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Europe produces more clean electricity than fossil electricity for the first time. The hard part starts now

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For years, the European energy transition advanced without completely displacing fossil fuels. Last year marked that turning point. According to the report European Electricity Review 2026wind and solar generated 30% of EU electricity in 2025, surpassing coal, gas and oil combined for the first time, which fell to 29%. As Dr. Petrovich explains by Emberwe are facing record growth. It is not normal to go from a 20% to 30% quota in just five years, but the numbers are there. The energy map is changing: there are now 14 EU countries where wind and sun generate more than gas or coal. In this scenario, Spain, Greece or Hungary already play in the league of solar powers. Beyond statistics. The milestone does not imply that Europe has left fossil fuels behind or that gas has disappeared from the system, but rather that it changes the hierarchy of the electricity mix. For the first time, variable renewable energies come to occupy the center of the electricity mix, while fossils are relegated to a technical and security support role. According to Emberrenewable energies as a whole contributed 48% of the EU’s electricity in 2025, practically half of the total, a figure that remained stable even in a year marked by adverse weather conditions, with less wind and less rain than usual. Coal, the most polluting fuel in the system, continues its withdrawal. In 2024 it fell to 9.2% of the European electricity mix, a historical minimum compared to the almost 25% it represented a decade ago. Gas, for its part, rose slightly compared to 2024, although it is still 18% below its 2019 maximum, confirming that its role in the system is increasingly residual. This rebalancing has consequences that range beyond the energy mix: Dependence on imported fossil fuels continues to be the main source of price instability and strategic vulnerability in Europe, even outside the climate debate. Five years that changed everything. The sorpasso – as it has begun to be called in the sector – is not the result of a mild winter or a stroke of meteorological luck. It is the consequence of sustained growth, especially in solar energy, during the last decade, accelerated very notably in the last five years. According to the reportsolar generation grew by 20.1%, this being the fourth consecutive year with increases of more than 20%, an unprecedented growth rate in European energy history. In absolute terms, solar reached 369 terawatt hours (TWh), more than double that of 2020, and the annual increase in 2025 alone is equivalent to the electrical production of three French nuclear reactors. A dizzying growth. This expansion responds mainly to the installed capacity. In 2025, 65.1 GW of new solar power was added in the EU, distributed almost equally between large plants and self-consumption on rooftops. All community countries increased their solar production, and in several of them—Hungary, Cyprus, Greece, Spain and the Netherlands—the sun already provides more than 20% of national electricity. As for wind power, although more affected by the weather conditions at the beginning of the year, it remains the second largest electricity source in the EU, with 17% of the total, above gas. The system, therefore, begins to rely structurally on variable renewables, something unthinkable just a decade ago. The reverse of success: when gas continues to set the price. Despite the historic advance of wind and solar, 2025 made it clear that gas continues to have a disproportionate weight in the European electricity system, especially in price formation. According to the think tank, gas-fired electricity generation increased by 8% in the EU, mainly to compensate for the drop in hydroelectric energy caused by the drought, and this greater use of gas raised the electricity sector’s import bill to 32 billion euros, 16% more than the previous year. The impact was especially visible in the electricity markets. Ember detects that price spikes They are concentrated in the hours with the highest gas use, while the hours with abundant solar and wind tend to make electricity cheaper. In 21 European countries, wholesale prices rose in 2025, driven almost exclusively by these fossil time slots. This is where the paradox of the current system: although gas no longer dominates by volume, it continues to set the marginal price of the market at critical moments. In other words, despite the oversupply, the price structure continues to be conditioned by fossil fuel when there is a lack of wind or sun. The new energy frontier. Ember’s report devote an entire chapter to what it considers the next big front of the transition: storage and system flexibility. Without these pieces, he warns, the sorpasso runs the risk of remaining a statistical victory. This was one of the large deficits of the European transition: investing massively in generation without doing so at the same pace in networks and storage. Batteries are now emerging as the piece that connects renewable success with stable prices and security of supply. Last year, the EU exceeded 10 GW of large-scale batteries in operation for the first time, more than double that of 2023. In addition, there is a portfolio of projects that could raise that figure above 40 GW if fully implemented. The first signs are already visible in countries like Italy, where batteries have begun to cover part of the demand during peak gas hours, reducing prices and displacing fossil generation. Physical bottlenecks: European infrastructure. It is not just a question of how much energy is generated, but where it enters and how it circulates within the continent. Europe has reduced its direct dependence of Russian gas, but continues to face physical limitations in terminals, transportation networks and cross-border connections. This substitution of Russian gas has been slowed by the slowness in the construction of critical facilities, such as regasification terminals and high-capacity networks, and by the insufficient interconnection between national electrical systems. This bottleneck explains why countries with abundant renewable production, like Spain, often cannot easily export that surplus, or why the European … Read more

