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10,000 tons of almonds have disappeared in Granada in a single night. It is a warning of what is about to happen.

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On the night of March 30, 2026, about 30 million euros they vanished. The figures They are from COAGbut (taking into account the precedents from the beginning of the decade and the growth of almond cultivation) they sound plausible: the region that concentrates the largest almond production in the country, lost around 10,000 tons due to a late frost. And it’s not even the most interesting thing. What the hell is up with almonds? With 70,000 hectares dedicated to almonds, the Granada Altiplano has become the national epicenter of the production of this fruit. Paradoxically, we might add. Because it is something very rare: there are not many more cases of crops that do not stop growing on the surface while their vulnerability increases to levels never seen before. A vulnerability that, of course, is not limited to March 30. Because that would be the easy thing to do: blame everything on cold air intrusion from the north that knocked down the thermometers of the Altiplano (-5 in Galera and Baza, -4 in Puebla de Don Fabrique or -3 in Castril) just at the moment of greatest sensitivity of the almond tree. However, that is only part of the story. Of course, frost during flowering and fruit setting is a problem. But in the last five years, the region has suffered 3 frosts of this type and the area of ​​almond trees does not stop growing. That is to say, the vulnerability is deeper and exceeds the climate risks: we are talking about the advance of the almond wasp, insufficient agricultural insurance, the tariff asymmetry with our main competitor (California) and, of course, the enormous pressure that international prices exert on farmers. And what happened to the harvest? According to COAGpreliminary estimates draw a very complicated scenario: between 8,000 and 12,000 tons lost, an economic impact of between 25 and 40 million euros and the complete loss of all production in the most affected areas. The assessment of the Junta de Andalucía and the Ministry is missing, but the figures serve to measure the destruction. Hunger with the desire to eat. Spanish almond production It was already affected by the drought and none of the explanations are surprising (late rains, winds that make pollination difficult, hailstorms in April and fungi derived from humidity). However, in 2025, things seemed to turn around and the campaign was positive. But it was a statistical artifact: production grew by 5%but the productive surface had increased by 10. That is to say, the situation was still complicated. And the data does not stop changing. It is enough to keep in mind that 15% of all the almond trees planted in Spain are not yet productive to understand that the crop has been experiencing a boom for years that does not end (and that may end by give us some displeasure). What does the almond tree need to avoid becoming the new lemon? That is, so that we are not forced to have to start ripping them out in a few years. And the answer is also simple: what you need is a better safety net, a better way of looking to the future, a better way of moving in the market. I have said it many times: In agriculture, Spain is a giant with feet of clay. And the almond tree is the best example that this is still the case and we have enormous difficulties to change it. Image | Marcia Cripps In Xataka | Spain is the second largest almond producer in the world. Tariffs or not, farmers are already in trouble

OpenAI is the most successful company on the planet. Also the one that plans to lose 85,000 million dollars in a single year

