sector

We were going to turn trash into clean energy. Now the biogas sector faces its biggest challenge: convincing neighbors

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Spain may be emerging as great power in solar and wind energybut there are other green energies that choke him. The Spanish state is not having a nose for biogas. Or rather: it doesn’t smell good, in the most literal sense of the word. However, the sector has practically gone from zero to one hundred in record time: in just two years there are more than 200 biogas projects on the table in different processing phases. And they bring with them a problem: biogas is the green energy that no one wants close to home. The problem: energy transition vs. social rejection. In the roadmap for Spain’s energy transition (the PNIEC 2030), whose ultimate goal is for the state to achieve emissions neutrality by 2050, biogas has its role. But to make it possible, it is an essential requirement to build and launch plants. And here it collides with a wall of social rejection in the form of citizen platforms, not so much to the technology itself, but to the implementation model. There are no shortage of reasons: from the classic fear of bad smell to the lack of territorial planning, promoter companies that present projects without setting foot on the territory and talking to those who live there, the gigantism of some facilities or the shadow of macro farms as arguments, such as They explain for El País the emeritus professor of Environmental Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia Xavier Flotats and the biologist and researcher at the National Museum of Natural Sciences Fernando Valladares. Why is it important. That biogas appears in Spain’s energy transition strategy implies that, sooner or later, it will materialize; the key now is in the as. It is also a direct path to energy sovereignty that replaces natural gas. Just take a look at the electricity price map in Europe To understand it: countries that depend on imported fossil fuels suffer from price volatility, while those who have opted for their own alternatives They achieve greater independence and stability. But its value goes beyond energy. These plants generate organic fertilizers that replace chemicals derived from petroleum and offer a real solution to waste management. The slurry or agricultural remains will be produced the same, with or without a plant; The difference is that biogas allows them to be turned into a resource instead of leaving them as an environmental problem. Context. A biogas plant is essentially a stomach where bacteria break down organic waste without oxygen, known as anaerobic digestion. From here two products are obtained: a gas rich in methane and a fertilizer. Depending on the gas obtained, the plant is simply biogas or biomethane: biogas is methane combined with carbon dioxide in almost equal parts, so it is a “weak” fuel that is usually burned on site to generate electricity or local heat. However, biomethane plants add a refining step (removing carbon dioxide) to obtain a gas similar to fossil natural gas. In Europe, the biogas sector is a consolidated industry with more than 19,000 plantsof which almost half are in Germany. A picture says a thousand words: this Europe biomethane plants map of Gas Infrastructure Europe shows the density in states like Germany or Denmark compared to the Spanish desert. The ecological dilemma. For engineer Xavier Flotats, the general rejection is a contradiction: “For some activists, it is better that a landfill is emitting methane into the atmosphere than taking the waste to a biogas plant to do something useful with it.” And he goes deeper by explaining that although this outgoing digestate has 95% of the input composition by weight, its composition changes, it is mineralized and converted into fertilizer. Valladares assures that biogas plants are greenwashing in that the process does not make the waste disappear, they only remove 5%. And that “Biogas plants cannot be understood without the macro farms industrial poultry, pigs and cows.” For the biologist at the National Museum of Natural Sciences, the only viable plants are few, small, safe and expensive. Marina Gros, representative of Ecologistas en Acción recognizes that “There are discrepancies within the organization because there is debate, there are different visions.” And in fact, have published a guide to evaluate case by case. The elephant in the room. Beneath the biogas dilemma inevitably lies the controversy of macro farms: In the event of a possible deployment of plants, the reality would be that part of the biogas produced in the state would depend on its slurry. There are those who see this as taking advantage of an already existing problem, but for other people it represents a facelift to a type of industrial livestock farming designed to maximize productivity at a lower cost compared to animal welfare and the environmental balance of the territory. Separate the wheat from the chaff. Faced with this flood of projects, experts agree on the importance of distinguishing sustainable plans from those that are not. Some signs that indicate that a project is reasonable include choosing a location close to the waste it manages and operating on a regional scale, with a plan to use the digestate as a local fertilizer and a design that guarantees total watertightness. On the contrary, there are signs that are authentic red flag: that the plant is far from the waste but close to gas pipelines, the absence of plans for digestate, the reception of waste in open pits, competition with other plants for raw materials or a logic of an industrial macroplant detached from the territory. In Xataka | A strange source of energy is putting Europe’s energy unity at risk: manure In Xataka | The ace up Spain’s sleeve to grow even more in the renewable energy landscape: biomethane Cover | Spencer DeMera and Eli DeFaria

