighted Business Insiderit took months of court proceedings and investigations for Eckel’s lawyers to reach Wayne Osborne, the man who manages the assets from Page since 2012. Osborne then confirmed that the purchase was for Page. In his statement he also explained that the islands had been acquired without the intention of building on them, and that the agent who negotiated the transaction (Gil Simon) did not reveal to the seller the identity of the actual buyer. It is a common practice in the operation of companies who manage large assets like that of the co-founder of Google: no document of the operation directly or indirectly mentioned Larry Page. The family office most discreet in the technological world. This trial has served as a window, albeit a very small one, to see how they work management structures of one of the family office most hermetic that exist…even for such a discreet area how is the one of the family office. The company that manages the 290.9 billion dollars of the second richest man in the world It’s called Koop and is based in Palo Alto. His philosophy is total opacity and to achieve it, employees sign confidentiality agreements before entering, LinkedIn profiles are deliberately vague and internal security is supervised by a former CIA agent, as revealed in a exclusive research of Business Insider in 2022. The entire society is organized so that Page does not appear in any of the documents of his own purchases. That is, keep the millionaire as far away as possible from his possessions, so that it is difficult to unravel the corporate network that is woven between the property and who really owns it. In fact, these companies do their job so well that when the judges in the Epstein case tried to locate Larry Page in 2023 to take a statement Regarding his role in the plot, a private investigation firm was unable to find a mailing address for him. It is not that Larry Page did not have a habitual residence, but that everything was designed so that he could not be linked to any real address. In Xataka | The most luxurious “hotel” in the world costs $70,000 a night because it’s not a hotel: it’s an LVMH private island Image | Flickr (Scott Beale / Laughing Squid)

The most ambitious US military project in space has a new owner: SpaceX

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The United States Government has hired SpaceX to act as the backbone of its military telecommunications system. After several delays of an initial system, based on the participation of multiple companies and entities, it has now been decided to bet all data transport on Elon Musk’s request. Starshield satellites. Although the technical details have not been announced at the moment, this agreement between the Pentagon and SpaceX is possibly based mainly on the contracting of Starshield services, satellites with technology similar to that of Starlink, but adapted to military applications. The space company It already has hundreds of these satellites in low Earth orbit, some of them involved in actions such as attacks on Iran. A system made up of layers. The hiring of SpaceX, in which 2.29 billion dollars have been invested, is aimed at the development of the backbone. That is, the central layer of the data transport system used by the United States for military purposes. This system consists of more layers, in which more companies will intervene, which will be in charge, for example, of tracking. However, everything revolves around the axis constituted by Elon Musk’s satellites. The functions. With all these contracts, the United States intends to facilitate the tactical communications of the US Army thanks to access to broadband communication services worldwide. In addition, the aim is to work on the detection and tracking of missile launches and, in turn, connect sensors and shooters. In short, SpaceX must provide the backbone of a system composed of sensors that detect possible threats and a network that communicates these threats as quickly as possible to anti-missile systems and shooters so that they act accordingly. Other companies. While SpaceX will focus on data transportation and the cohesion of all actors involved in the United States military plan, other companies will be in charge of tracking. In recent years, the Space Development Agency hired for it to L3Harris Technologies, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Rocket Lab, all companies that have already begun developing satellites for this purpose. On the other hand, the last three, together with York Space Systems, they had been hired also for transportation purposes, similar to those that have finally been entrusted to SpaceX. At the moment it does not seem that the development of its own satellites has been cancelled, but the change in strategy, much more focused on SpaceX, is clear. Concerned legislators. Despite the intervention of other companies, legislators have expressed concern about the decision to put all the transportation and telecommunications eggs in Elon Musk’s basket. Given this situation, the spokesperson for the United States Space Force has assured who are already looking for a second contractor to build Space Data Network satellites. At the moment it is only SpaceX’s task, but they intend to increase competition. SpaceX’s duties. As they point out from Ars TechnicaElon Musk’s company is obliged to deliver a “prototype of fully operational capacity” for its telecommunications system before the end of 2027. With this, SpaceX diversifies its work, entering fully into the military field. Is this surprising? The truth is, not too much. Now all that remains is to see how it swims in these waters in which He had already made his first dives. Image | US Space Force photo by Gwendolyn Kurzen/Diego González (Unsplash) In Xataka | Once again, Ukraine has opened a missile launched by Russia. Once again, surprising manufacturers have been found

There was a time when Nvidia was a gaming company. That business is now pocket change for the owner and lady of AI