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Something special is going to happen in 2026: both OpenAI and Anthropic are going public. This will finally mean that individual investors can invest in them and bet on their future with their money. It will be the definitive exam for the credibility of companies that have grown exceptionally in recent years but also They have burned the money as if there were no tomorrow. But be careful, because there is a compelling reality here: they are going to continue burning it in an even more astonishing way. The two sides of the IPO. The Wall Street Journal has had access to the financial documents submitted to investors before the IPOs proposed by both OpenAI and Anthropic. They reveal extraordinarily striking data that have two sides. Amazement and concern with OpenAI. For example, OpenAI has indicated that it will almost double its revenue this year. According to their forecasts, they could become profitable in 2026 if one excludes the cost of training their models (which are stratospheric, of course). But there is the other reality: OpenAI expects to spend $121 billion on computing power in 2028, so even doubling revenue it will lose, attention, $85 billion. No company has ever lost this amount of money and survived, but OpenAI not only promises that it will survive, but that those losses will end up being almost anecdotal. I tell you the truth, but only part of it. Both companies wanted to show two different versions of reality when talking about how they present their profitability. In one, the very expensive model training processes are included, and in others in which these costs are excluded under a heading called “computing for research.” Excluding those costs, OpenAI is on track to achieve a small pre-tax operating profit this year. Anthropic also promises to achieve this if its most optimistic scenario comes true. Excluding the cost of training models, both OpenAI and Anthropic could be “profitable” this year. Source: WSJ. Until 2030, no real profitability. If the costs and investment in model training are included, OpenAI indicates that it will end up being profitable in 2030, a fact that They had already planned a long time ago and that could not hide a forceful reality: the company has not only not stopped spending money until now: it is going to continue spending it, but to an even greater extent with projects like Stargate to the head. Saying that in 2026 they will be profitable if we do not consider training costs is like an airline telling us that it is profitable excluding the cost of fuel. Anthropic, by the way, expects to be fully profitable in 2028. Revenues growing fast, costs even faster. In addition to those training processes, both OpenAI and Anthropic are spending billions of dollars every year in inferencea section that is beginning to be even more important at an operational and strategic level. Currently, these inference costs represent half of each company’s revenue, although inference technology is expected to becomes cheaper and therefore the costs too. Here, however, there are two big differences between both companies: OpenAI: most ChatGPT users do not pay to use the service, so OpenAI assumes these inference costs without making them profitable. According to OpenAI, this facilitates adoption and will allow users to become subscribers in the future, something that is not happening too much at the moment. Anthropic: This startup has managed to win over many companies that pay to use their models, and it is evident that the company is absolutely focused on making you pay to use their models if you want to use them. And if not, Tell OpenClaw. Betting on the future. The companies and venture capital funds that have invested billions in OpenAI or Anthropic have made a bet on the future. They have blind faith that these companies will end up taking over the world, so the fact that today they are still not profitable does not scare them… or not enough to withdraw from this expensive race. Both have experienced spectacular growth that serves as an argument for investors. In addition, the growing interest of companies in integrating AI solutions by paying for them has boosted Anthropic and even caused OpenAI to reorganize and change its strategy. Less fireworks and hypemore focus in what makes money. The IPO as a trick to survive. Both companies are going to continue burning money like there was no tomorrow in the coming years, but now they hope that investors will be the ones to sustain their businesses. The amount of money they will need has made even the Nasdaq make things easier: It will allow newly listed companies to join its renowned index more quickly, giving them access to larger capital reserves. Now it will be the public market and to a large extent the individual investor who will decide whether they want to bet on that future or not. A small survey. Would you invest in OpenAI or Anthropic if it went public? It is evident that both companies generate different impressions, and although their strategies and ways of doing things are different, it is clear that this public sale offer is going to be very striking when it occurs. So, it is a good time to find out a little about what you, the xatakeros, think about this financial movement of these companies. Image | TechCrunch | Wikimedia Commons In Xataka | NVIDIA has so much money that it is becoming something different: the largest startup incubator in the world

lock up China without a single shot

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Japan is a country made up of more than 6,800 islands, although only about 400 are permanently inhabited. Many of them are small, remote and barely appear on the map, but their location places them in some of the most strategic points of the planet. The invisible barrier. It is evident that international views have been marked by the war in ukraine and now in Iran but, in the meantime, Japan has been raising a kind of “invisible barrier” fortified on a chain of islands off China that completely redefines the balance in the Pacific. It is not a single base or a large visible deployment, but a dispersed network of military positions stretching from southwestern Japan to remote points of the ocean, creating a continuous line of surveillance, detection and potential attack. This strategy turns small islands, many almost uninhabited, into key pieces of a system designed to stop the Chinese advance without the need for open war. From forgotten territory to the first defensive line. It we have counted in recent years. For decades, these islands barely had a military presence, but that has been changing radically in recent times. Places like Yonagunia few kilometers from Taiwan, have gone from having no troops to hosting radars, electronic warfare systems and permanent military unitswhile other positions have been reinforced with new bases and military equipment. There is no doubt, this turn responds to a crystal clear reality: if China tries to act on Taiwan, these islands would be the first objective or the first shield, and Japan is no longer willing to leave them exposed. One of the Type 12 models installed on the islands by Japan Missiles, radars and drones. The real change is in the type of capabilities deployed, which turn this chain of islands into a system offensive and defensive at the same time. As? For example, Japan is deploying long range anti-ship missilessystems capable of hitting hundreds or even thousands of kilometers, along with advanced radars and drones that allow you to detect and track targets in real time. Not only that. Added to this are new weapons such as hypersonic projectiles and cruise missiles that extend the range to the interior of the rival territory, thus marking a clear break with its historical policy of limited defense. Lock up China without firing a shot. Beyond protecting his territory, he recalled this week the wall street journal in an extensive report that the network has a strategic objective much more ambitious: complicate China’s movements at sea in a kind of trap. We are talking about a group of islands that is part of what is known as the “first chain”a set of narrow sea passages that any Chinese fleet must pass through to project power into the Pacific. By deploying weapons at these points, Japan turns each transit at a riskraising the cost of any possible operation and creating a kind of encirclement that limits freedom of maneuver without the need for direct confrontation. The definitive jump. In short, all this reflects a profound change in Japanese strategy, which has gone from passive defense to an active deterrence with the ability to strike from a distance if necessary. The introduction of rocket missiles attests to this. Type 12 long rangethe Tomahawk purchase and integration with US forces, all indicative that Japan no longer just wants to resist an attack, but prevent it threatening key adversary objectives. If you like, we are facing a delicate balance, because reinforces securitybut it also turns these Japanese islands into possible targets, increasing tension in an increasingly unstable region. Image | NARA, Tokoro_ten In Xataka | A single island houses 70% of the US military bases in Japan. There is a compelling reason for them not to leave: China In Xataka | China is sending drones to an island 100 km from Taiwan. The problem is that Japan and the US are filling it with missiles