SpaceX is now a company in the railway sector and it is very bad news for its employees

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For some people it will be ingenuity, for others a very hard face, but the point is that SpaceX has found a way to avoid lawsuits and strikes by its workers when obtaining the name of air transport company. This means that it is regulated under the Railway Labor Law, with all the benefits that it entails within US legislation. The news. On March 13, the official resolution was made public by which SpaceX, Elon Musk’s space agency, is now considered a company in the railway sector in the United States. This means that your activity is no longer subject to the supervision of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)which is typically responsible for protecting the labor rights of private sector workers. The layoffs that started it all. In January 2024, the NLRB put a lawsuit against SpaceX on the tableafter the company illegally fired 8 employees. The lawsuit requested reinstatement of the employees, back pay, and a letter of apology to each of them. Given this situation, SpaceX responded with another lawsuit to the NLRBalleging that the procedure being carried out was unconstitutional. Rockets have the same legal treatment as cargo planes. An ace up your sleeve. According to Elon Musk’s company, the NLRB should not be able to act against a company that is dedicated to transportation. He added that One of its main missions is the transport of humans and goods to the International Space Station.. In many cases, these jobs are carried out for NASA, so they would also be providing a service to the Government. For all this, they requested to be covered under the Railway Labor Law. A plan that suits many. In recent years, SpaceX, as well as other Elon Musk companies, have been the subject of complaints from a multitude of dissatisfied employees, either due to their personal situation or due to bad practices carried out in the company. In the case of Neuralink, for example, Very bad practice towards laboratory animals was reported. But returning to SpaceX, the increasing volume of complaints could put the company’s work pace at risk. This, logically, would harm its managers, but also the companies that benefit from its services. The entire US space program would probably collapse. For all this, although it seemed difficult, in the end Elon Musk’s company has had a resolution in favor of its new name. Immune to strikes. One of the peculiarities of railroad companies in the United States is that they benefit from special state protection. Since minimum transport services must be guaranteed, strikes and other similar activities that would normally slow down the normal pace of work are closely controlled. The NLRB no longer rules. Another of those special protections for railroad companies is that the NLRB no longer has power over them. Therefore, dismissed employees cannot resort to it to report their situation. Instead, the company is governed by the rules of the National Mediation Boardmuch more lax in the mediation of labor disputes. It is true that employees can request strikes, but to do so they must undergo a long and tedious process that often causes them to change their decision. And now what? With this new name, SpaceX has even more power and freedom than before. If measures are carried out that involve malpractice towards employees, it is difficult for their complaints to come to fruition legally. This gives them a lot of leeway and greatly speeds up their protocols. Other curious legal victories. It is not the first time that SpaceX has obtained an unexpected legal name. Last year, for example, The Starbase base was given the name of cityso that all employees who live nearby would also become inhabitants. This, far from changing a few patterns, also gave SpaceX more freedom when maneuvering in the areas surrounding its base. As with railway legislation, what may seem like a small name change can change everything. Image | Gage Skidmore (Wikimedia Commons) |SpaceX In Xataka | SpaceX is preparing the largest IPO in history: the fact that it is doing so right now is no coincidence