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In 1993, Nvidia was founded with the goal of creating graphics chips for video games. For almost three decades Nvidia has been basically that: a semiconductor company for gaming that yes, I had ambition in the field of professional computing. But things change: Nvidia’s gaming business has generated $6.4 billion the first fiscal quarter of 2027and although it is a healthy business, for Nvidia it is something else: It’s almost pocket change. Gaming no longer (almost) matters. In any other company in the sector, this income (29% more than last year) would already be extraordinary, but at Nvidia they are almost a footnote, because gaming represents less than 8% of the company’s total income. The other $75.2 billion came from the data center business, which grew 92% from the previous year. AI has made Nvidia’s original business almost irrelevant in relative terms. Stratospheric numbers. Nvidia has earned $81.6 billion in the first fiscal quarter of 2027. It is an absolutely colossal figure that should be put into perspective: it is so large like GDP from Croatia, Panama or Uruguay. The company led by Jensen Huang has managed to grow 85% in revenue since a year ago, almost double. The surprising thing is that it has also done so when it seems increasingly difficult to grow at this rate. The graph shows year-over-year growth in revenue in percentage. In 2026 the trend is bullish again. Source: FT. This is non-stop. The company exceeded Wall Street expectations, which projected revenues of 78.86 billion, but Nvidia also states that its forecast for the next quarter is to earn 91 billion dollars, 12% more than the current one. It’s true that growth is slowing in percentage terms, which is normal at this point, but in absolute terms the company continues to add billions of dollars of additional revenue each quarter. Data center numbers. Those $75.2 billion in data center business aren’t just GPU sales for hyperscalers. It also includes the company’s networking solutions business, which has grown no less than 199% year-on-year to $14.4 billion: it has tripled. The reason is logical: the demand for interconnection infrastructure for the large clusters that are being created everywhere is enormous, and Nvidia provides an ideal solution for those who buy its AI chips. Beware I, Anthropic is coming. On the call with investors, Jensen Huang gave a singular fact: Anthropic has made virtually no use of Nvidia solutions to train and serve its AI models, but that is going to change. The company’s CEO highlighted that the computing capacity they are going to deploy for Anthropic this year and next is going to be “quite significant.” Or what is the same: they are going to continue selling like hotcakes even if the competition tightens. Nvidia is also an investor in startups. Nvidia’s strategy is also being curious on a financial level, because it is not content with growing its business, it is betting on AI startups. It has invested more than 26,000 million in investments in this type of companies, and that does not include the recent agreements with OpenAI or in listed companies like corning. Beware II, China is coming. All these numbers, attention, are being achieved without the help of the Asian giant. In December, the Trump administration authorized Nvidia chip exports to China (with a 25% government fee). Theoretically that should make Nvidia generate notable income thanks to said authorization. Huang explained that at the moment these revenues are zero and that there is some uncertainty about whether China will finally allow its chips to be imported. In the second fiscal quarter of 2027, income from China is not assumed, but if that market finally opens, we will have even more extraordinary numbers. Buying back shares. Nvidia has returned about $20 billion to shareholders this quarter between buybacks and dividends. The board of directors has approved investing $80 billion more in share buybacks, thus multiplying by four what had previously been authorized. That’s a clear sign of Nvidia’s confidence in its future, which will also benefit shareholders: the dividend has passed from $0.01 per share to $0.25 per share. Previously, Nvidia offered specific data on gaming revenue. From now on, stop doing so to put that division within the Edge Computing category. Gaming no longer appears in the accounts. Typically Nvidia’s financial reports divided revenue into data centers, networking, gaming, professional visualization, automotive, and a few other fields. Now that Nvidia is a fully AI-focused company, it has changed its revenue pooling structure. Everything related to gaming, PCs, consoles, workstations, robots, cars and other devices is part of the “Edge Computing” category. Gaming, we insist, no longer (almost) matters. In Xataka | For the first time in 30 years, Nvidia will not present new GPUs for gamers in 2026. They earn much more with AI

The owner of Volvo and partner of Renault will also sell Chinese electric cars in our country

