Spain

that one of the European AI gigafactories ends up in Spain

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If the European Union wants to compete with the United States and China (which has a very detailed plan) in the artificial intelligence race, you don’t just need good models and specialized companies: you also need AI gigafactories. And the EU already has on its roadmap the construction of up to five plants throughout the continent. Where will they be mounted? The decision has not yet been made, but one thing is clear: Spain has submitted his candidacy in the form of a binomial between Madrid and Catalonia. The Madrid – Catalonia proposal. This candidacy combines the storage capacity and the Madrid network with the experience in Catalan computing architecture. On the other hand, the Spanish state has one of the most solid renewable energy networks on the old continent, a critical requirement for approval. Thus, it is based on a Madrid – Catalonia axis that connects the Barcelona Supercomputing Center with a new node in San Fernando de Henares (Madrid) and the previously planned massive installation of Móra la Nova (Tarragona), which would take advantage of the area’s energy infrastructure. What does a factory have to be “giga”? Last February Ursula Von der Leyen announced InvestAI, a project that will mobilize 200 billion euros for artificial intelligence, of which a fund of 20 billion will go to gigafactories, which are essentially large data centers with at least 100,000 advanced AI chips. The fundamental differences between a simple AI factory and a gigafactory according to the action plan are scale and purpose: while a factory is a supercomputing center optimized for fine-tuning AI models to specific tasks, a gigafactory is a much more powerful massive infrastructure designed to train models from scratch. At the hardware level there are also differences: the EU standard for factories is around 25,000 chips. Furthermore, while factories are often integrated into existing data centers, such as MareNostrum 5 in Barcelona, ​​for gigafactories they usually require their own They require their own high-power electrical substation. The list of requirements. The construction of up to five gigafactories in the EU is part of the action plan “AI Continent” from the European Commission. At the beginning of this year and after some delay, the formal call for proposals has already been opened. Regarding the requirements, the proposals must guarantee a capacity of more than 100,000 next-generation chips and the redundant architecture is positively valued, advanced liquid cooling systems, total sustainability and the capacity of a dedicated high-power electrical substation are required. Majority control must be European capital, although the financing model is public-private. Deadlines and budgets. If the EU approves the project in the coming months, construction would begin in 2027 to be operational between 2027 and 2028. As detailed Óscar López, Minister for Digital Transformation and the Public Service, “the joint public-private investment could exceed 4,000 million euros to make this gigafactory a reality.” The public part of the financing would come, among others, from the Spanish Society for Technological Transformation. In Xataka | If we ask Spaniards how they feel about AI, the answer is simple: more productive In Xataka | If anyone thought that Europe had no role in the race for AI, Mistral has something to tell them Cover | chaddavis.photography and Daria Borysenko

In Spain we are used to the signs on highways and highways being blue. In other countries not

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If you have ever had to drive or pass near a highway in Italy, Belgium, Switzerland and many other countries in Europe, you will have noticed something curious: the road signs are not blue, but green. This is something that I was always curious to know why a few years ago, and there is more to the story than it seems. And it is the result of a series of historical and cultural decisions that each country made separately when developing its high-capacity road network. The origin of the “problem.” Europe has had a common road signaling system since 1968, when the Vienna Convention on Road Signs. This treaty unified the shapes, symbols and many traffic rules, but left each country free to choose the colors of the orientation signs. The agreement establishes that road markings can be white or yellow, and that pictograms must be internationally recognizable, but does not impose a single color for highways. Therefore, even if you drive throughout Europe under more or less similar rules, the colors of the signs change depending on the country. Image: Maps Interlude Why Spain chose blue. When Spain began to develop its network of highways and highways in the 1970s, it decided to use blue for high-capacity roads and white for conventional roads. This choice responds to a series of practical criteria: blue offered good night visibility with the reflective materials available at that time. Just like Spain, other countries also decided to opt for this color. The green in other countries in Europe. Many other European countries opted for green for their highways. Belgium, Finland, Croatia, Italy, Switzerland, Ukraine, and many other countries have green signage on their highways. The decision has roots in the continent’s early highway systems. The first two major highway networks were the germans (Autobahnen) and the Italian ones (Autostrade), which used blue and green signals respectively. The Italian choice of green probably influenced other Mediterranean and Eastern European countries, while the German scheme remained very consolidated and was imitated directly or indirectly by countries close to or with strong German technical influence. Image: Luigi Chiesa Nor is there one color better than another. Although you might want to start a war and choose sides between countries that use blue or green on their road signs, none is really better than the other. In fact, the main reason why both colors coexist on the continent is because they have not been standardized at the European level. In this sense, both colors fulfill their function perfectly if they are applied consistently within each country. Blue stands out well at night, while green is very legible during the day and is psychologically associated with progress and continuity. As long as each driver can quickly identify what type of road they are using and it can be read clearly and without problem, all good. What is unified. Although the colors vary, the Vienna Convention guarantees that a driver perfectly understands the signs whether he is in one country or another, because the pictograms, shapes and logic of the system are common. Triangles warn of dangers, circles prohibit or oblige, and rectangles inform. This harmonization is what really makes it possible to drive around Europe without having to study every national code. If there are changes, it will not be in the colors. In 2025, the Global Forum for Road Traffic Safety launched a proposed amendment which could completely modify the text of the Vienna Convention, including new numbering for all signs. What will not change are the colors on the road signs, so each country will continue to have free rein to maintain its tradition. First because it works, and second because we are already used to it and that on the road means saving a lot of time. Cover image | Google Maps In Xataka | Madrid has committed to having an F1 circuit in September: at the moment it has an open field and four streets of a PAU

