parks

How your city parks have become the best therapy for modern anxiety

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A morning walk through almost any urban park reveals an increasingly common scene: calisthenics bars, wooden benches and grass esplanades have ceased to be simple elements of the landscape and have become the new fashionable gym. Accustomed to the monotony of traditional indoor gyms, with their relentless fluorescent lights and repetitive music on loop, going out to exercise in the park offers a radical and revitalizing change of scenery. As Nikki Fraser explains to the The New York Timesexercise physiologist, we tend to take training in our adulthood too seriously, seeing it as a strict “obligation” (something we have to do) rather than an “opportunity”, but by looking at a park, we regain the wonderful possibility of “playing”. The rise of the street as a training area. What has happened is that strength routines have left the basements and pavilions to conquer the streets. To perform a full-body workout, it is no longer essential to have complex machinery; All you need is a park bench and a piece of grass to perform routines that include climbing steps (step-ups) and push-ups, to lunges, squats and triceps dips. In addition, nature itself provides an extra physical challenge: unlike the repetitive monotony of a treadmill, the outdoor environment forces our muscles to constantly adapt to uneven terrain, which promotes balance, improves agility and burns calories dynamically. “The great moderation.” Behind this movement towards asphalt and grass is a profound generational and economic change. Young people are changing the classic bars for sports when it comes to socializing, a phenomenon that economists, as Joe Wadfordthey have already baptized as “the great moderation.” Instead of allocating a large portion of their monthly budget to going out at night and having to deal with an inevitable hangover the next day, many young people They prefer to invest their money and time in ways that are more rewarding for your health. In fact, as we already analyzed When explaining why the gym is the new bar to combat the loneliness epidemic, the data supports than 39% more young people Generation Z, compared to Generation fitness to meet new people who share your same interests. And there is science behind this. A systematic review long-term clinical trials that compared outdoor exercise versus indoor exercise revealed a revealing fact: of the 99 comparisons analyzed, the 25 that showed statistically significant results favored, in all cases, outdoor exercise. This natural environment encourages higher levels of positive emotions, tranquility and motivation. If that were not enough, simple exposure to sunlight provides a natural boost of vitamin D and works as a powerful antidote to reduce stress, anxiety and depression. Beyond the muscle. The true impact of this trend transcends body aesthetics and economic savings; It has a profoundly transformative and therapeutic power on a social level. The BBC reported the case of Raymond Goodfield, a 53-year-old man who, due to depression and his dependence on alcohol, had ended up living on the streets. After joining free weekly outdoor gym sessions in his local park, his life took a radical turn: he stopped drinking, lost his shyness and found a supportive community. To make these urban spaces truly inclusive and not just a haven for elite athletes, researchers at Loughborough University have worked closely with the community in the design of new park equipment. This machinery is designed to improve balance and postural control, which makes it suitable for a very wide range of users, including those who are undergoing physical rehabilitation processes. A paradigm shift. All this establishes a strong contrast with the wellness trends that prevail in exclusive areas of cities. In the era of “cuqui fitness”where sport has disguised itself as therapy to charge you more money, we have seen how the industry commodifies calm. People pay large sums for low-impact disciplines or “somatic” classes, which consist of making tiny movements to try to relax the exhausted nervous system, turning well-being into a luxury item. The park, however, offers the rebellion of simplicity: an alternative where reconnecting with nature and forming a community act as that same escape valve against modern pressure, but completely free of charge. The triumph of simplicity. In short, using calisthenics bars, grass and benches as training tools is much more than a clever trick to avoid paying a sports club fee. It is the reflection of a society that seeks to heal. Going out to exercise outdoors represents an instinctive response to an excessively digitalized and isolated world. At the end of the day, the park gym reminds us that the goal is no longer just to sculpt the body, but to build real bonds, nourish ourselves with vitamin D and claim our most basic right: to go out and play again. Image | Magnificent Xataka | The big lie of “cuqui fitness”: sport has been disguised as therapy to charge you more money

Nintendo knows that most people who go to its parks and watch its movies have never touched a video game. and he loves it