For the first time, a military drone has invaded Taiwan’s airspace

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China has taken a new step in its pressure on Taiwanone that until now was only part of the rhetoric and that has become very real: the introduction for the first time of a military drone in its airspace, a brief incursion (just four minutes) but loaded with symbolism and unpredictable strategic intention. The first time. What happened reminds what we had seen with Russia in Europe. The device, identified by Taiwanese sources as a WZ-7 reconnaissanceentered the air of Pratas/Dongshaa small atoll controlled by Taipei in the South China Sea, and did so at a deliberately f altitudeout of reach of defenses available on the island, leaving after Taiwan issued international radio warnings. The maneuver appears to reveal a classic pattern controlled climbing: Beijing is not seeking an immediate clash, but rather to normalize the fact that it can violate Taiwanese sovereignty without suffering consequences tactics, forcing Taipei to accept rape as routine or to react in a way that could be presented as provocation. Pratas as a weak point. Pratas is a perfect target for this type of testing because it combines symbolic value and military fragility: It is about 400 kilometers south of Taiwan, in an area through which American and Chinese submarines would transit in a crisis scenario, and in recent months it had already been harassed by coast guard and militias Chinese maritime forces, that hybrid arm that operates on the border between civil and paramilitary. There, Taiwan maintains minimal defenses (there is talk of short-range systems like Avenger or portable missiles) that serve for low and close threats, not for a high-altitude drone, which turns each incursion into a demonstration of impunity. Furthermore, the problem for Taipei is that this type of movement opens up a dangerous ladder. Tomorrow it can be repeated, but the drone can go a little lower and force a decision whether to shoot it down or tolerate it, and if it is shot down when it is finally in range, Beijing can use it as a political excusearguing that Taiwan “escalated” a situation it had previously accepted. A Wz 7 drone The unpredictable factor. The Financial Times recalled that what is disturbing is not so much the time the flight lasted, but rather what trains: China’s ability to explore doctrinal gaps, measure reaction times, test warning communications and, above all, introduce uncertainty about what each side considers a “first strike.” Taiwan has been warning for a long time that any unauthorized entry of military assets into its waters or airspace can be interpreted as an initial attack that enables a response, but its own rules of engagement are still being refined to decide who, when and under what circumstances can order an action that could trigger a further escalation. From that prism, Pratas works as a laboratory: a place sensitive enough to hitbut remote enough and defended with tweezers so that each decision is a balance between firmness and restraint. The choreography around. The incursion also comes in a context of accumulated pressure, with exercises increasingly frequent and closer to the island from Taiwan, and with a constant pulse in the strait which combines military maneuvers, US weapons packages and Chinese responses in the form of live fire or more aggressive patrols. That backdrop turns a drone into something more: a message that Beijing not only intimidates with large deployments, but can wear out daily with small, cheap and difficult to answer actions. At the same time, the role of the United States adds ambiguity: Washington is committed to helping Taiwan defend and maintain ability to resist pressure, but even within that framework there is doubt about how far it would go if something catches fire, which reinforces the Chinese temptation to press just where the allied response could be less automatic. The new threshold. China presents it as a “legitimate and legal” exercisebut precisely that narrative is part of the change: if it is accepted that these incursions are normal, a precedent is opened that erodes sovereignty without the need to occupy or shoot, and that prepare the ground for more dangerous scenarios. In other words, if Beijing repeats and deepens this tactic, it could force Taiwan to choose between normalizing the incursions or a risky response, and in that margin of doubt (where no one “wants to be first”) is where the strategic pressure is more effective. Image | CCTV, Infinity 0 In Xataka | China’s new futuristic drone is already flying alongside the J-20 fighters. And Beijing has shown it without saying a word In Xataka | One of China’s most disturbing weapons already has a flight date: a huge mother drone with 100 kamikaze drones on board

For the first time in history the possibility of a Mediterranean without wine is beginning to appear on the horizon

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The same week we found out that Nabimia is flooding Europe of grapes grown in the middle of the desert, a map goes viral that says that the continent’s wine-growing areas have been moving north for decades. What’s the point of all this? Is it even possible? Let’s see it. Let’s start with the map. In recent days, the map is by Sebastian Gräff for The European Correspondent and shows how, in Europe, the “wine-growing areas” have been shifting for 60 years due to the effect of climate change. Not only has it gone viral, it has also become very controversial. Just look at the map to see that historical areas full of vineyards (such as the Jerez countryside) do not appear on it. And it is not a specific failure: there are ‘gaps’ of this type in practically all of the countries that come out. And yet, this isn’t exactly a problem. How is that not a problem? Because what the map represents is the Huglin index: one of the many indices that tries to determine the areas with optimal conditions for growing vines. It is based on a viticultural principle: that each grape variety needs a certain amount of heat to be grown successfully. The Huglin index tries to make an estimate, but (due to the nature of meteorological data) it is not useful for concrete detail. The best-known example is the slopes: having one orientation or another can change the average daily temperature of the area by more than two degrees. It is rather a tool to classify areas, predict ripening and plan the cultivation of certain varieties. But a tool that only makes sense in its context. And the map is not its context. I mean, it’s not what it’s intended for, but that doesn’t mean it’s not interesting. At the end of the day, climate change is one of the most important “game changers” in the world of vines: we must not forget that, in 2024, the harvest took place earliest of the Marco de Jerez since there are records and experts fear that, if the trend continues like this, there will come a time when it will not be viable to grow grapes. In the same way, there are huge regions of the world that they are about to be able grow vines: UK wine production has doubled in a very short time and indeed the area planted with vines has increased 75% in the last five years. They are not yet large amounts, but the harvests are getting better and the sector is moving more and more money. And the expectation is that it will go further, of course. Bad omens. All this outlines something that researchers are beginning to take very seriously: the first time, in historical times, the Mediterranean run out of useful vines for wine production. In this sense, the Jumilla disaster of 2024 serves as a warning to navigators. Wine is entering unknown territory and we are going to bear the worst part. Image | Sebastian Graff In Xataka | The oldest wine in the world is “Andalusian” and has been resting for 2,000 years. If it’s good or not, no one wants to know.