There is an acute shortage of housing supply in Spain. So the convents of Toledo have seen an opportunity

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Toledo has had an idea to reinforce the meager housing supply in its historic center. In the city there is the curious contradiction that there is demand for flats for rent while around 150 buildings of the monumental area (both public and private) remain closed and without tenants, so… Why not solve both problems at once? With that philosophy as a backdrop, two convents in Toledo are preparing to become landlords and allocate part of their buildings to rent. The historic center sees its housing offer expand (although still timidly) and in the process the religious orders obtain a new source of income. Quite a ‘win-win’. What has happened? That in Toledo they want to kill several birds with one stone. For some time now, its historic center has faced three challenges that, although at first glance they seem to have little to do with each other, are directly related. The first is the shortage of residential rentals. In Idealista, just over a few are announced right now. 50 apartments for lease and many of them do so as seasonal rentals. For long stays the offer is only 33. The second challenge is represented by abandoned buildings. Last year, the Consortium of the City of Toledo did the math and found that in that same area of ​​the Castilian-La Mancha capital, 150 buildings unused, some in ruins. The third challenge is not so much the city itself but the religious orders that live there: How to achieve income in the 21st century? Where to get money to pay bills or unforeseen events such as repairing the roof of the Discalced Carmelites convent, sunk during a DANA in 2023? Connecting the dots. The Toledo Consortium has come to the conclusion that these three challenges can be connected and has had an idea: to renovate wasted spaces in convents in the city to convert them into homes. And not just any type of housing. Their objective is to move them to the long-term rental market, the one that has the most difficulties in the historic center and more pressured It is seen through tourism. For that purpose, in November The organization gave the green light to the tender for the renovation of two properties: one located in the convent of the Discalced Carmelites and the other in the Immaculate Conception (Nasturtiums). Between them there will be four homes. “New opportunities”. The objective, explains the manager of the Consortium, Jesús Corroto, is to advance in the recovery of the disused heritage of the historic center and in the process generate “new residential opportunities”, especially for young people. The idea is to rehabilitate a building attached to the Discalced Carmelites convent with 131,000 euros to provide it with two new homes with a total constructed area of ​​130 m2. Investments will be made in the Capuchinas property. 130,000 euros to open two new residences in what was once the Priestly House, built at the end of the 16th century. In any case, the organization wants to go further and not stay in those four apartments. The SER chain indicates that it aspires to enable at least a dozen of housing and has already transferred more proposals to other convents. Whether they go ahead or not will basically depend on the budget and what the religious decide. After all, the buildings are private, non-segregable and considered BIC. The initiative would allow the creation between 20 and 30 housesto which other services can be added, such as parking. “Rental ethics”. In the case of the new homes set up in convents, a peculiar circumstance will occur: the Consortium is in charge of the works, but unlike what happens with other accommodation promoted by the Municipal Housing Company, its price will not be limited by a maximum limit. Since these are private properties, it is the religious who must decide what rents they charge to their future tenants, although Corroto already advances in The Country that a “rental ethic” will govern. What the organization he directs has done is put an inflexible condition on the friars and monks of Toledo: the new homes must be dedicated to residential rentals, not become tourist apartments, a business that has already attracted other religious of Spain who have seen the need to take advantage of their buildings. In Seville, for example, not long ago some cloistered nuns agreed to offer a part of their convent to tourists through Airbnb. The reason: selling candy is no longer enough to pay bills. Between 37 and 60 m2. In the case of Toledo, the objective is for the new homes to be available in about a year. To make it possible, the religious orders will assume part of the works and furniture. Once the project is completed, the city will have new apartments with a useful area of between 37 and 60 m2. The residences will have to comply with the regulations that govern the Historic Center of Toledo and will have between one and two rooms. Images | Suraya_M (Flickr) and Wikipedia (Antonio Velez) In Xataka | Toledo has had enough of the mass tourism that saturates the city center. His plan to change it: China