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The success of the park Super Nintendo World and of the Mario’s first animated film (with a sequel just around the corner that also promises to break the box office) has confirmed what the company has known for years: that its characters are worth as much inside a console as in an outdoor version. The strategy coordinated by Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of Mario, points towards an entertainment model where the video game is only the origin, not the objective. Not just video games. Shinya Takahashi, senior CEO of Nintendo, He has been repeating a phrase for years which sounds almost like a wake-up call: “People see us as a video game company. But we have always considered ourselves an entertainment company.” The distinction is important: Nintendo was founded in 1889 in Kyoto as a manufacturer of Hanafuda cards. It went through toys, taxis and hotels before reaching video games in the seventies. Software and consoles have been its core business for decades, but they were never the only thing the company thought it could do with its characters. The problem is that for a long time all of the company’s forays outside of video games had been failures. 1993: disaster. The most famous case is the live-action Super Mario Bros. movie from 1993. Nintendo transferred the rights through a simple licensing agreement and did not participate in the production. The result was an experiment that It raised only 40 million dollars with a budget close to 50 and which is remembered as one of the worst video game adaptations in history (although over time it has acquired, thanks to its outlandish production design, a well-deserved cult status). Miyamoto himself acknowledged the root of the problem with that film in an interview, and why it took them so long to try again: “We were afraid of all the failures of IP adaptations of the past, where there is a license and a distance between the original creators and those of the films.” The consequence of that failure was almost thirty years without giving up film rights to its main franchises. Nintendo stopped licensing its IP to external studios and only allowed occasional appearances of his characters in films like ‘Wreck-It Ralph!’ or ‘Pixels’, none with real creative control. New adaptations. When Nintendo sat down to negotiate with Universal and Illumination for an animated film, the conversation started from a different beginning. Miyamoto served as executive producer and was involved in every significant decision, from casting to animating key characters. The same logic was applied to the construction of their first amusement park, Super Nintendo Worldin collaboration with Universal and announced in May 2015. Construction of the park in Osaka began in 2017. The investment reached 351 million dollarsa scale comparable to what Universal once dedicated to the Harry Potter franchise. A real game. Super Nintendo World is designed so that visitors feel like they are in Mario’s world. They wear an NFC bracelet with which they interact with the question blocks, collect coins, complete challenges and end up facing Bowser Jr. as the final boss. There is no controller, but there are game mechanics, score markers, hidden secrets, and a slight internal narrative. Attention to detail permeates spaces such as bathrooms and restaurants. Nintendo is doing well. The financial results support the bet. According to Comcast data released during an earnings call, CFO Jason Armstrong noted that Universal Studios Hollywood (home to one of the two Super Nintendo Worlds in the United States) recorded its best gross profit in that period of the year in its entire history, thanks to the impact of the Nintendo park, and experienced an increase in visitors of 15%. The Super Mario movie has also been extremely profitable: 1.36 billion dollars worldwidebecoming in just 26 days the first adaptation of a video game to exceed one billion. It was the second highest-grossing film of that year, only behind ‘Barbie’. New philosophy. There is a quote from Takahashi that sums up this new business philosophy: “We knew that Mario was adored by video game fans, but the park helped us understand that Mario also has non-gaming fans.” and Miyamoto adds: “There are many people who know who Mario is but have never played the game.” The park’s target audience, according to Takahashi, is not any age group or any specific player profile: “It’s all-encompassing, whether it’s someone who knows Mario from the games or a kid who’s never played before.” Mario is an IP that generates value regardless of whether its audience has ever touched a controller. In other words, he is a much more valuable client, because there are no limits regarding age or hobbies. It doesn’t stop, it doesn’t stop. The expansion continues: Donkey Kong Country opened in Osaka in December 2024, expanding the space of Super Nintendo World by 70%. Epic Universe, Universal’s new park in Florida inaugurated in May 2025has its own Super Nintendo World. And there is a version under construction in Singapore. Takahashi has mentioned that franchises such as ‘Splatoon’ or ‘Zelda’ are part of the expansion plans into new media, although there are hardly any specific announcements. Of course, the sequel ‘Super Mario Galaxy’ arrives on April 1. Video games are just one more link in a chain of dividends that have turned Nintendo into a very different company than it was a few years ago. In Xataka | No one would think of leaving ‘Super Mario 64’ on for 14 months. But whoever does it will find a surprise

Spain went to hunt therians in the parks and there were none. That says more about us than it does about them.