Opening a company in a single visit to the administration sounds like utopia. In China it has been law for years

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Bureaucracy is probably one of the few things on which there is almost absolute consensus: everyone hates her. Queuing from window to window, discovering that you are missing a photocopy, returning another day because the official who signs is not there… an administrative ordeal, but it doesn’t have to be like this: years ago, in China they set out to end the labyrinth of procedures with one objective: so that more companies can be created to be more competitive. One visit at most. The ‘one visit at most’ reform It was promoted in the province of Zhejiang in 2016 and today it has spread to more territories in the country. The central objective is to unify all the procedures into one, so that those who want to form a new company only have to go to the administration once, avoiding the “walk” through different windows. It does not only affect the creation of companies, but all types of procedures such as birth certificates, registration records, registrations for health insurance and health cards. In addition, there are many procedures that can be done electronically, it is what they call ‘zero visit’ and the idea is that over time more and more processes will be added to this list. How it was before. Before this reform the process was not only much more tedious, but also much slower. a businessman counted in CGNT To get a permit you had to go through a lot of procedures, the lines were very long and it took several weeks. And if everything went well, if a document was missing or there was an error, you would have to start over. Another businesswoman says that she sent the documentation online and when she went to do the process it took her only 15 minutes to get the permit. Land of entrepreneurship. That this reform has been promoted in Zhejiang is no coincidence. It is the province in which Hangzhou is located, the city that has become the reference technological hub for AI companies. Here you can find Alibaba, DeepSeek, Unitree or Deep Robotics. It is also where the Zhejiang Universitynicknamed “the Stanford of the East”, and where many of those who are today senior executives of technology companies have studied. The streamlining of bureaucracy is one of all the measures that the government has implemented and which also include very advantageous loans for entrepreneurs. One person companies. Recently We were talking about ‘one person companies’ or OCP and how the Chinese government is supporting this new entrepreneurship model. They are startups created by a single person with strong AI support, very much in the style of what he did Peter Steinberger with OpenClawwhich in turn has allowed many entrepreneurs to create their own solo companies. OCP communities are being created in cities like Suzhou, Wuhan offers special loans for ‘solopreneurs’ and in Shanghai they cover up to 300,000 yuan in computing expenses. How is it here? In Spain we also have our own agile business creation system called CIRCE. It works through the DUE (Single Electronic Document) that groups up to 25 administrative forms into one. Through CIRCE you can create or cease a company, whether it is a SL or a self-employed person, and it can take from one to ten days. Of course, for SLs it is still necessary to complete an in-person procedure at a notary office. Image | Studio4rt, Freepik In Xataka | For 60 years, a farmer with no idea about architecture built a cathedral from scratch in Madrid. The bureaucracy has closed it

Since 2019, Spanish movie theaters have not had so much attendance in a single weekend. The person responsible: Torrente