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It is possible that if you are not very up to date with the automobile market, the word Geely may not be very familiar to you. Yes, it is more likely that Lotus will tell you something else. And you surely know Smart and Volvo. Any of them, any of those companies that were once European, are owned by Geely, one of the largest Chinese automotive groups in the country. Now, the company lands in Spain with its own brand. Yes, Geely in addition to owning a portfolio with up to 16 brands Under his direction, he also has his own car company. So that we understand it quickly and easily, just as the Volkswagen Group has the Volkswagen brand or as Renault owns Dacia but, of course, sells cars under the Renault brand. Geely, therefore, will arrive in our country with two electrified models. Its presence, as is evident from the first and mentioned brands, is already palpable in Spain but now it will have its own vehicles on the street, with its distribution network separate from any other company and with two SUVs that point to the present and future of the brand. Geely arrives in Spain To have a general photograph of Geely and know what is behind this new brand, the first thing you should know is that in 2024 they became the first Chinese manufacturer to establish itself as one of the 10 most important automotive companies in the world. Shortly after, the brand has been surpassed by the enormous muscle of BYD but In 2025 it managed to put 3.02 million on the market of cars counting only the companies born under its umbrella (without adding Volvo or Smart). With the latter he reached the 4.12 million units sold and was positioned as the ninth largest automotive group in the world, exceeding 2024 sales by 800,000 units. For its arrival in Spain, the company has announced two vehicles. Geely E5 He Geely E5 It is an electric SUV with 160 kW (218 HP) and a maximum range of 475 kilometers according to the WLTP cycle. It will be available with two battery sizes (60.22 kWh and 68.79 kWh) developed in-house. In the press release, Geely does not confirm the total peak power and only mentions that it will go from 30 to 80% autonomy in 20 minutes. Geely Starray EM-i On the other hand, the Geely Starray EM-i It is a plug-in hybrid with a combined power of 262 HP where the greatest weight of its dynamics falls on the electric motor that reaches 160 kW (218 HP). It also has two battery options (18.4 kWh and 29.8 kWh) that increase the total range of the set up to 943 kilometers in the mixed cycle. At the moment, Geely does not specify its autonomy in fully electric mode. It is to be hoped that, little by little, we will learn more details about these two new models, especially in their commitment to software and digital functions focused on the user. We do know that this latest plug-in hybridization system has been developed in the heart of Horse, the joint venture that Geely maintains with Renault to continue looking for solutions focused on combustion engines. Regarding its distribution, Geely says that it is developing a network of nationwide dealers “supported by partners with extensive experience and deep knowledge of the local market.” It is to be expected, therefore, that at least in the first months and years its distribution will be supported by the large groups that have been supporting brands such as BYD or the Chery Group. And the Chinese companies are making a strong investment in dealerships to give customer confidence. At the moment, the Chinese company has not set a specific date for us to see these cars on the street but it does set a deadline of “the first half of 2026”, so in the next four months we should have all the details. It must be taken into account that Geely is making clear efforts to expand its market with its own brands. We recently learned that is interested in entering the United Statesdespite the fact that the geopolitical context is complicated. It has also been rumored that it could occupy part of the Ford plant in Almussafes. Movement is key in an ultra-competitive Chinese market that is slowing down and Spain has shown interest in the firms arriving from this country, especially among entry-level vehicles and plug-in hybrids. Photo | Geely In Xataka | MG, BYD, Lynk&Co, Omoda: who’s who of Chinese car manufacturers in Spain

The owner of Mercadona believes that in a few years kitchens will disappear from homes. The consumption of precooked foods proves him right