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In recent weeks, social networks and the media have been filled with information, with the usual overtones of alarm, about the phenomenon of therians, people (usually adolescents) who identify as animals. The wave has reached a certain point with the “therian gatherings” of recent days: in Pamplona and other cities, crowds of people showed up in parks and shopping centers to “monitor” concentrations that never occurred. The phenomenon says little about therians and a lot about how we manufacture collective panic in the viral age. First of all: what is a therian. We already explained it in depth in our first approach to the phenomenonbut essentially they are people who claim to suffer from “species dysphoria.” Unlike furries, a therian does not wear an anthropomorphic animal costume, but instead identifies psychologically or spiritually as a non-human animal. There is no scientific basis – as there would be for gender dysphoria – but there are clear links between how this group is being formed and how other subcultures and urban tribes were generated, often born from pop fandom and which today have millions of followers. Crazy Therian meetings. What we have seen are several supposed therian gatherings that were called off on the fly or were outright false, but were attended by hundreds of curious people. The most popular case was that of Friday, February 20 in the Plaza del Castillo in Pamplona, ​​from Therian hangout rumors on TikTok, Instagram and Telegram. Not a single person characterized as an animal appeared at the place, but when people started talking about it The therians could be in the Plaza de Merindadeshundreds of people moved on foot to that area, collapsing traffic on roads such as Avenida de las Cortes de Navarra. Menacing tints. Although there were no outbreaks of violence in Pamplona, ​​there were in other areas of the country. In Córdoba, a collective TikTok account called CloeMastim He called a meeting for February 27 in Miraflores Park. The publication accumulated about 2,000 interactions between comments and shares before organizers canceled it due to a barrage of death threats. In Lugo, the meeting scheduled for Praza Viana do Castelo was suspended after receiving messages such as “we are going to rip off your skins” and “I am going to go hunting.” In Barcelona, ​​the concentration did take place and about 3,000 people gathered in the surroundings of the Arc de Triomf; The meeting ended with five arrests and the intervention of the Urban Police and the Mossos d’Esquadra. These violent traits are well known to the therians themselves: a member of the community denounced that “sometimes they create fake accounts in which people posing as Therian propose to make meetings to attract people and go attack them.” That is to say, some of the calls that caused alarm did not even come from real therians. When did it become massive? Therians have existed for decades on internet forums, invisible to the general public. The change in scale occurred between 2020 and 2021, when the TikTok algorithm began to amplify videos of young people performing shifts either quadrobics (movements that imitate the locomotion of quadrupeds) with masks and accessories that evoke their animal identification. TikTok’s short format flattens any identity until it becomes aesthetic: what for some is a question of identity, for the majority of spectators is an extravagant costume or choreography. The same old story. The cycle is the same that we have seen in other cases of social panics and that has been amply studied in its forms of spread: media that had never written about therians published emergency pieces, many of them bringing up the possible “contagion” of these behaviors and putting the issue of mental health on the table with not exactly didactic intentions; television talk shows debated the phenomenon with the same tone with which decades before sects were discussed. And in several cities, groups of adults turned out en masse to “watch“non-existent concentrations. We recommend reading the 1972 book ‘Popular Demons and Moral Panics’ by Stanley Cohen, which already described precisely what we have seen in recent days, in five phases: a group or behavior is identified as a threat to social values; the media portrays it in simple and symbolic terms; public alarm grows; the authorities respond to the climate of concern; and finally, the panic dissipates, but the stereotypes remain. And of course, the group mentioned belongs to groups in a marginal position, before the panic chose them as a focus. Of course, Cohen was talking about an inflammation process that lasted weeks and now, with social networks, it happens in hours. The anti-trans side. There is a phrase that appeared in dozens of comments during the days of the Spanish therian fever of February 2026: “If you can perceive yourself as a cat, why not as a washing machine?” It is not an original occurrence but, as documented by sociologist Andrés Kogan Valderramaa slogan with a route, systematically used in different Spanish-speaking countries (do you remember that thing about combat helicopter?) to link therian identity with trans rights and present both as equally absurd. Because the threats that the Therian profiles received have the same rhetoric as that raised against the LGTBI community. In Latin Americawidely distributed far-right media present a template that was transferred unchanged to Spain: first, pathologization of the therian collective as “mental disorder” or “identitarian delusion.” Then, direct association with the “woke agenda” and gender identities. Finally, a threat that demands moral restoration. Feminism, sexual education and trans rights have passed through there. As stated the newspaper ‘Ara’the aggressors who went to “watch” the therians in parks and squares will, in all probability, be the same ones who tomorrow will find another group to point out. In Xataka | What are urban tribes and how have they evolved until today?