It is the promise of a Chinese startup that aims to revolutionize the sector

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There is a whole world in this synthetic fuels. And it is no wonder, since whoever can develop a renewable fuel, without harming the environment and with elements that we have in abundance, has won heaven. And in this regard, there is a Shanghai startup that promises to have taken a significant step. And if his claims hold up, it could change the rules of the game. We tell you the details. Context. China imports more than 70% of the crude oil it consumes, and a considerable proportion comes from the Middle East. If you have been paying attention to this region of the planet in recent weeks, you will have seen that the thing is not very there. And at a time when conflicts in the Persian Gulf generate volatility in the markets and threaten energy supply chains, Beijing has been looking for alternatives to conventional fossil fuels for years. It is in this scenario where Carbonology emerges. What exactly has he announced. Just like share SCMP, the company, co-founded in 2024 by a former Tesla vice president, claims to have developed a process to convert carbon dioxide (extracted from air and water) into synthetic fuel using solar and wind energy. The products it claims to be able to manufacture include gasoline, diesel, aviation kerosene and naphtha, all of them at competitive prices with those on the market. The company also reportedly announced that it is preparing a deployment to produce its product on a large scale in China. How this technology works. The process the startup describes is based on direct air capture, known in the industry as DAC (Direct Air Capture). This technique consists of extracting CO₂ from the atmosphere and combining it with hydrogen, in turn obtained through electrolysis of water using renewable energies, to synthesize liquid hydrocarbons. The result is fuels that are practically identical to those derived from petroleum, but whose carbon cycle is closed: the CO₂ they emit when burned is the same as that captured to manufacture them. It is really not a new process, as it has been developed for years in laboratories around the world and There are pilot projects underwaysuch as the Haru Oni ​​plant, in southern Chile, promoted by companies such as Siemens and Porsche. What is still unclear. The bad thing is that Carbonology’s claims lack details. According to the mediuma company spokesperson confirmed the information but declined to offer more information on the matter. As SCMP shares, the company has a registered capital of just over 14 million yuan (about $2 million) and completed a first round of financing last year. In January it opened a 300 million yuan R&D center in Shanghai, along with a synthetic kerosene production line. In any case, the company recognized that its future commercial operations will probably have to be located near large solar and wind energy facilities in western China, since it is a process with high energy demand. A problem that persists. Synthetic fuels produced from renewables remain expensive. The medium refers to paper published in January 2025 in the journal Energy Conversion and Management, where some of the obstacles to its commercialization were identified, including high capital intensity, low energy efficiency in the conversion and absence of infrastructure and regulatory frameworks that allow its large-scale deployment. About Repsol. In Spain, the main company that has promoted renewable fuels in its gas stations has been Repsol, although the concept in this case is different. Repsol comes from a process that reuses used cooking oilremains of agricultural processes and forestry waste to develop its Nexa fuel, which is already sold in hundreds of gas stations in the country. However, the company is also studying the DAC technique to produce synthetic fuels. It does this through a cutting-edge project in the Port of Bilbao (Petronor). At the moment what they have is a demonstration plant, so we will have to wait to see if it has an outlet. for the car. That a Chinese startup barely a year old claims to have solved the cost problem that has blocked the entire industry is, at the very least, interesting, but there is a lack of data to support it. DAC technology exists and is maturing, but most of the CO₂ captured so far is stored underground, not converted into fuel. That the announcement was made under these circumstances is curious, to say the least. So we will have to wait to see if this project ends up materializing and fulfills what it promises. Cover image | ADIGUN AMPA In Xataka | 115 million barrels released and a fear on the horizon: that gasoline in Spain will go to €2/liter

The almond trees throughout Spain are already in bloom and that is fantastic news for the sector. Or also a disaster

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40 years ago, on January 10, the father of Simplisíssimus told him it would be a bad year for the almond. The reason was simple: when the trees flowered early, the almond embryo was exposed (“weak and sensitive”) to late frosts that could destroy entire crops. Therefore, the good time for flowering was March, he explained. And he must have been right, but in the last 44 years it has been increasingly difficult to prove it. According to an article published by AEMETSince 1981, the flowering of the almond tree has been advancing systematically and documented throughout the country. But it seems that, at least in some areas, this has changed this year. If confirmed, it could be good news. When do almond trees bloom? According to the work of the Autonomous University of Madrid, the Senckenberg Research Institute and AEMETin these 40 years, the median flowering date in the center of the peninsula has moved from February 12 to February 7. Of course, the progress has not been linear: it has accelerated in recent years. At a historical level, the most advanced in recent decades was in 1993 (around January 8). And why should we care? In general terms, because the almond tree is the most extensive woody crop in Spain and, in fact, it is growing: in the last decade the dedicated area has grown by 34%. The almendril madness in the country is such that, well, Spain leads the sector with 765,000 hectares productive. That is, it is an issue that matters to us as a country. So, we’re talking about good news, right? It will depend on how the weather goes from now on and, furthermore, we must not forget that It has not been like this in all places. However, as has been happening lately in the field, it can be (at the same time) good news and bad news. Good because a big harvest would help remove volatility that the almond has had in recent years, because it would help generate rural employment in a year which is expected to be complicated by flooding and will give a break to agricultural insurance. And yet, a good harvest can end up delaying a fundamental debate: that of varieties. The only way the sector has adapt to climate changes is betting on late or hyperlate variants. They are not a magic solution, but it is a solution. The question is whether the global almond giant, up to its eyeballs in debt, will understand that it has to make a move. Image | Tim Mossholder In Xataka | An end of February with 20 ºC, haze and full reservoirs is not “good weather”: it is the sign of a completely misplaced meteorology

The new director of Comic-Con Málaga does not come from fandom, but from a sector that can solve last year’s problems