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‘Torrente Presidente’ arrived in theaters on March 13 without a trailer, without press passes and with a poster with a black background as the only promotional material. In 72 hours it raised close to 7 million euros: with one million viewers, it is the best start for a Spanish film in fifteen years. And these are the causes of the phenomenon. The figures. The first numbers of ‘Torrente Presidente’, before the weekend ended, were already overwhelming and predicted extraordinary success. Premiere on 1077 screens. 150,000 tickets sold in advance. 2.4 million euros and 300,000 spectators on Friday alone. At the end of the weekend, it had generated a total of 6.94 million euros, 70% of the national box office. Of course, it is the weekend with the highest attendance at cinemas since 2019, before the pandemic. The figure places the sixth installment of the saga as the fourth best premiere in the history of Spanish cinema, behind ‘The Impossible’ (€8.9M), ‘Torrente 4: Lethal Crisis’ (€8.6M) and ‘Torrente 3: The Protector’ (€7.21M). It is also the highest-grossing Spanish film of the year and the best debut of a Spanish production in the last eleven: no national film had reached that level of box office on its opening day since at least 2015. Unusual marketing. Segura opted for a launch strategy completely atypical: The film arrived in theaters without a trailer, without promotion and without prior press screenings, announcing itself only with a publication on social networks. The director has explained that his intention was that fans of the saga would be the first to enjoy it. Curiously, Segura has for decades been one of the most active Spanish directors in the promotion machine, continually appearing on television wearing t-shirts with the film’s title. Once ‘Torrente Presidente’ was released, it has already been seen on programs like ‘El Hormiguero’ and has begun to give interviews and give access to press passes. You know what you’re going for. Curiously, Torrente’s films do not stand out for their plot twists or spectacular surprises, but there is another secret to keep: the cameos. As could be seen when the film arrived in theaters, ‘Torrente Presidente’ is one of the densest films in the saga (if not the most) in terms of number of cameos and guest stars. That was what Segura did not want revealed, and that is why there are abundant articles on the internet that they gut this aspect of the movie. It is the great secret of the premiere, above its plot or its approach, where it rains in the wet. And now what. If in a film like this the surprise effect is important, word of mouth is even more important. From its second week onwards, Segura will adhere to the usual rules of the promotion (trailer, poster, pass, interviews) seeking to maintain the momentum. The first milestone that ‘Torrente Presidente’ has to overcome is the 22.1 million in revenue from ‘Torrente 2’, the most lucrative of the saga to date. At this rate, this second week could exceed the 14 million euros that the intermediate installments of the saga accumulated, amounts that the films of ‘Father there is only one‘. In Xataka | There are many people who hate Santiago Segura’s films. The problem is that they “save” Spanish cinema every year

Your bet in the AI ​​race is to bring together several functions in a single model

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The artificial intelligence race is often told as a competition to see who builds the most powerful model or the one that dominates the most benchmarks. In the middle of that board, the French startup Mistral AI has just presented Mistral Small 4a proposal that tries to occupy a different place in that conversation. It is not presented as a model limited to a single function, but as one that, according to the company, seeks to bring together several advanced capabilities within the same tool. What exactly is Small 4. The company presents it as the new great iteration of its Mistral Small family and, above all, as the first model of the house that brings together capabilities that were previously distributed among several lines. Specifically, it integrates functions associated with Magistral, Pixtral and Devstral along with those of the Small series itself. Fewer models, more features. One of the central ideas of the announcement is to concentrate tasks that are normally solved with different tools in a single system. According to Mistral, the goal is that the same model can be used to converse, analyze complex information, work with images or assist in programming without having to switch between several specialized systems. The numbers behind Small 4. The model is based on a Mixture of Experts architecture, a design that distributes processing between different specialized submodels and that today appears in several artificial intelligence systems. In the case of Small 4, Mistral indicates that the system has 128 experts and that only four participate in each generated token. According to the company, the model reaches 119B total parameters, with 6B assets per token, and offers a context window of up to 256k. Who is this model intended for?. Beyond its architecture, Mistral also describes quite clearly the scenarios in which it imagines the use of Small 4. Let’s see. Developers: Automate programming tasks, explore code bases, and code agent workflows Businesses: conversational assistants, document understanding and multimodal analysis Research: mathematics, complex analysis and reasoning tasks The underlying idea is that the model can move between quite different needs without forcing you to change the system depending on the type of work. The graphics. In the material accompanying the announcement, Mistral includes several graphs where it compares Small 4 with other models in different benchmarks. These comparisons are not limited to the score obtained in each test. They also show the average length of the responses each system generates, a data the company uses to illustrate how much text each model needs to produce to achieve certain results. One of the graphs in the advertisement corresponds to the AA LCR benchmark, where Mistral compares the scores of various models and the average length of the responses they generate to solve the same tasks. The data published by the company are the following: • Mistral Small 4: 0.72 score with 1,600 characters• GPT-OSS 120B: 0.51 with 2,500 characters• Claude Haiku: 0.80 with 2,700 characters• Qwen3-next 80B: 0.75 with 5,800 characters• Qwen3.5 122B: 0.84 with 5,700 characters The comparison. Small 4 is not the highest scoring model. Both Claude Haiku and the Qwen models appear higher in that indicator. However, Mistral highlights another aspect of the comparison: the length of the responses. According to the company, its model achieves this combination of score and output length by generating significantly less text than several of its competitors, something it relates to lower latency and lower inference cost. The short answer trick. A shorter answer is not better simply because it takes up less space. It is only if it manages to solve the task with a level of quality comparable to that of a longer answer. This is where Mistral tries to put the focus: if a model achieves a competitive result by generating less text, it can respond faster, consume fewer resources and reduce the cost of inference. In other words, the advantage is not in being more concise, but in needing less output to reach a useful result. How to access the new model. Small 4 can not only be used via API and AI Studio. Being published under license Apache 2.0is also proposed as an open model that can be downloaded, adjusted and deployed in your own environments. The company adds that it can be tried for free at build.nvidia.com, in addition to offering it for production as NVIDIA NIM. Images | Mistral In Xataka | OpenAI has been wanting to be the bride at the wedding and the dead man at the funeral for years: now it has finally defined its priority