human poop in parks

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The case I told it Marisa García, apothecary, has been on Instagram for some time now. One day he was walking through a park in Majadahonda when he lost sight of his dog. The scare did not last long. The dog reappeared after a few minutes, but it did so after having feasted on human feces. Up to this point the scene may be eschatological, but it is not of much interest either. If you have a dog you will know that it’s not strange that are interested in poop. The problem is that those specific feces contained traces of drugs, which is why the animal ended up in the vet. The problem is that it is not an isolated case. More than an eschatological anecdote. The video of García is from September 2024 but the poisoning of dogs that end up ‘high’ (and admitted to a veterinary clinic) after feasting on human poop is far from being a curiosity or problem of the past. Quite the opposite. It continues to happen (at least in the Community of Madrid) and with astonishing frequency. This has been revealed The Country in an article in which he cites several veterinary cases that corroborate that they are no longer surprised to encounter dogs that, due to their owners’ carelessness, have ingested poop… with some type of drug. A member of the Reina Cristina emergency center assures that they have attended to up to four emergencies in a week. Even in the film ‘Sirât’Oliver Laxe’s Oscar-nominated film, is winks to these types of cases. “I had already been warned”. García’s experience is illustrative. In September 2024 counted how he lost sight of his dog while walking through a park in Majadahonda (Madrid). When the animal appeared, it did so with surprise: “It had eaten someone’s feces.” The problem is that those human poops were ‘seasoned’ with something else. Whoever had left them there had consumed drugs, substances that left traces in their stools. “Dogs eat it and get intoxicated from marijuana, cocaine… In this case it also had traces of tricyclic antidepressantsfrom opiates… Maybe from someone who was taking some type of medication,” remember the apothecary. “Apart from vomiting and becoming very sad and ill, the dog’s back legs began to fail and he couldn’t walk. That alerted us and we took him to the vet.” García recognized that cases like the one she had experienced were relatively frequent because, whether due to lack of public bathrooms, urgency or simple habit, there are people who choose to relieve themselves in the parks… leaving their excrement and everything they contain, including traces of drugs or legal medications. “I had already been warned. This can happen to anyone. There are more and more dogs that become intoxicated by the drugs that humans consume,” Remember Garcia. “A plague”. How frequent is it? One of the veterinarians interviewed by The Country speaks directly of “plague.” The problem is by no means new, but cases such as that of García or that of Paula Valdeón, another Madrid native who had to take her dog (Balkis) to a clinic after she ate human feces during a night walk through Madrid Río, suggest that it has worsened. The reason? One possible explanation is the change in drug use. A european report of 2025 on the subject concludes that 13.3% of Spaniards between 15 and 64 years old have tried cocaine at least once in their lives. This is the highest figure in the EU, considerably above nations such as France and Denmark (9.4%) or the Netherlands (8%). Not all are negative indicators (cannabis use has collapsed among adolescents), but Health data show that the prevalence of the consumption of hypnosedatives, ecstasy, cocaine or hallucinogens is significantly higher today than in the 90s. Are there more factors? Yes. Several. The first explains why the report of The Country or García’s video point to the same region: Madrid. Beyond the greater or lesser consumption of drugs, the capital deals with a handicap: the high cost of nightlife, which forces groups to look for alternatives, such as meeting in public areas or organizing bottles. If to that is added the the small number of public toiletsthe story tells itself: feces within reach of the dogs, with everything they have ‘on board’, both medications and illegal drugs. Beyond Madrid. The problem of pet poisoning is not exclusive to the parks and gardens of Madrid. A year ago the Radio and Television of the Principality of Asturias warned that several dogs from Oviedo had gotten sick after eating human poop with traces of drugs. For the neighbors, the origin of the problem was clear: the drinking parties held in a park in the area. There are also animals that become intoxicated without setting foot on the street. In 2024 JAMA Network Open public a study by Orrin Ware and Renée Schmid that shows that episodes of this type are not strange within homes themselves. For their study, the researchers analyzed hundreds of calls made between 2019 and 2023 to the organization Pet Poison Helpline in which pet owners reported that their animals had become poisoned. The sample must be handled with some caution because it coincided with the pandemic, a period during which many people were forced to confine themselves and carry out their daily lives inside their homes, but their conclusions are interesting: they reveal a worrying (and growing) exposure of pets to drugs. Images | Courtney Mihaka (Unsplash) and Colin Davis (Unsplash) In Xataka | In 2001, a yacht took refuge on a remote island in the Atlantic. Days later its inhabitants breaded fish with coca

It is a parks company that also makes movies

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The Walt Disney Company just announced that Josh D’Amaro, 54, will assume the position of CEO on March 18, thus closing almost three years of speculation about who would succeed Robert A. Iger. The board of directors voted unanimously in his favor, appointing the 28-year veteran to the company he currently leads. Disney Experiencesthe division that generated 36 billion dollars during fiscal year 2025 and contributes approximately 60% of corporate profits. The experience. D’Amaro comes to the position with deep experience in the physical operation of the Disney business (logistics, hotel management, multimodal transportation systems, customer satisfaction) but without significant experience in the film or television production that has historically defined the company. It is a commitment to profitability over glamour. Since 1998. D’Amaro’s career at Disney began in 1998 in Disneyland Resort. For more than a quarter of a century, he rose through various positions: CFO of consumer product licensing, overseer of the most ambitious expansion in the history of Disney’s Animal Kingdom (which included the attraction Pandora – The World of Avatar), president of Disneyland Resort in California and, finally, president of Walt Disney World in Florida, where he coordinated 75,000 employees. The Chapek stage. When Bob Chapek was promoted to CEO in 2020D’Amaro assumed his position at the helm of what was then called Disney Parks, Experiences and Products. The division, renamed Disney Experiencesjust reported quarterly revenue exceeding $10 billion for the first time in the company’s century-old history. With 185,000 employees worldwide, it operates twelve theme parks, 57 resort hotels, an expanding fleet of cruise ships and the consumer products business, including video games. Bet on experience. Disney Experiences generated 71% of the company’s operating income during the fiscal first quarter of 2026, despite representing only 38% of total revenue. While streaming barely broke even in 2024 after years of multibillion-dollar losses, theme parks maintained solid margins even during the pandemic. In 2023, Disney announced a plan to invest 60 billion dollars in a decade to expand this division. Turn towards the experiential. This shift responds to broader transformations in cultural consumption, not just at Disney. He theme park tourism grew at a compound annual rate of 9.2% between 2020 and 2024, driven by a generational preference for experiences over material possessions, something we have already talked about with the live entertainment boom. A theme park offers something that streaming can’t replicate, and Disney knows it. What’s up with Dana Walden. The other candidate for the CEO chair has been named president and creative director, becoming the first executive to hold this position in Disney’s 103-year history. The position unifies the company’s creative strategy under one leadership. From ABC and ESPN to Disney+ and Hulu, everything falls under Walden’s mandate, who will report directly to D’Amaro. With more than three decades in the television industry, Walden spent 25 years at 21st Century Fox, where as CEO of Fox Television Group he transformed the network into a ratings leader. Under his supervision, series such as ’24’, ‘Glee’, ‘Modern Family’, ‘This Is Us’, ‘Homeland’ were produced… When Disney acquired Fox in 2019Walden became head of Disney Television Studios and later, co-president of Disney Entertainment. The teams under his direction have accumulated more than 1,200 awards, including 400 Emmys, and recent series such as ‘The Bear’, ‘Shōgun’ or ‘Only Murders in the Building’ have consolidated Disney’s prestige on television. Immediate challenges. D’Amaro will need to quickly articulate a strategic vision that balances continued investment in parks (where his expertise lies) with strengthening the entertainment business. Streaming, although now profitable, shows some stagnation. And then there is the precedent of Bob Chapekalso hailing from the parks division, who lasted just two years before being ousted amid public conflicts with Iger. This time the consensus has been greater, but… is it what Disney needs? Header | Disney – Matt H. Wade In Xataka | Disney Adults: how the parks are filling up with childless adults who leave their salaries in nostalgia