Self-consumption is no longer a marginal option to conquer half of Spain

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The spring of 2025 marked a before and after in the psyche of the Spanish consumer. The so-called “Great Blackout”which left millions of homes without power on the Peninsula, transformed the perception of solar panels. What was previously seen mainly as a way to reduce the monthly bill, is today perceived as a guarantee of resilience and energy independence. in the face of market volatility. The consolidation data. According to the “Solar Report 2025: X-ray of self-consumption in Spain”, prepared by SotySolar in collaboration with the Spanish Photovoltaic Union (UNEF)the market has entered a phase of maturity after years of accelerated expansion. Spain closed the 2024 financial year with an accumulated installed capacity of 8,137 GW. These figures closely coincide with the records of the Ministry for the Ecological Transition (MITECO), which places the power at 8,255 GW. However, Red Eléctrica raises the total estimate current at 8.7 GW, integrating data from the Electrical Measurements System (SIMEL) and estimates from the System Operator (OS). The end of “refundable” subsidies. After the closure of the European Next Generation funds, the sector has stopped depending on direct aid to embrace more structural profitability. This change is reflected on the national map: Catalonia has become the benchmark for success, with an increase of 20.6% in the volume of interested parties thanks to agile management of its local incentives. Despite the accumulated strength, the beginning of 2025 presented a slight cooling: the residential sector suffered a drop of 14% in the first quarter compared to the average for 2024. Even so, self-consumption has maintained sustained growth since 2021 and demonstrates greater stability than the large plant market (utility scale). The profile of the new consumer. The user profile has evolved towards a more informed and demanding one. Although financial savings continue to be the main driving force for 65% of users, factors such as sustainability (12%) and energy independence (8%) have gained unprecedented weight. As José Donoso, CEO of UNEF, explains, self-consumption has gone from being a minority technology to an “everyday, reliable and essential appliance.” This maturity is reflected in the choice of the installer: the price continues to matter (45%), but trust based on recommendations (25%) and support in procedures and aid (20%) are now decisive factors. The new standard. The acquisition model has undergone a radical transformation. Financing has gone from being a barrier to a driving force: between 60% and 70% of households opt for flexible payment formulas, a figure that rises to 80% in projects that exceed €10,000 or include batteries. In fact, strategic partners like Pontio They project to exceed 10,000 funded installations in 2026. This financial boost facilitates the integration of aerothermal energy, which has established itself as the ideal companion to photovoltaics. 66% of solar system owners plan to install aerothermal in the next three years. However, as experts in Xataka warn80% of Spanish houses have technical deficiencies in their electrical installation, which requires a prior evaluation of the insulation to prevent the investment from becoming an expense that is difficult to amortize. Roadmap. To prevent progress from slowing down, UNEF has proposed in its presentation urgent measures that strengthen the structural profitability of the sector: Tax incentives: Apply a reduced VAT for both installations with and without batteries. Network expansion: Extend the distance of shared self-consumption from the current 2 km to 5 km. Administrative simplification: Extend the exemption from requesting access and connection permits to all facilities that inject less than 15kW into the grid. Review of tolls: Modify the distribution between the fixed and variable part (target 25% fixed and 75% variable) to encourage savings. For its part, Red Eléctrica has reinforced the “maximum observability” of the system, publishing detailed information on self-consumption on all its platforms from the end of 2025, including a new demand curve (“Total Scheduled”) that integrates the impact of this energy on the national grid, where it already represents close to 4% of demand. An irreversible path. Self-consumption in Spain has come of age. It is no longer a specific response to a price crisis, but a strategic decision. As José Carlos Díaz Lacaci, CEO of SotySolar, points out, the path towards electrification is now “irreversible.” The challenge for 2026 will be to modernize the real estate stock and consolidate an intelligent management model that guarantees that every ray of sunlight captured becomes energy freedom for the citizen. Image | Unsplash Xataka | Landing at an airport full of solar panels had become a drama. Until Malaga had an idea

Xiaomi smart glasses arrive in Spain at a very low price. They are just missing a small detail