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The forecast sounded so far-fetched, it clashed to such an extent with the gastronomic tradition of Spain, that it generated a considerable stir. Just a year ago, during the presentation of Mercadona’s accounts, Juan Roig surprised by predicting death (almost) imminent of domestic kitchens. “I said it and I maintain it: in the middle of the 21st century there will be no kitchens,” cried the businessman. In the future imagined by Roig we go from making our own food in the vitro at home to taking it already prepared from supermarkets, which have become an absolute reference for food. The sector data They confirm that, no matter how dystopian Roig’s prophecy sounds, it seems to be coming true. A percentage: 3.8%. Spain is a benchmark for the Mediterranean diet. But also, and increasingly, a country of families who are no longer willing to spend hours and hours in the kitchen. That’s what it suggests at least. the last balance of the Spanish Association of Prepared Meal Manufacturers (Asefapre). According to the data of the sector, in 2025, ready-made foods “reinforced their weight in the shopping basket”, with an increase in consumption of 3.8%. In total, 715,052 tons of prepared meals were sold, “a new record,” recalls Asefapre, which consolidates the trend of the last decade. Translated into hard and fast euros, sales rose to 4,309 million, with an annual increase of 5%. A figure: 18 kilos a year. To give us an idea of ​​what this growth means, Asefapre calculates that last year each Spaniard ate on average about 18 kilos of prepared dishes. As a reference it is almost the same amount of fish products that we Spaniards consume in our homes (another thing is the restaurants) throughout 2024. The difference between precooked and fish is that the demand for the latter takes time to increase. low hours (both fresh and frozen) while the former grows at a good pace. The latest balance sheet of the employers’ association reflects an annual increase of 4.7% in the consumption of prepared foods, a growth rate that comfortably exceeds that of food as a whole (0.6%). What do we eat? Asefapre segregate your data of sales, which offers us an interesting vision of what exactly we Spaniards consume. The cake goes to “refrigerated” products, with a sales volume of 330,602 t shipped in 2025, 5% more than the previous year. In second place are “frozen products”, with sales that amounted to 297,023 t (+2.5%). The “dishes prepared at room temperature”, very common in some supermarket chains, are quite far behind, with 87,426 tons sold, but they leave an interesting fact: their demand grew by 4.1%. From pizza to potatoes and pasta. If we go down to detail we see that what we Spaniards like most (at least it is what we demand most) are pizzas, the leading producer in the sector with a sales volume that amounted to 131,600 tons. They are followed by frozen potatoes, with 98,056 t, and pasta-based dishes, which totaled 72,405 t. The three categories grew, with sales increases ranging between 2.6 and 7.2%. Beyond the Spanish market, one fifth (21.4%) of the industry’s production ends up being exported. More than just strategy. At this point the question is obvious: Why do we buy more and more pre-cooked foods? What leads us to feed ourselves with prepared dishes, whether frozen, refrigerated or food sold at room temperature ready for consumption, like what Mercadona offers in its supermarkets? The answer is complex. On the one hand there is the sector’s strategy, which has increased and perfected its range of products, adding foreign dishes that aim in part at the growing population immigrant living in Spain. Beyond the efforts of the industry, the increase in consumption of prepared dishes also responds to profound changes at a social and cultural level. They increase the single-person householdsit gets complicated conciliation between professional and family life and even change the kitchen structure in the houses. Also our way of thinking, as Asefapre herself remembers: today it no longer ‘squeaks’ at us that they serve us a pre-cooked dish on Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve or that in families there are no longer people willing to lock themselves between the stoves. Of new grandmothers and homes. “Grandmas are not like they used to be and prefer to go walking with friends, do pilates or travel,” he reflected during the presentation of the balance sheet the president of Asefapre, David Aldea. It is not the only cultural change he cited. Added to this are others, such as the fact that it is increasingly easier to find “homes with fewer members” or homes in which the space dedicated to cooking has been reduced to a minimum. The trend seems to confirm Roig’s prediction, which a year ago I already confirmed the good progress of Mercadona’s business line for ready-to-eat dishes, launched in 2018. “It is profitable and continues to grow.” Images | Andalusian Government (Flickr), Mercadona and Asefapre In Xataka | Mercadona has grown so much in Spain that for the US it is no longer just a supermarket chain: it is a “cultural phenomenon”

The Spanish business that Vodafone sold as ballast is now worth three times as much. Zegona has shown that the problem was the owner

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according to further Populi Voicea medium with a good track record in telecom exclusives, Telefónica has started talks with Zegona to acquire Vodafone Spain. The negotiations are recent (just a few weeks) and it was Movistar who picked up the phone first. Telefónica wants to close the operation in the first half of 2026. The rumors come from months ago. The problem is that arrive late, and that has a price. A little more than two years ago, Zegona bought Vodafone Spain for about 5,000 million euros. Vodafone (the British parent) was selling a problematic asset: It was the third operator in a market of four. He was caught between the scale of Telefónica and the agility of the low-cost He inherited a network that required constant investment. And he also inherited a tarnished reputation after years of complaints. For the British group, Spain was a drain of money and effort. For Zegona, a poorly managed gold mine. And in just two years, the fund has proven that he was right: Has returned to its shareholders 1.4 billion euros in dividends (28% of what was paid by Vodafone Spain). Has reduced the number of shares in circulation by 69%. And yet its current capitalization is around 3.6 billion. For fund shareholders, the return has been spectacular: The stock went from 345p when they bought Vodafone (less than 100 when they announced their intentions) to over 1,565p now. It has multiplied by 4.5 in two years. Vodafone Spain generates around 4.5 billion annual revenues and, with more focused management than before and without the bureaucracy of a global giant, it has become a profitable operation that Zegona can continue to exploit… or sell to the highest bidder. Telefónica is now negotiating from a weak position. It needs the operation (Marc Murtra has repeated that Movistar must lead the consolidation of the Spanish market) and the market knows it. An ERE of 4,500 people has just closed. And while Telefónica prepared the house to add more furniture, its price has fallen 27% since the end of October. Zegona, however, its value has skyrocketed. The price of this indecision is between 2,000 and 7,000 million extra euros. regarding what the purchase of Vodafone Spain would have cost in 2023. Zegona is in no hurry. It can wait, it can squeeze, it can even stay as it is. Telefónica now cannot afford that luxury because buying Vodafone Spain is not an expansionist move, it is an almost defensive necessity: needs critical mass before Europe forces further consolidation where Movistar is the main course, not the diner. But when negotiating is a necessity and the other side knows it, the price stops being a variable and becomes a toll. If the operation crystallizes, it will create a giant with more than 45% of the Spanish market, great cost savings by eliminating duplications (headquarters, networks, contracts…) and intense regulatory scrutiny from Brussels. Although not as brutal as it would have been with Vestager because Ribera has another look. Telefónica knows it and so does Zegona. The difference is that one is late and the other can afford to wait. That changes everything in a negotiation. In Xataka | The great dilemma of Spanish telecos: either they become giants or China swallows them Featured image | Vodafone, Telephone