Getting married in Switzerland was equivalent to paying more taxes than a single person. And a referendum has put an end to the problem

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In Switzerland, marriages they are news. And not because of its rise or fall, demographic issues or new trends when celebrating them. They are for strictly tax reasons. In a historic decision the Swiss have supported majority (with 54% support) a reform that will basically put an end to what is called the “marriage penalty” in the country. In other words, saying ‘I do’ in Switzerland will no longer be (in most cases) a sentence to paying more when declaring income to the Treasury. The decision has come preceded by an intense debate, which gives a clue that the issue does not only have fiscal implications. The background is social, cultural and historical. What has happened? That after years of debate Switzerland has given the ‘green light’ to a key tax change for marriages. Couples in the country who formalize their relationship will stop paying taxes jointly, through a single tax return in which the sum of their income and assets is taken into account. From now on, each spouse will be taxed individually. Just as if he hadn’t gone through the altar. The measure has received the endorsement of 54% of voters during a referendum in which they have discussed more topicsbut it does not mean that it will be activated immediately. The idea is that it be adopted gradually, over the next five years. The cantons have margin until 2032. Is it so important? Yes. In fact in Switzerland (and other countries who have paid attention to the fiscal change) there is no talk of joint or individual taxation, but of something much more forceful: the end of the “marriage penalty”. Because? Because according to its promoters, the current Swiss tax regime punishes those marriages in which both spouses work and enjoy good salaries. In these cases, with the current system, couples are forced to bear greater burdens than they would face if they remained single. That is, the same couple can find themselves in one or another tax bracket (more or less beneficial) depending only on whether they have formalized their relationship. Why’s that? Basically because the Swiss system is a few decades old and is based on a traditional family model in which each household has a single base salary. If the family receives more income (a second payroll) they are usually taxed at a higher marginal rate. “The joint model came from a time when women’s income was considered a ‘complement’ to that of their husbands,” clarify Swiss Info. With the new system, that changes. Does it influence that much? What we have seen so far may sound abstract or too theoretical, but its scope is better understood with practical examples. In January Swiss Info carried out a simulation for different profiles of households with one or another tax system and found that the ‘photo’ changes quite a bit. The summary is very simple: new tax model It mainly benefits marriages in which both spouses earn the same or similar amounts and harms (forcing them to face a greater tax burden) those in which there is a greater imbalance of income between the members of the couple. A practical example. Let’s take the case of a couple in which both members earn the same: 100,000 francs. With the joint model that has been operating in Switzerland for years, its tax burden would be about 6,700 francs. With the new individual taxation system it would drop to 2,700. Things change in couples in which there is only one salary. In these cases (with the same level of income) individual taxation will mean an increase of 32% compared to joint taxation. What is the change looking for? Its promoters assure that the new model will solve a problem that has been dragging down the Swiss economy for some time: a tax system that discourages paid work for those people who provide a second income to their homes. When changing the legal framework, remember Financial Timesthe Swiss government hopes to increase the nation’s workforce by about 60,000 people and increase the national GDP by about 1%. Advocates of the change hope it will help women gain strength in the Swiss labor market. It is estimated that only 60% of Swiss women work full time, a percentage lower than the OECD average, which is around 78%. The “marriage penalty” has also led to some curious practicessuch as couples who marry without legally registering their union or even marriages that they divorce before retiring for tax reasons. Are they all advantages? Not at all. At least that is what the sectors most critical of the measure maintain, warning of several negative effects. The main one, that the new system will result in more bureaucracyincreasing the workload (and costs) of the administration. There are cantons that also fear that the change of model will affect their coffers, punishing them with a loss of income. Beyond the practical issues there is another ideological one: part of the critical sector warns that individual supervision will generate inequalities that will harm traditional families above all. According to the Government, the new framework will more or less half of the taxpayers see their tax burden reduced. 36% would not notice changes and only the remaining 14% will have to pay more taxes. Images | Leonardo Miranda (Unsplash), Ronnie Schmutz (Unsplash) and Leo_Visions (Unsplash) In Xataka | 40,000 euros to say “yes, I want”: weddings in Spain have become events and their price is skyrocketing