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The first international edition of San Diego Comic-Con broke sales records of tickets and attracted almost 100,000 people to Malaga. The organization, however, received abundant criticism: capacity to the limit, queues that lasted hours and more than 550 complaints accumulated by consumer associations. Now comes a change of direction and, with it, a new opportunity to prove that pop culture’s biggest event can work outside of California. The first Comic-Con outside the US The mere news that Málaga would host the first international edition generated an expectation which translated into instant sales: three of the four days of the event were sold out in less than 24 hours at 50 euros per day. And there were still no guests. When these they started to advertise (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Antonio Banderas, Elle Fanning, Jared Leto or the composer of ‘Final Fantasy’ Nobuo Uematsu, among more than thirty international guests) the first criticisms intensified: it was not an event for fans, like its original namesake, but rather oriented completely to the mainstream. Some figures. The official statement announcing the first plans for 2027 takes stock of last year and speaks of 95,784 attendees over four days, with an economic impact of 44.3 million euros and the participation of more than 110 exhibitors and brands such as Disney, Nintendo, Lego and Bandai Namco. Here we find the first discrepancies with the past: the Malaga City Council announced at the time that attendance had been greater than 120,000 people (thus exceeding the 30,000 daily visitors admitted to the Trade Fair Palace). 25,000 visitors difference in the information that the organization does not explain now, nor is there any mention of the more than 550 consultations accumulated by Facua and OCU to file claims. Changes in the organization. Implicitly admitting that there are issues to improve, a change has also been communicated to the front of the event. Fernando Piquer assumes general management, replacing Javier Barberá. His profile is striking: founder and CEO of Movistar Riders, one of the most recognized esports teams in Spain, and responsible for the Global Strategy of Movistar KOI before this new assignment, he has no previous connection with the world of comics or fandom, which has already generated the first criticism. However, his choice makes sense: large esports festivals have served in the last decade as a laboratory for managing massive events, with young audiences, a festive atmosphere and large numbers of people in closed venues. These are events used to digitally managing massive influxes: digital accreditation systems, capacity control by zones, staggered time slots, computerized queue management, all of this is applied today to entertainment fairs. The question remains for the 2026 edition about content and guests, but a good team should solve that problem. Possible solutions. Massive and comparable events such as Gamescom in Cologne or Paris Games Week have incorporated ticket systems by time slots, official apps that show crowd saturation maps divided into pavilions, and there are organizational teams dedicated exclusively to managing access flows. It is also worth reviewing the prohibitions on bringing water and food to the event, given the saturation that occurred at the food stalls and fountains. They are technical problems that have been identified and that can be solved: the next step should be announcements in that direction, especially considering that criticism of the event in terms of organization was widespread. In Xataka | “We are taking the industry towards 3D”: the creator of ‘DOOM’ has a full-time job and that is explaining ‘DOOM’ to you

AI agents have indeed changed work and the economy forever. But for now only in one sector: programming