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Xiaomi, for a long time, has not been a smartphone brand. It is an ecosystem brand. And to close the product circle it presented its Xiaomi AI Glasses. While these end up landing (or not) in Spain, the company has just quietly brought its Mijia Smart Audio Glasses. A quite different alternative in design to the formats we are used to for a simple reason: they are glasses purely focused on audio. You see it, you hear it. This is the slogan of Mijia, Xiaomi’s ecosystem sub-brand, for its Smart Audio Glasses. These are not the smart glasses we are used to. They are a device designed for audio functions. They have compatibility with both Siri as with him Google Voice Assistant. They have a voice recorder, included for calls. Real-time noise cancellation. Real-time notifications A design of… glasses. One of the main problems with alternatives with double chambers is the thickness of the temple. Being simpler glasses, these Audio Glasses have an appearance that could easily pass them off as normal glasses. In fact, the thickness of the rods is only 5mm. The chassis weighs only 27.6 grams. The hinge promises more than 15,000 bends and is detachable in case we need to replace it. They have polarized lenses that not only filter 99.9% of ultraviolet light, they also filter reflections and 25% of blue light. The design is finished in titanium. The controls. To interact with these Xiaomi glasses we will have two solutions. The first is to use its temples, with touch controls. These allow you to enable calls, alerts, start recordings… Of course, while we are recording a small indicator light will turn on, so that there is evidence that we are recording. The second method is to use its app, through which we can manage recordings, connected devices, gesture control and even find the glasses by emitting a sound if we can’t find them. The autonomy. If you are wondering how long the battery of a product like this lasts, the answer is: little if you use them a lot, enough with logical use. They promise up to 13 hours of continuous playback, 9 hours in calls and an average of a day and a half of use. Why is it important. The Mijia Smart Audio Glasses are not just glasses focused on audio, they are proof that Xiaomi wants to bring to Spain a product ecosystem that, sooner or later, will end up competing with giants like Go with your RayBans. The integration of the Xiaomi ecosystem as a Trojan horse in Spain It is something we have been talking about for a long time, bringing its ‘Human x Car x Home’ philosophy to all aspects: smartphones, appliances, smart accessories, cars… and even robots. Styles and price. The Mijia Smart Audio Glasses are now on sale in the Xiaomi Spain website in three different mounts: Pilot Style: 179.99 euros Browline: 179.99 euros Titanium: 199.99 euros Image | Xiaomi In Xataka | Meta is so serious about smart glasses that its catalog is already a mess: this is how the new models differentiate themselves

The Government of Spain has announced a “sovereign fund.” It has nothing to do with a sovereign fund

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Pedro Sánchez announced yesterday Thursday the creation of ‘España Crece’a fund managed by the ICO with an initial endowment of 10.5 billion euros from the Next Generation funds that the Government will not spend before the end of 2026. The stated goal is to mobilize an additional €120 billion through private investment and debt to maintain the reform momentum beyond the European deadline. Why is it important. The European funds expire this year and have been the main investment muscle of the Government, which has not approved budgets in this legislature. Without this vehicle, Spain would lose public investment capacity just when Sánchez boasts of having placed the country “in the Champions League” economically. The announcement arrives in extremiswhen there was a real risk of losing those 10.5 billion that had not been executed. Between the lines. Calling it a “sovereign fund” creates intentional confusion. The classic sovereign funds (Norway, Saudi Arabia, Singapore…) are born from structural surpluses thanks to oil, gas or trade balances that are permanently in the green. Spain has not had a budget surplus since 2007, when there was some debate about converting the pension piggy bank into a vehicle similar to Norwegian. The 2008 crisis buried that discussion. Yes, but. What the Government has presented is more like a renamed investment bank than a traditional sovereign fund. The closest model is British National Wealth Fundoriginally the UK Infrastructure Bank, which raises private funds to co-invest in green technologies and advanced industry. Its capacity is 27,000 million and Spain aspires to quintuple that figure with a smaller public base. In figures: 10.5 billion: initial public endowment, similar to SEPI business rescue fund created in the 2020 pandemic. 120,000 million: theoretical capacity if private investment is added, a “conservative estimate” according to Minister Carlos Body. 60 billion: what the ICO could mobilize directly through leverage. 9 priority sectors: housing (with a focus on the industrialized), energy, digitalization, AI, reindustrialization, circular economy, infrastructure, water and security. The context. Spain has competed well for foreign direct investment in the last decade – fifth world power in projects greenfield since 2013 – and has capitalized on European funds to promote reforms without approved budgets. But the absence of structural surpluses limits ambition too much. Spain has been running a deficit for almost twenty years and its balance of payments, although in surplus since 2012, does not compensate. What is happening. The Government is turning a necessity (not to lose unexecuted European funds) into a narrative of national sovereignty. But the seams are visible: it acts because the deadline is going to expire, not because there is a strategic plan based on its own surpluses. There is neither of the two things. Missing. Minister Corps will present the full details next week. There remain unknowns about the private co-investment mechanisms and how it will be guaranteed that those promised 120 billion will materialize. The experience of the SEPI fund, which barely used a quarter of its endowment, invites skepticism. Sánchez took advantage of the Spain Investors Day to vindicate the economic moment: “We have become accustomed to competing in the Champions League,” he said. He used the same expression as Zapatero in 2007, a few months before the outbreak of the financial crisis. The simile has not gone unnoticed. In Xataka | Carrying your ID on your cell phone is very easy. You just have to take advantage of your next visit to the police station Featured image | Moncloa