A single shareholder will earn 3,234 million euros thanks to Inditex’s record profits: Amancio Ortega, of course

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There are companies that never stop breaking their own records and Inditex is one of them. The Galician group that owns Zara, Massimo Dutti or Pull&Bear has closed its 2025 fiscal year with a record net profit of 6,220 million euros, which is 6% more than the previous year. It is the fourth consecutive year that Inditex exceeds its own historical highs. However, what is really striking is not only the record achieved by the textile giant based in Arteixobut that record profit also implies unprecedented dividends for its shareholders. The 2026 dividend is the largest that Amancio Ortega will receive from Inditex in the entire historical series. No less than 3,234 million euros. A billion-dollar dividend. The Board of Directors of Inditex approved in its presentation of 2025 results the distribution of dividends among its shareholders. Given the increase in profits obtained this year, Inditex will offer a total dividend of 1.75 euros gross per share, which represents an increase of 4.17% compared to what it delivered the previous year. This dividend is made up of two parts: an ordinary component of 1.20 euros per share, equivalent to 60% of net profit, and an extraordinary payment of 0.55 euros per share. As is customary for the textile giant, the distribution of this dividend will be carried out in two equal payments of 0.875 euros per share. The first, scheduled for May 4, 2026, and the second will be sent on November 2, 2026. Two dates on the calendar that, for Amancio Ortega, have a very specific economic implication. What happens to Amancio Ortega. With a participation of 59.29% of the capital, distributed between his company Pontegadea (50.010%) and Partler Participaciones, Amancio Ortega controls 1,848 million shares of Inditex. Applying the dividend of 1.75 euros for each share, the resulting figure is 3,234 million euros gross, which implies surpassing the barrier of 3,000 million euros for the second consecutive year. Ortega received 3,104 million euros in 2025 for this same concept. To put this data in a little perspective, in the last five years, Inditex has raised its dividend by 88%. During that period alone, Ortega has earned 13.12 billion euros in dividends. Almost half of that amount, about 6.3 billion, corresponds only to the last two years. 100% of that income has gone directly to the accounts of Pontegadea, with which it makes all the investments that have led it to become the largest Spanish real estate by value of assets and one of the largest in Europe. The rest of the Ortega family also receives dividends. Despite being the largest company on the Ibex 35, Inditex has not lost the participation of the Ortega family, so its founder is not the only one who benefits from the distribution. His eldest daughter, Sandra Ortegacontrols 5.05% of the capital through the Rosp Corunna companywith 157.48 million shares without voting rights. For them, he will receive 275 million euros in dividends. A figure that, by itself, would be an extraordinary income for any medium-sized company. Curiously, Marta Ortega, youngest daughter of the tycoon of fashion and current president of the company, only controls 42,511 Inditex shares, for which she will receive a payment of 74,400 euros for those dividends. An abysmal difference with respect to his father. In Xataka | Amancio Ortega: the billionaire who lives like a neighbor (except for private jets and superyachts) Image | GTRES, Unsplash (Igal Ness)