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AI agents are beginning to demonstrate their capabilities, but the only area in which they do so is programming. An Anthropic report reveals how software engineering is where half of the activity of AI agents is currently concentrated, and that proves two things. The first, that AI can effectively enhance work. The second, that there is a huge opportunity for hundreds of verticals where AI has barely landed. what has happened. If there is a sector that has embraced AI and AI agents, it is programming. Platforms like Cursor or WindSurf first and like Claude Code, OpenAI Codex or Antigravity today have made all kinds of people —whether they know programming or not— can turn their projects into reality in a really simple way. It’s a clear case of how AI can contribute to a field, but there’s a problem: it’s practically the only case where it has actually done so. Distribution of requests to AI tools by segment. Software engineering is almost responsible for 50% of those calls or requests, at least in the case of the Claude platform. Source: Anthropic. Verticals with a lot of margin. As can be seen in this graph, the presence of AI agents is very reduced or practically non-existent in a large number of verticals in which it is evident that there is a notable opportunity to take advantage of these tools. The automation of office tasks is the second main protagonist with 9.1% of the function calls of the Anthropic AI model in this report. Below it we find segments such as marketing, sales, finance, business analysis or scientific research. And others who are ignoring AI. There are quite a few sectors in which AI agents seem to be barely present. The travel, legal, medical, e-commerce or education segments seem perfect to start taking advantage of these tools, but at the moment this is not the case and this presence is very, very small in all of them. Claude Code can work longer and longer. Double what it was three months ago, in fact. Source: Anthropic. Models can now work autonomously for a long time. In these scenarios it is true that the models used to be limited by the time they could function autonomously and “chain” actions and self-analyze progress to continue acting. That’s not so true now. Claude Code, for example, has doubled the time of his longest sessions in just three months: from 25 minutes in October 2025 to 45 minutes in January 2026. And they need less human intervention. Another of the revealing data of the study is that the evolution of these agents not only means that they can function autonomously for longer periods of time, but that this also implies fewer human interventions. Those situations in which an agent “needs human help” to continue with the process are becoming limited. In August 2025, the average was 5.4 human interventions per session. In December that average dropped to 3.3 interventions. We trust more and more in AI. At Anthropic they have also noticed a unique behavior among users: they are increasingly trusting AI agents. In programming, novices approve each new step before it is executed, but veterans delegate and intervene when something goes wrong: they have gone from pre-approving everything to exercising active and constant monitoring. As they say at Anthropic“Users develop confidence as they work with the model, and change their monitoring strategy based on that growing confidence.” From programming to other fields. What has happened with programming could happen in other scenarios. The challenge is to build AI agents that adapt to each segment using that specific data from said vertical. If an AI wants to help in the legal segment, it must be specifically trained for that segment. What the AI ​​did when trained with thousands of code repositories on GitHub It was learning and improving. Well, the same can be applied to other verticals, although the challenge is certainly notable because programming was a perfect segment for the application of AI: it is very deterministic. It either works or it doesn’t, and whether it does or not, execution logs allow you to fine-tune that operation. The new unicorns await. As entrepreneur Garry Tan points out in your newsletterin the last two decades SaaS platforms have managed to capture 40% of venture capital investments and that industry has more than 170 unicorns. “The thesis is simple,” Tan concludes, “all of those unicorns have an equivalent in the form of vertical AI waiting.” Promises and realities. The AI ​​agent segment therefore promises many changes in a multitude of segments, but the reality is that today the practical success (there is no economic success at the moment) of AI is limited to the world of programming. Will we be able to transfer it to other segments? The opportunity is there, but it is one thing to say it, and quite another to do it… even if it is with AI. Image | Joshua Reddekopp In Xataka | Every time Facebook had a competitor, it bought it: it is exactly the same thing that OpenAI is doing

The supermarket sector has been highly contested in Spain for years. Now it is reflected in networks with the super hooligans

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That the supermarket sector is disputed highly disputed In Spain it is nothing new. Especially since Mercadona undertook a unstoppable conquest which has allowed it (thanks to its white brands and prepared dishes) to monopolize almost 30% of the marketat least in terms of value. What is new is that this rivalry between chains is encouraging a phenomenon as curious as chanante in networks: a pulse between ‘hoolingans supermarket’. Same as the ultras who have been going to football stadiums for decades, only in this case the phenomenon is cooked up on networks (X, Instagram or TikTok), through memes and focused on the main store chains. The protagonists here are not Real Madrid, Barça or Atlético, but Mercadona, Lidl, Aldi or Dia. Goodbye Barça, hello Bonpreu Click on the image to go to the tweet. Before getting into the matter, I propose a game. Enter TikTok, type the hashtag #hooligans and take a look at the search results. You will see that there are videos of ‘conventional’ ultras (what anyone would expect to find in a search like this) and others less orthodox that show images of people with balaclavas, scarves, flags and banners that do not read the names of football clubs, but of that store where you buy yogurt and bread. That is, nothing from Real Madrid, Barça, Atlético, Manchester United, Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain or any other sports club. What they wave are flags that read Mercadona, Eroski, Aldi or Hipercor. In fact, it is their corporate colors that predominate in the scarves and flares. The phenomenon is so curious that a few days ago the @MariaMayrit account dedicated it an interesting thread in X, where he baptized it as “supermarket ultras.” Click on the image to go to the tweet. Click on the image to go to the tweet. What differentiates them from traditional hooligans? To begin with, the focus of attention It goes from sports to supermarket chains, but that is just one of its peculiarities. Another (fundamental) is that the ‘super ultras’ are a phenomenon that is concentrated on social networks and memesphere. There is no known group of fans of Mercadona, Alcampo, Hipercor or Covirán (to name four chains) that remain in the parking lots of shopping centers to confront each other. Your territory It is another: that of the meme, virality, montages and images generated with artificial intelligence. That does not mean that the phenomenon of ‘super hooligans’ is a curiosity limited to networks, a passing fad fueled by AI. In addition to videos and montages, there are also accounts focused on that content. In the end it is linked to something much more important: the weight that the large chains in the sector retail are acquiring in our daily lives as we homes change. The best example probably Mercadona leaves itwhich no longer aspires only to be the place where we buy food to fill the refrigerator, but rather our reference in general food, the place where they cook for you and you even sit down to eat. The ultras memes confirm something else: the roots that some brands, such as Mercadona, FGadis, HiperDino, Alimerka or Bonpreu, have achieved in certain communities. In fact, the sector itself manages studies that show that the super regionals are supporting the push of the giants of the industry. The reason: their commitment to certain products, but also the value of closeness to identity, precisely what is exploited (with a certain dose of humor) by the memes that circulate these days on the networks about ‘supermarket ultras’. Images | x 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”