Disney’s most profitable business for years has been amusement parks. And Netflix is ​​going to follow in their footsteps

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In a turn that will not be too surprising to those who closely follow the finances of entertainment giants like Disney, Netflix has made the leap to the physical world. Last Wednesday, the platform inaugurated its first permanent entertainment center in King of Prussia, a town located 25 kilometers from Philadelphia. A real dive into Netflix products that makes it clear that there are no authors or stars here, but a single corporation with things very clear. What does it consist of? Netflix House is a two-story complex with a surface area equivalent to a football stadium and that allows visitors to tour replicas of scenes from series such as ‘Wednesday‘, ‘The squid game‘ either ‘Stranger Things‘. For example, there is a replica of the room that Wednesday shares with Enid at Nevermore Academy, where visitors solve a murder with Thing through their cell phones, or a escape room based on ‘One Piece’. There is also a nine-hole mini golf course with automatic ball tracking technology, whose courses are themed to series such as ‘Bridgerton’ or ‘The Squid Game’. Finally, there are virtual reality rooms. As a culmination, a restaurant with dishes inspired by the series, and the TUDUM theater, with 229 seats for screenings. The company already plans to open a second headquarters in Dallas on December 11 and a third in Las Vegas in 2027. Admission is free, although the experiences have a cost: from $15 for a game of mini golf to $39 for the main immersive attractions. On the go. The flexibility of the model was demonstrated before the inauguration. The success of ‘The K-pop Warriors’ It caught those responsible for the installation by surprise, but its presence was incorporated into the venue on the fly with life-size figures of its protagonists and merchandising exclusive. And of course, more dedicated content is promised in the coming months. It is one of the strong points of the project: that although there is always the presence of timeless hits such as ‘The Paper House’ or ‘The Squid Game’, last-minute audience bombshells can be incorporated to make it an experience that breathes a certain life of its own. British roots. This concept that Netflix exploits does not come from the United States, but from the United Kingdom: for example, Fabien Riggall founded Secret Cinema in 2007 with the idea of ​​making your childhood wish come true of “living inside a movie.” Its first event brought together 400 people in an abandoned railway tunnel to screen a film whose title was kept secret until the last moment, with stages and actors decorated to give the atmosphere. Since then, the company has raised over £130,000 for charitieswith increasingly spectacular and complex installations. A few years before, in 2000, Punchdrunk already existed, immersive theater collective where the public was not limited to passively observing the work, but went on a tour of spaces where the action took place. London has ended up consolidating itself as global epicenter of these interactive experiences. Like a virus. Of course, this idea did not come from Netflix: its rivals have been operating comparable facilities for decades. Disney is the clearest example given its long experience in amusement parkswill allocate 60,000 million dollars to its experiences division over the next decade. Universal invested 7 billion in its recently inaugurated Epic Universe, based on franchises such as Harry Potter or Super Mario. Let us remember that Disney’s parks division contributes 70% of the profits of the company. Of course, be careful with the powerful comparative advantage of the Netflix proposal: entry to Netflix House is free. It’s just the beginning. This is not an isolated experiment or an extra next to Netflix’s main business: the platform’s decision to stop communicating its number of subscribers should give us a clue about how they have peaked in certain aspects, and need to continue expanding their reach. Netflix has reached agreements with cinema chains in the United States and sporting events have become core part of its offer. He has already made it clear that the plan is to open up to 25 of these Netflix Houses around the world and to continue releasing plays like ‘Stranger Things: The First Shadow‘. We are going to continue hearing about Netflix for a long time. Header | Netflix In Xataka | The chaos of streaming is causing a phenomenon that we thought was in recession: downloads are increasing

Cities are becoming theme parks. The “ship” that has landed in Madrid is the latest example