That doctors, one of the groups with the best salaries in Spain, go on strike is striking. These are your reasons

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2026 has started with Spanish doctors on the streets. Although the tracking data is clouded by the dance of figures usual in these cases, thousands of doctors they have seconded today the strike convened by the Professional Group for a Medical and Faculty Statute (APEMYF) to demand better working conditions. Three are its greatest workhorses: guards, salaries and hours. The question that surely more than one person is asking today is… What do doctors, one of the groups, complain about? better paid and with higher status social? To understand it you have to know their day to day life. White coat strike. The year has started with turbulence in the country’s hospitals. Although the first data from the Administration point to a follow-up more or less discreet (those who arrive from the unions show a ‘photo’ very different), one thing seems clear: today thousands of doctors have responded to the strike called by APEMYFa platform that brings together more than a dozen organizations. The protest will last today and tomorrow and is added to those in 2025. One word: statute. APEMY already clarifies on its behalf what its main claim is: the group demands that its own statute be negotiated with doctors in Spain, a “basic standard” that meets the needs of the group. In contrast to the “framework statute” for health personnel that the main unions and the Government have negotiated, doctors want their particularities to be taken into account. That they go out onto the streets right now is no coincidence. a month ago Health closed a preliminary agreement with the unions to carry out this general rule for the health branch, an ‘umbrella’ that will determine the conditions of hundreds of thousands of public employees. Why’s that? Because the collective (at least the one that supports APEMYF) insist in that it has specific “needs”, just like “other professions with singularities”. Hence, he calls for a negotiation “exclusive for the medical profession.” On the table they have put issues such as the management of guards, hours and salaries, issues that have also served as leverage for the strike today and tomorrow. In fact, everything related to the guards (its duration, remuneration and recognition) has had a key weight in the call. But they charge well, right? Although their salaries are noticeably below Compared to other European colleagues, Spanish doctors enjoy good salaries. At least if they are compared to other sectors. What a doctor earns is influenced by issues such as the region in which you work or its age, but Medical Writing remember who are generally among the highest paid professionals. In the INE’s Annual Salary Structure Survey, doctors and nurses appear in the chapter “Technicians and scientific and intellectual professionals”, to which in 2023 an “average annual earnings per worker” of almost 43,000 euros. As a reference, the average for all sectors did not reach 28,500. A wide fork. However, this information must be handled with caution. A year ago Newtral analyzed also the remuneration of doctors and concluded that the fixed annual salary of hospital doctors ranges between 19,000 euros for a first-year MIR and 72,100 for more senior doctors. There is an important nuance: this gross salary indicator does not include guards, who according to the same medium were paid at 28.6 gross euros per hour. Or more, on holidays. The payment varies in any case from one community to another. Other estimates, how are you also published by Medical Writingconcludes that the average salary of a Spanish doctor who works in public health is around 54,200 euros gross, although the range goes from 35,300 to 140,000. Why do they go out into the streets? Because (beyond these figures) doctors are exposed to a considerable load of stress and work, handicaps that are addressed in the statute negotiated by the main unions and the Government, although not in a way that satisfies the entire group. Of all the issues on the table, perhaps the most complex is the one related to medical guards. Right now doctors cover continuous 24-hour shifts, including their regular shift. From the collective they take time crying out against those marathon shifts, which affect thousands of doctors. a report of the Official College of Physicians of Toledo points out that in Spain 60% of professionals face exhausting shifts and that there are even professionals who exceed “36 hours of continuous work”, which for many carries an emotional burden. “Stop 24-hour guards”. Among other novelties, the draft of the framework statute reduces the duration of the guards to 17 hours straightbut in the group there are those who already warn that in reality the norm opens the door for nothing to change. The reason: this limit of 17 hours could be exceeded if there are “organizational or healthcare reasons” that justify it and the doctor accepts it in writing. Another sensitive point is how those ‘extra’ hours are compensated. The unions demand that an hour of on-call duty not be paid worse than an hour of their ordinary day and that they also count towards retirement, a circumstance that now it doesn’t happen. The issue is so worrying that during today’s demonstrations doctors could be seen with signs of “Stop 24-hour guards”. “Just like the rest of the workers”. In your manifestothe Association of Higher Qualified Doctors of Madrid (AYTS) demands to “recognize all of the doctor’s time worked, just as it is done with the rest of the workers.” Their request is clear: “Suppress the concept of on-call duty as a type of duty that is neither ordinary nor extraordinary, with the conditions of obligation and remuneration below the ordinary shift.” The underlying objective? That doctors stop chaining together exhausting 24-hour shifts, periods of work that do not also count as time for retirement and that even generate ‘debts’ of hours. All this while assuming a high level of responsibility for their patients, which has even led some to suggest that 24-hour shifts should be “illegal”. watch earrings. Another … Read more