While farmers fear the pact with Mercosur, one sector brings out the champagne: the automobile industry

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From 35% tariffs to their non-existence through a progressive de-escalation that will advance over time. That is the new scenario that the European Union and Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay have, those countries that make up Mercosur with which the European Union has signed an agreement that will create the largest free trade area in the world. The agreement. After 26 years of negotiations, on January 9, 2026, the news broke: Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) and the European Union they reached an agreement to create the largest tariff-free trade zone in the world. The pact was already almost confirmed but ended up being approved by the European Union with the approval of 21 countries (including Spain) and the votes against of France, Poland, Austria, Ireland and Hungary, as well as the abstention of Belgium. After European approval, The signing will arrive next January 17 in Paraguay. Then a project will be launched that in the next 15 years will end up eliminating the tariffs that exist between both commercial zones. A pact that will make things complicated for the primary sector but which has the European industry as the great winner. And in that industry, the automobile is one of the most benefited sectors. Why the car industry? Until now, exports from the European Union to Mercosur had tariffs of 35% on their shoulders. The pact will eliminate any type of trade barrier over 15 years. It will be gradual but after three decades, vehicle exports to South America will be completely tariff-free. That, according to data collected by The Automotive Tribuneis expected to triple the volume of exports from the European Union to this region. It remains to be seen what steps will be taken year after year but in Infobae They already anticipate that exports are expected to Brazil and Argentina with a maximum quota limit that will expand at the same rate as tariffs are reduced. Spain. One of the countries that can emerge the most strengthened from the agreement in the automobile sector is Spain. Although the figures point to a drop in production and export of automobiles this year, our country is the second European power in vehicle production (behind Germany) and more than 90% of the cars manufactured leave our borders. But, furthermore, our country is a large producer of vehicle components that will also discount tariffs on their exports. The news is especially interesting for a sector that has suffered from the tariffs imposed by the United States Government. And it is that Spain does not send cars to the American country but automobile components. Holy water for Europe. The agreement feels like holy water for European manufacturers. Currently, the cars sold in Mercosur countries are cheaper and have very poor security measures if we compare them with Europeans. Acting without tariffs will allow them to sell more cars and amortize investments than with the European emissions policies their days may be numbered. It is a good outlet for lower priced vehicles and an opportunity to compete with higher quality cars. It allows them follow that Toyota maxim to sell in each market what each market demands. But it also opens the door to compete with China, which was eating up the market by exporting cars in large volumes. They collect in Infobae that the measures that have tried to benefit the entry of hybrids and electric vehicles to Argentina and Brazil have ended up filling these markets with Chinese cars, which represent 80% of imports. USA. It must be taken into account that, in addition, dark clouds had settled on the future of the European automobile industry. Tariffs on exports to the United States they had done enormous damage despite the fact that mostly high-cost vehicles were being sold there. The problem is that the most affordable ones of European origin They are mostly manufactured in Mexico so they have also been bleeding with trade barriers. It is expected that exports to the Mercosur countries, due to purchasing power, will not generate as much money per car sold but they are expected to be much more voluminous. Eliminating tariffs will allow, as we say, to amortize investments in vehicles with lower prices and lower profit margins. They lose. The one that, predictably, will lose will be the local industry. Right now Mercosur has an industry sustained in the production of very specific vehicles for its market and with very high trade barriers that causes a very low volume of imports. Furthermore, they provide feedback to each other since 75% of car imports in Argentina They come from Brazil. Now the industry has the challenge of opening up and being more competitive. The problem for Mercosur is that, due to the cars manufactured, it seems that this sector only has one way and that is one way from Europe to South America. The return, with combustion vehicles and safety standards much less demanding than the European ones, everything indicates that it will be deserted. Photo | Jeanne Menjoulet and Mercedes In Xataka | China has a weapon to circumvent tariffs and protect the secrets of its electric cars: removable kits