Spain is betting its future in the semiconductor industry on a single card: gallium chips

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SPARC Foundry is one of the best assets that Spain can cling to to get on a train, that of semiconductors, currently guided with a firm hand by USA, South Korea, Taiwan, China and Japan. This Galician company, however, does not pursue producing silicon chips. In this area, competing with the five powers I just mentioned is essentially impossible. SPARC’s plan involves building a manufacturing factory in the Valadares Technology Park, in Vigo. next generation photonic semiconductors. The interesting thing is that these chips will not be silicon; They will be manufactured using gallium arsenide (GaAs), indium phosphide (InP) or gallium nitride (GaN), and will most likely have a leading role in the telecommunications, defense, automotive, consumer electronics, quantum computing or the aerospace industry. Be that as it may, SPARC will not tackle the GIGaNTE project alone. Indra leads it with a 37% stake in SPARC Foundrywhich places the latter group as the majority partner of the company specialized in the production of chips. According to SPARC and Indra, the Vigo semiconductor plant will be operational during the first half of 2027 and will have the capacity to manufacture up to 20,000 wafers per year when it is able to work at full capacity. An interesting note: GIGaNTE, the name of this project, has been designed around the chemical formula of gallium nitride (GaN). Gallium aspires to be the protagonist of the next generation of chips Photonic integrated circuits use photons to process and transmit information. Photons are the elementary particles responsible for forms of electromagnetic radiation, including the manifestation of visible light. They have no mass and are capable of traveling in a vacuum at a constant speed: the speed of light. However, something worth not overlooking is that although we are referring to them as particles, they also manifest as waves, hence the existence of the quantum phenomenon known as ‘wave-particle duality’ to identify the wave nature of light. Although, as we have seen, SPARC will produce photonic chips, the core of its business will revolve around gallium arsenide and gallium nitride. Unlike silicon, They are not elementary semiconductors. And they are not because the latter are characterized by being made up of a single chemical element, while gallium arsenide (GaAs) is composed of gallium (Ga) and arsenic (As), and gallium nitride (GaN) is composed of gallium (Ga) and nitrogen (N). SPARC is going to produce photonic chips and the core of its business will revolve around gallium arsenide and gallium nitride The term semiconductor is appearing many times in this article, so it is a good idea that we review what it is about before moving forward. A semiconductor is an element or compound that, under certain conditions of pressure, temperature, or when exposed to radiation or an electromagnetic field, behaves like a conductor, and, therefore, offers little resistance to the movement of electrical charges. And when it is found in other different conditions it behaves like an insulator. In this last state it offers great resistance to the displacement of electrical charges. In elements with electrical conduction capacity, some of the electrons in their atoms, known as free electrons, can pass from one atom to another when we apply a potential difference at the ends of the conductor. Precisely, this electron displacement capacity is what we know as electric currentand we all know intuitively that metals are good conductors of electricity. Curiously, they are because they have many free electrons that can move from one atom to another and, thus, they manage to transport the electrical charge. Gallium nitride and gallium arsenide are semiconductors, and this implies that under certain circumstances they are capable of transporting electrical charge. When the appropriate conditions exist, the mobility of its electrons is much greater than in semiconductors such as silicon or germanium. And this means that its capacity to transport electrical charge is also superior. Another very interesting property of these compounds is their high saturation rate. It is not necessary for us to delve into this parameter to the point of excessively complicating the article, but it is interesting that we know that it reflects the maximum speed at which electrons can move. through the crystal structure of these compounds. This maximum speed is limited by the dispersion suffered by the electrons during their movement. Gallium arsenide transistors can work at frequencies above 250 GHz This property has very important repercussions. One of them is that gallium arsenide transistors can work at frequencies above 250 GHz, which is a quite impressive figure. In addition, they are relatively immune to overheating and produce less noise in electronic circuits than silicon devices, especially when it is necessary to work at high frequencies. On the other hand, gallium nitride can work at very high voltages and reach extreme temperatures without its performance or stability being compromised. Besides, allows manufacturing compact and efficient transformers Because it dissipates little energy in the form of heat, it will most likely play a fundamental role in the charging infrastructure of electric cars and base stations for 5G communications. Image | Generated by Xataka with Gemini More information | SPARC Foundry In Xataka | Spain steps on the accelerator in its particular chip race. And it does so with a total commitment to integrated photonics