Ukraine is proving that kamikaze drones are the future of warfare. And that is why Spain is going to start manufacturing them

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Europe has been talking about defense as an abstract concept for years, but the war in Ukraine turned the threat into something physical and quantifiable: drones, missiles, loitering munitions and a logistics chain under constant fire, forcing NATO to assume that the modern battlefield is a “death zone” where those who do not mass produce are at a disadvantage. And in that equation an unexpected nation has emerged: Spain. The new shield of Europe. To that strategic pressure after the invasion of Russia and the appearance of his ghost fleet An even more uncomfortable factor has been added: the political tension with the United States and the growing sense that the Western security umbrella is no longer It is not an automationbut a negotiation. In this double impulse is born the rush for a European defensive shield (perhaps that repeated drone wall), and not only in radars or interceptors, but in industry, stocks and real response capacity, where manufacturing speed matters as much as quality and where technological sovereignty becomes a survival requirement. The unexpected actor: Spain. In this scenario of rapid rearmament and need for autonomy, Spain aims to go from being a country that buys to being one who producesand also do it with a weapon that defines contemporary war: the kamikaze droneor loitering munition, which watches, waits and strikes with precision at costs much lower than manned aviation or traditional missiles. The move is ambitious because Spain does not compete from the heavy industrial tradition of other European partners, there is no doubt, but from a commitment to the most demanded segmentscalable and urgent of the moment: cheap, numerous, quickly upgradeable platforms and capable of saturating defenses. The political and military thesis seems clear: if Europe’s immediate future is decided by who can produce and replenish drones the fastest, then a country that leads that manufacturing not only wins contracts, also influence. Comparison of UAVs in the international market The Indra-Edge alliance. The core of the movement was in the news yesterday with the agreement between Indra and Emirati giant Edge to create a joint venture focused on the development, production and full lifecycle support of loitering munitions and smart weapons, with an estimated order book of about 2 billion euros annually. There is talk of manufacturing drones and sustained capacity: design, assembly line, maintenance, replacement and scaling, something essential in a type of war where systems are consumed at an industrial rate. Indra relies on experience Edge on suicide drones to accelerate the technological leap, while underlining that the real value for Europe is in pproduce in European territoryfulfilling the logic of sovereignty and reducing dependencies and deadlines in a market that is moving due to urgency and not by comfortable calendars. Castilla y León as a military-industrial hub. The bet has taken concrete form with two plants in Castilla y León: in Villadangos del Páramo (León), a production facility dedicated to drones and loitering munitions will be built, with an investment of about 20 million euros and a forecast of up to 200 jobs at full capacity. Another plant focused on micromotors will be installed in Boecillo (Valladolid), a critical component that defines autonomy, reliability and production capacity. The combination is revealing: it is not only the “final product”, also, and very important, the control of key pieces, which allows manufacture without bottlenecks and sustain a high exit rate when the strategic environment demands constant replacement. The objective is for Spain to not only be an assembler, but also part of the industrial heart that makes war with drones possible. Defense turns it into a state program. The Ministry of Defense has presented the project as part of the Industrial and Technological Plan for Security and Defense approved in May 2025, and has stated that the León factory will produce “the most advanced drones that can operate today in Europe and NATO.” Beyond the owner, what is relevant is that the new company would already be born with valued contracts around 2 billion of euros, with a workload committed to covering the needs of the Spanish Armed Forces and also other European armies, and with a performance horizon in 2026 and 2027. The implicit message is that Spain wants to be in the industrial layer that supports the European defensive shield, not as a secondary actor, but as a real supplier of a capacity that decides tactical survival on the front. Politics gets on the drone. The announcement, furthermore, is made with a staging in the Senate and in a pre-electoral context in Castilla y León, where the local impact (those 00 jobs distributed between León and Valladolid) turns the defense industry into territorial policy tool. The narrative mixes national security and reindustrialization: Small areas such as Villadangos del Páramo appear as recipients of a project of high technological value, while it is presented as a historic turn for the Spanish industrial base. At the same time, it is linked to other military initiatives in the community, emphasizing that rearmament It is not only a strategic debate, but a map of investments, works, infrastructure and employment that reorders public priorities. The real game. Finally, the movement also gives clues about the future of Europe with Ukraine as a mirror: the defensive shield It is no longer measured only in troops and doctrine, but in the ability to produce cheap, intelligent and massive systems, with short innovation cycles and controlled supply chains. Somehow, Russia has imposed the pace of the threat, and Washington has added the political pressure of not depending eternally on an external guarantor. In this scenario, Spain tries to occupy an unexpected gap: become the protagonist of the European loitering ammunition, the tool kamikaze which not only serves to attack, but also to deny space, saturate defenses and impose costs on the adversary. In a Europe that has belatedly discovered that modern war is also won in factories, Spain wants are in their territory. Image | Khamenei.ir In Xataka | Europe faces … Read more