The US industrial plan is crumbling because it is being eaten up by a new sector: that of insatiable AI

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Generative AI is stupid. Is Yann LeCun’s opinionone of the godfathers of the artificial intelligencewhich has grown tired of how the AI ​​majors seek AGI and it seems that he is going to set up his startup to achieve it. To make AI more “smart” you have to train it, and for that you have to build data centers. And boy is it being done. To the point that there are already those who calculate that the rise of AI threatens the plan of reindustrialization of the United States. AI walks or doesn’t walk. The United States has a plan: invest whatever it takes to achieve superintelligence before China. China is also investing, but while what it seeks is a cheap and functional AI to monetize nowwhat the US wants is artificial general intelligence, or AGI. That costs money and, above all, investment in huge data centers. One of the Donald Trump’s election promises During his two campaigns he orbited around the commitment to return millions of jobs to Americans. To achieve this, the opening of new factories on national soil through tax incentives and an “America First” policy that we have seen echo in the rest of the world in the form of tariffs. In Xataka SoftBank has always been characterized by very risky investments. And now he just abandoned NVIDIA Capital redistribution. ANDfactories are opening and reopeningbut perhaps not as many expected. In Bloomberg They point to a devastating fact: spending on new data centers has increased by 18% in the last seven months. This is a colossal increase, but it goes hand in hand with another fact: spending on new factories has fallen 2.5% this year. While large technology companies are committed to building data centers, the policies of recent months, immigration restrictions, withdrawal of support for electric vehicles and tariffs are generating uncertainty in the market that slows down investment aimed at opening other types of factories. Not only are factories not opened, but they are laid off. American manufacturing heavyweights are not only facing the biggest corporate tax hike since the 1990s, but are estimated to have lost 38,000 manufacturing jobs this year. Mostly in sectors such as electronics, automobiles or household appliances. In August alone, 12,000 people lost their jobs (and why don’t we include those from the video game industry here…). In Xataka Quietly, the great AI industry has found a gateway to Europe: the United Kingdom brutal difference. Estimates suggest that the monthly spending of manufacturing plants will situates at $18.8 billion, but while the trend is downward, if we look at spending on AI, we see a radically different scenario. Among the big four technology companies (Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and Alphabet) $400 billion will go to AI infrastructure in 2025 alone. This is an increase of 60% compared to last year and it is not a peak: it is something sustained. In fact, the investment in 2026 is expected to be higher. There are other companies with their own plans, such as OpenAI what is the most valuable private company and can afford lose 11.5 billion in just the last 90 days which is making an investment of between 400,000 and 500,000 million dollars between 2025 and 2027. {“videoId”:”x9sjece”,”autoplay”:true,”title”:”CHINA is WINNING the TECH WAR because they planned it that way 10 YEARS AGO”, “tag”:”china”, “duration”:”721″} Help Uncle Sam. This AI boom is driving other directly linked sectors, such as the construction of the data centers themselves (someone has to build them as long as they do not use already manufactured facilities) and that of energy. Because these facilities need ridiculous amounts of energy to runso much so that Google wants to take them to space and China is submerging them in the sea to spend less on dissipation. Thus, reopening nuclear power plants or investing in modernizing gas turbines to supply data centers is on the horizon, but it is still something that does not impact the American worker, they are not new factories that need personnel. And part of the money needed is coming from the state itself. Recently, AMD announced that the United States Department of Energy had allocated 1,000 million public to power the infrastructure. And both OpenAI and NVIDIA have dropped the need for the United States to get involved to sustain this new industry, which is already awakening bubble feelings. In Xataka While the US reopens nuclear plants, China has already resolved the great limitation to the development of AI: energy Echoes of the 2008 blow. When we talk about such astronomical figures, it is very difficult to get an idea. It was already happening with the 70,000 million dollars that Microsoft paid to take over Activisionand if we now go to amounts of 400,000 or 500,000 million, things are going to get worse. What is evident is that, as we say, these investments fly over the fear of the bubble bursting. If in July of this year 37% of fund managers believed that we were facing a bubble, in October the figure increase up to 54%, although from the technology industry itself It seems that there is no one who brings sanity. Because it is spending a lot, a lot, more than during the dotcom era which did not end too well for many, and even figures as interested as Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, have commented that, while it is true that many are oversizing their investments, it is better than being left behind. Only time will tell how everything turns out, obviously, but the article Bloomberg It closes in a quite interesting way. Arno Hill, former mayor of Lordstown, a municipality where there was a large GM plant already closed and which is now part of SoftBank and Foxconn’s plans to create a data center, says that he does not know what will happen with AI, but that people will always need cars. Image | Google Data Centers In Xataka | The world of AI has a problem: there is no energy … Read more