A single company is going to buy 20% of all the footwear manufactured in Mexico. Their goal: confront China

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These are not easy times for the footwear industry in Mexico, a sector that generates tens of thousands of jobs, moves million-dollar investments and has its headquarters in the state of Guanajuato. main bastion. In a market highly conditioned by Asian competition, the local industry has experienced setbacks and job lossstaying far below of its production capacity. With this backdrop, the sector has received curious news: a single Mexican company is willing to buy 20% of all national production. Shoe addict. Grupo Coppel is a heavyweight in the Mexican economy. He holding companywhich a year ago announced its plans to invest almost 700 million of dollars in the country throughout 2025, has a long experience in the financial services and retail sector, with hundreds of points sales distributed throughout the country. All in all (and despite its enormous size), it is surprising the advertisement what it just did: in 2026 the company plans to buy no more and no less than 42 million pairs of shoes produced in Mexico. That’s a lot of shoes, right? Yes. To be precise, this is one million more pairs than those already purchased in 2025. However, the figure is striking for another reason. With this enormous volume of purchases, Coppel will account for a fifth (about 20%) of all formal national footwear production. The operation is part of a “strategic alliance” reached with the Chamber of the Footwear Industry of the State of Guanajuato (CICEG) and, according to calculations from the firm itself, will allow “contributing to the livelihood” of the more than 100,000 families that depend directly on the footwear industry in Guanajuato. “This alliance promotes the growth of our companies and strengthens the Mexican footwear industry in an environment of legality, transparency and respect for market rules. By choosing the formal national supplier, you contribute to the construction of a more solid and competitive sector,” celebrated a few days ago Juan Carlos Cashat, president of CICEG. For shoe manufacturers in Guanajuato, the news is a valuable breath of fresh air. Footwear ‘made in Mexico’. His output It is far from that of countries like China, India or Vietnam, but Mexico is a prominent footwear manufacturer. In fact there are rankings that place it as the tenth worldwide and second in Latin America, only behind Brazil. In 2024, the country’s companies produced around 214 million of pairs of shoes, which explains why the sector contributes million dollars to the Mexican GDP (especially in Guanajuato, the heart of the sector) and also maintain thousands of jobs. Despite this footprint, the sector has not had easy years. “The impact of the pandemic was severe. Before 2020 we had 64,000 jobs registered with the IMSS. During the pandemic that figure fell to 49,000,” recognized two years ago the CICEG. Since then the situation has changed, but the sector stay away to be at 100%. Beyond market fluctuations, the industry has had to deal with competition from low-cost merchandise from Asia. Click on the image to go to the tweet. The Government, to the rescue. The data quoted by the local press are eloquent. In 2022, Mexico imported 136.4 million pairs of footwear valued at 1,843 million dollars. Two years later, the Import Trade Balance showed that this flow had already reached 185.5 million pairs with a value of 2,163 million dollars. On average each pair cost $11.6. The problem was not so much the arrival of products manufactured in Asia as the competition it exerts on national firms, especially due to suspicions of price manipulation. To clear up doubts, the authorities responded with an investigation antidumping and in September 2025 they decided to impose a system of compensatory duties on imports from China. It was not the only support from the Government to the industry. In November the Executive advertisement a Textile and Footwear Promotion Plan to finance small and medium-sized businesses. The objective: inject around 6.5 billion dollars to improve the competitiveness of the industry and reactivate 50,000 jobs, recovering part of the lost production muscle. How does the future look? Optimistic. At least that is what the CIEG recognized in December. “Despite a challenging economic and commercial environment, the industry in Guanajuato is beginning to show signs of recovery, especially in terms of employment and productive capacity,” indicates the sectorwhich recalls that between the month of September and October it registered a small rebound in employment. The increase was modest (256), but it is the first recovery “in many years.” The employers’ association also detected a change in the international market. “Total imports remain high, with more than 141 million pairs imported from January to September 2025, although relevant progress in the fight against unfair practices stands out,” celebrates CIEG“Imports from China, corresponding to tariff items with quota, decreased by 81%.” Images | Irfan Simsar (Unsplash) and Phil Desforges (Unsplash) In Xataka | Mexico City is already noticing the economic effect of the World Cup: it is losing homes and gaining Airbnb apartments

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