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A spaceship has parked in the center of Madrid. No, you don’t have to you start running like you were Naruto because it will be there for a few days. This is not a real ship, but the Sol station. And the reason why the design of the subway entrance has been changed to that of this ship is because it is a PlayStation advertising action. And more than something special, it is part of a phenomenon. That of converting part of large cities into theme parks. what has happened. Last Tuesday, November 4, one of the entrances to the Sol station in Madrid appeared “tuned.” Representing a “crashed” ship, PlayStation itself gave some details about the action on your blog. Streamer The Grefg is involved in a campaign that will be resolved on November 19 and in which four PlayStation 5 Pro. It is not a celebration of the launch of any game, but rather a big raffle for which PlayStation has decorated an emblematic point in the city. Experiential Marketing. These types of interventions are not new, although in Spain it is one of the largest marketing movements seen in recent years. It is a strategy designed to create links with users beyond those that can be traced with traditional advertising. A giant LED screen or a billboard is something that we have so internalized that we even ignore it in many cases, but when the station you pass by every day becomes something else, it inevitably draws attention. It is something that reconfigures the perception of the urban environment and can manifest itself in multiple ways. Transportation stations are some of the favorite centers of companies because they are points where many, many people pass through. Sol, without going any further, was “Vodafone Sol” for many years and, although it is a different example, it serves to identify a place and a brand. Advertising outside the advertising space. It has come to be called “visual pollution of a commercial nature” by generating advertising exposure that the citizen cannot avoid. You are going to see it, whether you want to or not, but beyond the subway users themselves, it is an advertisement that generates a conversation on social networks. Public landscape = advertising canvas. As we said, Madrid is becoming an example of how public settings are converted to support a commercial narrative. Next to the PlayStation ship, and literally at kilometer zero of Madrid, the watch brand TAG Heuer placed a few weeks ago a giant clock with a countdown indicating the 365 days left until the Formula 1 returns to Madrid (something with which the neighbors also have their pluses and minuses). It is not very different from what happens with the Olympic Games, but there are other bloodier examples. Without leaving the metro, in 2016 the Chueca station was transformed with the colors of the rainbow. It was not something promoted by political movements in favor of the LGTBI+ collective, but rather an advertising action by Netflix under the slogan “Rainbow is the new black“The campaign was temporary, but the collective managed to keep the colors after Netflix withdrew its brand. And Puerta de España has also been personalized in the past. Pragmatism. This, obviously, does not come for free. Madrid, under Mayor Alberto Ruiz Gallardón, approved an ordinance that regulates outdoor advertising in Madrid by which advertising banners in Puerta del Sol and other central environments would be placed exclusively in buildings with certain characteristics. That is why Puerta del Sol is wallpapered with advertisements from big brands, series or movies, for which companies they have to pay a large fee to the city. In the end, looking at it from the most pragmatic point of view, these public-private activities finance infrastructure and furniture that municipal administrations could not afford. That is to say: cities obtain income through these advertising permits and companies gain a scenario that hundreds of thousands of people see every day. In a context in which many cities are attracting tourism and investment, it is a win-win if we think with a cooler head. The mentioned contract of Vodafone Sol was three million euros for changing the name of the station between 2013 and 2016, as well as the name change in the red line public address system. And, when the contract was not renewed, it was Vodafone that bore the management costs. Reactions. Now, while cities like Madrid, Barcelona or New York allow these activities, others restrict them. An example is Lyon, which has decided reduce outdoor advertising in public spaces by up to 75%, eliminating above all digital screens. Outside of the previous pragmatism, it is something that exerts a tension between municipal revenue, commercial freedom and the protection of the urban landscape. In the case of the PlayStation ship, varied reactions have been seen, from enthusiastic voices to those who criticize this conversion of the city into an amusement park. The truth is that PlayStation is a company that carries out very imaginative advertising campaigns in several cities and in Spain nothing this big has ever been seen. Another recent action also had much angrier reactions in the subway, when the company Uber Eats changed the name of the emblematic Goya station to… yes, you’re guessing: Gyoza. Or the former name change of the Blue Line to Stonewashed Blue. and the future Santiago Bernabéu station customized by Real Madrid. Images | PlayStation Spain In Xataka | Japan has an amusement park dedicated to Spain. And it’s as wonderful as it looks