In 2010, the owner of a Ferrari missed a radar in Switzerland at 137 km/h. He took home the most expensive fine in history

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The fine for speeding highest ever recorded did not come from a German road or a French motorway. It arose in Switzerland, and they gave it to the driver of a Ferrari Testarossa. The most curious thing is that they did not put it in for pushing the power of this 90’s classic to the limit since it was traveling at 137 km/h. The result was a fine of more than 247,000 euros, an amount that officially appears in the Guinness World Records as the biggest fine for speeding. A record fine. The highest speeding fine officially recorded was imposed in Switzerland in January 2010. A court in the canton of St. Gallen sentenced the driver of a Ferrari Testarossa to pay about $290,000 (more than 247,000 euros at the exchange rate) after being detected by radar traveling at 137 km/h in a section limited to 80 km/h. The amount of the fine was not arbitrary. In Switzerland, judges do not set fines based on rigid tables according to the infraction, but rather based on the real impact they must have on each driver’s pocket. A system designed so that everyone hurts equally. Swiss legislation contemplates a model of fines proportional to the driver’s income, instead of establishing a table of fixed amounts as happens in Spain. This applies an equivalence factor with respect to economic capacity, making the sanctions truly have a deterrent nature. A fine of 200 euros for a person who charges a salary of 16,000 euros It can be a compelling reason for you to take your foot off the accelerator when you don’t play. But that same figure is insignificant for someone with a net worth of several million euros. Sanctions in Switzerland are at another level. In the case of the driver of the Testarossa, the sanction was triggered because the driver declared assets that exceeded 22 million dollars and accumulated a record for similar violations. For the Swiss authorities, the fine should reflect not only the risk committed, but also the economic impact it should generate. The 2010 record is not an isolated case. According to collects the local newspaper 24hourslast August a billionaire resident in Lausanne was fined 90,000 Swiss francs (about 96,500 euros) after exceeding the 50 km/h limit on the road while traveling at 77 km/h. Although the violation was not extreme, the final calculation was, and was justified by evaluating income, assets, and family circumstances. 96,000 euros for exceeding the speed limit by 27 km/h. Switzerland is not the only country that applies it. Finland shares a sanctioning philosophy similar to that applied in Switzerland. There are also fines calculated according to income, with precedents that have exceeded 120,000 euros. One of the best known cases It is that of a businessman who was traveling at 82 km/h in an area limited to 50 km/h and ended up facing a fine of 120,000 euros due to his level of income. In Austria, for example, a millionaire They took away his driving license and the Bugatti Veyron was immediately seized for traveling at 123 km/h in an area limited to 60 km/h. Spain will never come close to these figures. The Spanish traffic legislation is located at the opposite extreme. The fines depend exclusively on the margin exceeded over the speed limit, not on the financial capacity of the offender. Thus, the case of the Finnish driver fined 120,000 euros, in Spain would be resolved with a fine of 400 euros and four points less on the driving license. In fact, you would even have a 50% discount on the fine if you pay it in the first few days. In Spain, the most serious sanctions are penalized with a maximum of 600 euros and the withdrawal of six points on the license, without there being a link between the sanctions and the level of income. This implies that someone with high purchasing powermay consider the cost of the infringement to be minimal, thus losing its deterrent nature. In Xataka | The DGT allows legal circulation at 150 km/h without being an emergency vehicle. The secret: a sign Image | Unsplash (Noah Boyer)

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