The train is eating the plane in Spain for a very simple reason: airports exhaust us

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Although Renfe has given us some somewhat tortuous months in terms of its service, AVE delaysthe truth is that the train continues to be a very important means of transport in Spain, and there are many who prefer it to the plane. Factors like railway liberalization and the fierce price war Among the different railway operators they have also been especially favorable to this preference. According to Renfe data to which El País has had access82% of travelers choose the train over the plane. And this from an environmental point of view is good, since as the media reminds us, this represents an annual savings in emissions that reaches 512,926 tons of CO₂, equivalent to removing about 250,000 combustion cars from circulation for an entire year. Growth. The seven main routes, which connect Madrid with Barcelona, ​​Seville, Malaga, Valencia, Alicante, Galicia and Asturias, have experienced growth of up to 66% in the number of travelers in the last three years, according to the data provided by the railway operator. Numbers. Between September 2022 and August 2025, the Madrid-Barcelona corridor has gone from 7.5 to 8.9 million travelers. Madrid-Valencia rose from 4.4 to 5.3 million, while Madrid-Málaga jumped from 2.1 to 3.5 million, being the corridor with the most relative growth. According to account In the middle, these figures also include the users of Ouigo and Iryo, the private operators that have entered into competition after the liberalization of the sector. The three hour rule. “As soon as the train offers a competitive travel time of less than three hours, demand shifts massively to the railway instead of the plane,” explains Adrián Fernández, director of Sustainability and Energy Efficiency at Renfe, to El País. Fernández presents the case of Madrid-Barcelona, ​​since when the journey lasted seven hours, only 15% of the passengers chose the train; Now, with a two and a half hour trip, that proportion reaches 83%. Where do new travelers come from?. Just like collect In the middle, the International Union of Railways estimates that 50% of current high-speed users come from the plane, 20% abandon the car, and the remaining 30% correspond to induced trips, referring in the latter to trips that were not made before having the AVE. Savings Breakdown. The middle collect Renfe calculations based on European Commission methodologywhich state that the Madrid-Barcelona route avoids the emission of 185,856 tons of CO₂ per year. According to these data, Madrid-Seville saves 76,874 tons, and Madrid-Málaga reduces emissions by 72,121 tons. Adding the connections with Galicia, Valencia, Alicante and Asturias, the total amounts to 512,944 annual tons of CO₂. The equivalent in cars. To measure this figure, the Institute for Energy Diversification and Saving (IDAE) esteem that each car traveler emits 121 grams of CO₂ per kilometer, as points out The Country. Considering that a vehicle travels about 11,200 kilometers per year in Spain with an average occupancy of 1.5 people, the savings are equivalent to removing 252,325 cars circulating throughout the year. Challenges. Although the train is more sustainable, Cristina Arjona, Greenpeace mobility spokesperson, counted to El País that “to encourage its use even more it must also be the most competitive in price, since sometimes it is still more expensive than the plane.” “As high speed reaches new corridors, as soon as times are competitive, people decide to use the train en masse, with quotas of 80% and 90%,” account Fernandez in the middle. Now the challenge for operators is to extend this network to more territories and ensure that the offer of frequencies and prices remains attractive. In Xataka | Aragon finally solves the great bottleneck for its Pyrenean dream: joining Navarra and Catalonia by highway