tired of living in theme parks

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the word “tourismphobia”once seen as media exaggeration, began to describe for some time now a real climate: first were the massive marches and denunciations of unaffordable rents, then the jump to another guy of pressure (water guns, symbolic seals, terrace intervention) and then the extension of the unrest to iconic territories such as the Balearic Islands, where the protests in the middle of the high season sought precisely to hurt tourist visibility to signal that quantitative success had become a “non-living situation.” Latest case in Valencia reveals that the situation is far from over. Valencia as a symptom. At this time the video It has gone viral. The altercation between Dutch tourists on bicycles and young people in the historic center of Valencia (insults crossed, bikes on the ground, “tourists go home” versus “fuck you”) illustrates that the conflict has decreased, if possible, a step: It is no longer just political representation or organized protest, but direct friction in the saturated public space. They remembered in Levante newspaper that the video alone does not explain the background. The neighborhood platform contextualized the incident within an act for the eviction of a social space, denouncing that “real violence” is not the shout but the eviction, the noise, the daily saturation and the conversion of basements into tourist monoculture. The reactions in networks (some demonizing the neighbors as barbarians who tarnish the image of reception, others asking that “if they don’t respect, don’t come”) confirm that the phenomenon has entered a more polarizing phase, where each episode serves to reinforce side narratives. When it stopped being local. The demonstrations that occurred throughout Europe This summer they had a new nuance: they were no longer isolated cities in intermittent outbreaks but a coordinated mass that protests on the same day, against the same externalities and with recognizable symbols in circulation. Suitcases dragged to make noise, cardboard boats as an allegory of cruises or posters in English directed at the royal emissary of unrest made visible that for many, tourism stopped being just money and became a structural conflict over the use of land, air, water, sleep and disposable income. Housing as a trigger. The emotional thread that connects Barcelona, ​​Palma, Lisbon, Genoa, Venice or Marseille is not ideological but material: the hard core is the house price and social displacement linked to the monetization of the square meter in terms of tourism. When an apartment converted into a vacation rental doubles the potential income of renting it to a resident, the incentive structure expel population without individual bad intention. This displacement becomes more hurtful in island contexts or of historic centerwhere the supply cannot grow without damaging heritage or landscape, so the pressure It’s arithmetic: each hosted tourist competes with an expelled resident. that the conflict emerge in summer nor does it seem coincidental: the clash between external leisure and internal life It is maximum when the visitor demands speed, noise, density and carelessness, while the neighbor asks for sleep, shade, peace and access to basic goods. Globalization of fed up. What happened this summer of 2025 (the simultaneous protests in Mediterranean cities) proves that the unrest stopped being isolated to become a pattern of functional region in which the South has been reconfigured as North recreational playground. The demands shared in all the demonstrations reveal a common goal: decrease in tourism, limits on cruises, quotas on flights, moratoriums on tourist apartments, taxation of foreign capital and veto of land uses that externalize costs. If you also want, the political force of the phenomenon lies not so much in its radicality but in that is no longer marginal: social sectors that are not anti-system militants assume that tourism is a monoculture erodes civic resilience basics (residential market, mobility, access to services, quality employment) and that the gross profit of GDP does not compensate for erosion of the living conditions in the neighborhoods where the phenomenon is physically established. No cheap solution. And in all cities the underlying equation is similar: tourism is tax revenue, export income and low-entry employment in a country that has not generated equivalent industrial substitutes, but its territorial concentration produces social losses not internalized. The irony is that limiting it implies cut visible GDPbut not modifying it means gradually destroying the raw material of the habitable city. More simply put, success kills its own foundation. The Mediterranean arc went from competing to attract visitors in the 90s and 2000s to coordinating to contain them because the context of reference changed: when the limiting factor was employment, tourism was a solution, but when the limiting factor was land and housingtourism comes to form part of the problem. Uncertain future. Thus, without intervention, the outcome could be the silent consolidation of two parallel cities coexisting in the same place: one for tourists (abundant, prohibitiveephemeral, instagramer) and another for expelled residents to cheaper and worse served peripheral crowns. That pattern, in fact, already exists (Capo in Palermo converted in gastronomic park for visitors, Ciutat Vella in Valencia commercializedconverted Palma neighborhoods in decoration) and its deepening tends to become irreversible: when a street loses its base trade and their rents influence tourism, and as long as a solution is not found in the neighborhoods that absorb said impact, the videos like the one in Valencia They will not be an anomaly, they will be the symptom. Image | Zoetnet (Flickr) In Xataka | Decades ago, the cities of Europe came together to attract tourists. Today they join forces for the opposite: kick them out In Xataka | Spanish tourism faces the real risk of dying of success. There are already guides that advise against three of its great destinations