“Salaries above the sector average”

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A few days ago, Juan Roig, founder of Mercadona, took the floor before 1,500 businessmen from the mass consumption sector (AECOC) to claim the pride of making money leading a company, but also championing a message that has surprised many: the defense of employee well-being. “You need the worker to feel well treated as a human being, and well treated,” he said. Beyond the discursive epic of the moment, Mercadona supports the words of its founder with data: “We offer salaries above the sector average,” they assure in a corporate statement. That can be your best business strategy in the long term. Juan Roig: Richard Branson in the Spanish way. The millionaire founder of Virgin published in your X profile a memorable phrase: “Take care of your employees and they will take care of your business.” That is, in essence, the message that Juan Roig gave to the businessmen who gathered in his presentation within the framework of the 40th AECOC Congress in Valencia that was held in the new stadium that bears his name. “You can buy the hands, the heart and brain you need for the worker to feel well treated as a human being. And well treated is not doing what the worker wants, but what the worker needs,” said the businessman who claimed to be very proud of his staff. Well-being starts with your pocket: your salary. According to Roig in his presentation, “a Mercadona manager A earns 2,100 euros net per month,” the data provided by Mercadona they confirm it and they place their employees among the best paid in the large supermarket segment. According what was published by News Worka manager A (the largest category in Mercadona’s workforce) earns: Full time (40 hours/week) GROSS monthly salary (approx.) NET Salary (estimated) Manager A (less than 1 year) 1,686 euros/month 1,470 euros/month Manager A (less than 2 years) 1,851 euros/month 1,546 euros/month Manager A (less than 3 years) 2,054 euros/month 1,566 euros/month Manager A (4+ years) 2,280 euros/month 1,830 euros/month Annual bonus for objectives (Less than 5 years) 1 extra monthly payment Annual bonus for objectives (More than 5 years) 2 extra monthly payments Incentives. However, the most differential thing is in the bonuses and incentives for objectives, which can add one or two additional monthly payments to the set if they have been in the company for more than five years. Altogether, the data confirm Juan Roig’s statement. A category A manager with more than five years of seniority can receive a monthly net salary of around 2,100 euros, being between 27% and 72% above the SMI. How the rest of the supermarkets pay. If we compare these salaries with those of other supermarkets, we find that Lidl, its main competitor, offers base salaries slightly higher than those of Mercadona, with 1,539 euros net per month, according to comparative data by Skello. However, the bonuses and incentives are not as generous, so the total sum is slightly behind. The rest of the supermarkets, such as Carrefour, do distance themselves with base salaries of 1,387 euros for the majority of their store staff and few incentives that increase that salary. Playing attrition in an environment of labor shortage. As and as highlighted María Miralles, senior partner of the retail sector in Iberia at the consulting firm McKinsey, in statements to financial times, “Employee retention becomes an increasingly important business imperative. If a rival supermarket chain loses a qualified fishmonger or butcher, finding a replacement on the high street is almost impossible.” This analysis perfectly summarizes the “Mercadona Model“in which they bet on better salaries than their competition and encourage the long-term stability of the workforce to make it an attractive asset to attract talent and avoid let them go to their competition. Bet on training. With an inverted demographic pyramid, staff shortages are going to be a growing problem, so taking care of employees is no longer going to be an option, at least to remain competitive in a expansion scenario to Portugal like the one proposed by Mercadona. According what was published through the medium specialized in food retail Food, Retail & ServiceMercadona invested 128 million euros in training in 2024 with four million training hours for its staff. This implies an individual investment of 1,164 euros per employee and 1,894 people promoted to positions of greater responsibility. That is, Mercadona not only seeks recruit your qualified personnel with better salaries than its direct competition, but also establishes that talent by offering them training and an internal professional career. As Elena Orden, spokesperson for Merco in Spain, pointed out in the article in Financial Times: “In Spain, we have an inverted pyramid in terms of the active population. So, if you want to have the best workers, you need to offer them what others do not offer them and prioritize their well-being.” In Xataka | Juan Roig, Amancio Ortega and Ana Botín in contention for being the highest-rated leaders. Inditex does not find a rival as the best company Image | Mercadona

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