Cloudflare is planted in Italy due to blockades. In Spain, the conflict with LaLiga points to the same underlying problem

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We are witnessing firsthand how what began as an offensive against unauthorized party broadcasts has transformed into something much broader, a dispute over who can decide which parts of the internet are turned off and how. In Italy and Spain, judicial and administrative resolutions that apply current legislation are endorsing or ordering measures that operate at the network level, measures that, as they are now being applied, may not distinguish between an infringing service and legitimate services that share infrastructure. This scenario has brought to the fore cloudflarea company whose name has been sneaking into the technology conversation for some time. Here we must be clear. What unites the cases of Italy and Spain is not the type of content, but the logic that supports them: to stop the unauthorized dissemination of matches, it has been decided to act where the network becomes vulnerable, in the intermediaries that connect the public with the servers. It is not a button in the hands of a government, but rather a fit between laws, judges or regulators, rights holders and different actors who execute the measure. That strategy allows you to block quickly and with massive range, but it also has collateral damage. Behind every block there is a clear sequence. In Spain, LaLiga takes its requests before a judge and it is the courts that authorize the operators to execute the cuts. In Italy, rights holders enter domains and IPs into Piracy Shield and it is AGCOMthe Italian telecommunications and media regulator, who reviews these signs and converts them into administrative orders that providers must apply. When an authority orders a block, it is not simply saying “close this page”, it is choosing at what point in the journey the connection between the user and the server is interrupted, according to the limits established by current legislation. This can be done by preventing the website name from being translated into a technical address, directly blocking that address, or asking an intermediary to stop serving the data. In this invisible journey there is a particularly sensitive piece, the system that translates website names into technical addresses that computers can understand. Every time we type a URL or tap a link, a DNS resolver responds with the correct IP so the connection can be established. If this translation is interrupted, the page is no longer accessible even if the server continues to function. That is why DNS has become a very attractive lever for blocking, because it allows access to be cut off quickly and without directly touching the content. What is 1.1.1.1 and why is it in the center. Among the many DNS services that exist, there are some open to the public that do not belong to any national operator, and the best known is 1.1.1.1, managed by Cloudflare. It serves as a widely used public DNS resolver that users and applications use to translate domain names into IP addresses. That scale is what makes it especially sensitive in this debate, because any intervention on it is not limited to a country or a specific network, but can have much broader effects. A modem with network cables The company explains For years it has been able to comply with court orders that force it to act on specific clients or on its distribution network, because there it is controlling its own service within a jurisdiction. What it rejects is modifying open tools such as its public DNS by administrative decisions of a single country. In his approach, that would mean that a national authority could change how a basic piece of the internet works for users around the world. Italy, the Piracy Shield system and controversies. The Italian model does not just cut individual pages, but entire pieces of the route along which traffic circulates. Through Piracy Shield domains and IPs are ordered to be blocked and, according to the regulator itselfthe framework also expressly includes public DNS services and VPN providers as obligated parties when they are involved in the accessibility of that content. Cloudflare Global Network Map The problem is not only that the system blocks a lot, but how it does it and with what margin for rectification. Its quick reaction logic prioritizes cutting access while the event is happening, and that increases the risk of affecting third parties when acting on shared parts of the network. AGCOM quotes as balance that since February 2024, more than 65,000 FQDNs, that is, fully qualified domain names and about 14,000 IPs, have been disabled. That clash took concrete form at the end of 2025. In a decision taken on December 29 and recently notifiedAGCOM imposed a penalty of more than 14 million euros on Cloudflare for failing to comply with a previous order issued on February 18, 2025. According to the regulator, the company had to deactivate the DNS resolution of certain domains and the routing of traffic to IP addresses indicated through Piracy Shield, or apply equivalent measures to prevent users from accessing that content. Spain, the judicial path. As we mentioned above, in Spain the system is not based on an administrative regulator, but on a resolution from a commercial court obtained by LaLiga. On December 18, 2024, the Commercial Court No. 6 of Barcelona authorized blocking measures against addresses used to broadcast matches without rights. On March 26, 2025, that same court rejected the challenges and left the order in force. That is what allows access operators to execute these blocks during matches under the direct legal coverage of a judge. The way that order is executed in practice explains many of the complaints that have arisen in Spain. Access providers block entire IP addresses, not just specific domains. This mechanism explains why so many legitimate services end up dragged down by these blocks. Instead of deactivating a specific domain, operators sever an entire IP address, which is often shared by hundreds or thousands of websites. It’s a bit like boarding up the entrance to a building … Read more

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