Now the war for attraction parks has begun

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The consumer’s struggle to introduce food into closed enclosures in which he had paid to enter I was in theaters. Then we go to the Music festivals. And finally, the Attraction parks: Facua has denounced several for preventing entry with food and drink from outside its customers. After this decision there is a constant struggle between companies that seek to maximize their benefits and consumers who claim basic rights. Do not introduce food. Magic Island, Warner Park, Port Aventura and Terra mythical are the Spanish attraction parks that have received the complaint of Facua-Consumenores in Action before the Ministry of Social Rights, Consumption and Agenda 2030 for preventing entry with food and drink. The objective of this prohibition is clear: to force visitors to acquire in establishments and vending machines inside the enclosures, usually at much more expensive prices. The objective, says Facua in its statement, obeys “economic motivations and the eagerness to obtain greater benefits.” According to the association, these practices violate the Royal Legislative Decree 1/2007 of November 16which approves the consolidated text of the General Law for the Defense of Consumers and Users and other complementary laws. The reasons. Some of these parks use reasons for the ban. Warner alleges “hygiene and security reasons” From its websiteand mythical terra It also refers to reasons of “health” and “food and safety hygiene”. Magic Island and Portaventura do not detail the causes of the prohibition. Facua states that in all cases these reasons are “unjustified” And they remember that the prohibition “does not occur in Disneyland Paris and Parc Astérix, in France; in Europe-Park, in Germany; in Legoland Windsor Resort, in the United Kingdom, or in the Park of Los Jardines de Tivoli, in Denmark. In all of them it is allowed to access with food and drink.” Facua’s reasons. The reasons why Facua has filed the demand are the same as he presented (and won) Before movie chains like Yelmo. According to the Association for the Defense of Consumer Rights, the main activity of these companies is “recreational establishments”, in its variant of attraction and thematic parks. The restoration service is a complementary activity and is not part of the price of the entrance that consumers hire when paying it. It is, contrary, the imposition of accessories not requested by the client. 30,000 euros. That was the amount of the fine imposed on the Yelmo cinemas for prohibiting the entry of food and drink from outside in its rooms. The sanction comes from Kontsumobide, the Basque Institute of Consumer, which considered the prohibition as an abusive clause, for the reasons detailed in the previous paradfo. It was not the first time that judicial resolutions were produced against this type of practices. There were already a history In Huelva and Zafrawhere he declared illegal or fined rooms for preventing entry with outdoor food. The company tried to justify the measure, covering in the right of admission. In festivals it is not so clear. In the case of music festivals, the situation is similar but more complex. Many festivals prohibit entry with exterior food, arguing commercial and security motifs. However, the Ministry of Consumer opened sanctioning file to a music festival for this practice – an important precedent – claiming again that “the main activity of these events is not the restoration, but the musical show.” However, there are discrepancies in The interpretation of the law: Some experts consider that when Food sale is a relevant business part From an event of several hours or days, it can be part of its main activity. Variable regulation. The regulation in the festivals ultimately depends on each autonomous community, which produces notable differences: in some regions (Like Asturias), the right to access with exterior food is guaranteed if consumption is allowed in the enclosure; In others this access can be vetoed when the promoter markets its own products. The debate also extends to sporting events, where food is usually allowed only in plastic containers and small volumes, with the strict prohibition of alcoholic beverages and glass or metal containers. Header | Portaventura In Xataka | Abu Dabi’s Disney Park will not look like any other. For a hot reason

Two gigantic parks that will make “sponges”

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The Generalitat Valenciana has presented your strategy to deal with future floods after Dana’s disaster: The creation of two huge green corridors that will occupy 1,500 hectares and work as water absorption areas. The project, baptized as “Parque de la Esperanza”, will require an investment of more than 150 million euros and aims to become one of the largest metropolitan parks in Europe. What includes the plan. The project includes two large green axes of 35 kilometers of total extension. The first will expand the current Turia channel in 10.5 additional kilometers, connecting the heading park with the mount of La Vallesa. The second will take place in the area most affected by the Dana on October 29, with a main section of 18.5 kilometers from the Albufera to Picanya and another secondary of 5.5 kilometers between La Torre, Massanassa and Catarroja, following the route of the ravine of the poyo. Seeking to replicate the work of the Albufera. The Dana disaster, which claimed the lives of 228 people, demonstrated the vulnerability of the area to such meteorological catastrophe. At that time, the albufera acted as a natural laminator, absorbing part of the water and avoiding major damage. Now the idea with this project is Replicate this capacity in a planned way in areas that can serve to cushion damage to future overflows. How will it work. These spaces will act as giant “sponges”, absorbing excess water in times of torrential rains and allowing a controlled water release. The project includes the plantation of 100,000 trees and the creation of water sheets integrated in the landscape. Eduardo Rojas, UPV professor, commented that the sediments dragged by the Dana They will be reused to adjust the land levels and protect the inhabited areas of future overflows. Between the lines. Beyond its defensive function, the initiative also seeks transform agricultural land devastated in climatic shelters and public leisure spaces connected by cyclopeatonal roads. President Carlos Mazón has taken advantage of the presentation to criticize The lack of economic support from the central government, insisting that it is “a matter of state” that the Generalitat is facing “practically alone.” Next steps. The 2026 regional budgets will include an initial game of two million euros for the development of the project. The Generalitat will also explore European financing and public-private collaboration through CO2 emission compensation mechanisms. The Plan has the technical support of the Polytechnic University of Valencia and the Center for Environmental Studies of the Mediterranean, although there is still no specific date for the execution of the project. Lessons learned. The Dana showed problems that came long. Decades of construction in flood risk areascareless ravines and Lack of infrastructure They were some of the ingredients that ended up magnifying the tragedy. Criticism also pointed to alert managementwith Mazón in the main focus. This new plan seeks to turn the situation by creating spaces where water can run safely. Cover image | GVA and Levante-EMV In Xataka | Valencia feared that the housing market sink into the areas devastated by the DANA. The opposite has happened

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