the world’s first system to measure time on the Moon

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The Moon is close to going from being an occasional destination to a place where many things happen at the same time, and that forces us to rethink even the most basic bases of how we operate there. When several ships are maneuvering, when you want to land accurately or when thinking about a future navigation network, it is no longer enough to use Earth time and make corrections on the fly. Time becomes an operational tool, and any gap, no matter how small, begins to matter. That is the background of the step that China has just taken. The announcement comes from Nanjing and has a very practical objective. According to Global Timesa team at Purple Mountain Observatory has developed and published LTE440a software that allows you to directly compare the weather on the Moon with that on Earth without resorting to manual calculations. The system is based on a model that integrates lunar gravity and the movement of the satellite, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences presented it officially as a usable product last December, not just as an academic exercise, with an eye toward future operations in the lunar environment. Why time doesn’t run the same on the Moon. The gap that Chinese software is trying to solve is not a curiosity, but a direct consequence of physics. By having a lower gravity, the Moon makes its clocksand move forward about 56 microseconds a day with respect to those on Earth. This difference, imperceptible in the short term, accumulates and ends up introducing increasing errors if Earth time continues to be used as the only reference for missions that last months or even years. Landings and navigation at play. This gap, however small it may seem, has direct consequences when moving from theory to operation. Jonathan McDowellHarvard astronomer and quoted by the South China Morning Postexplained that differences of just one microsecond can become relevant in navigation systems, affecting calculations even on scales of one minute. What is LTE440. LTE440 calculates the relationship between the Moon’s coordinate time and the dynamic time of the solar system’s barycenter, an astronomical reference used to describe the motion of bodies. This correspondence is one of the necessary steps to later convert lunar time to Earth time in a traceable way. A model of the “Long March 10”, the launch system that China wants to use for its first manned mission to the Moon The international framework. The pressure to sort out this problem does not come only from China. In 2024, the International Astronomical Union adopted a broad framework for the Moon to have its own temporal reference, given the prospect of multiple missions operating at the same time. In that context, the Nanjing team’s work is presented as an engineering step that attempts to turn that general idea into a usable tool. Ambitious scope. The scientific article in Astronomy and Astrophysics maintains that The method remains on the order of a few tens of nanoseconds even according to their calculations when projected out to 1,000 years. On the other hand, this technical advance comes at a very specific moment in the Chinese space program. China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) maintains its goal to take astronauts to the Moon by 2030 and has already completed preliminary prototyping of the main systems, from the Long March-10 rocket to the Mengzhou spacecraft and the Lanyue lunar module. Images | Ganapathy Kumar | engin akyurt In Xataka | Poland and Spain are the European countries that have increased their contribution to space the most. For very different reasons

There is someone who is clear that China has a very difficult time overtaking the US in the AI ​​race: the Chinese themselves.

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China or the US, who will win? the AI ​​race? The US seemed unattainable, but after the launch of DeepSeek a year ago, China became almost at par. Since then, the possibility of China winning the race became very real. Great figures of American AI Several Chinese AI companies have already warned about this situation they are doing very well on the stock market. Despite everything, there are those in China who do not see it at all clearly. Low chances. They count in Bloomberg that Chinese companies have less than 20% probability of being able to advance the OpenAI or Anthropic models in the next 3 or 5 years. Justin Lin, technology manager of the Qwen modelsduring Justin Lin, technology manager of the Qwen models from Alibaba. To the limit. The event was also attended by Tang Jie, founder of Ziphu AI, one of China’s ‘AI tigers’ that last week it had a spectacular IPOincreasing the value of its shares by 36%. Its founder pointed out a somewhat uncomfortable fact for the Chinese AI ecosystem: while companies like OpenAI dedicate “a large part of their computational capacity to next-generation research, we are at the limit of our possibilities. Just meeting delivery demand consumes most of our resources.” In other words: the restrictions on the latest technology are working. The gap is widening. As we said, the launch of DeepSeek R1 a year ago unleashed a wave of optimism among Chinese companies. Since then, a few have launched new LLMs such as Alibaba with Qwen, Ziphu AI or Minimax. However, Tang notes that “some may feel excited, thinking that Chinese models have overtaken American ones, but the real answer is that the gap may be widening.” Restrictions. Speakers blamed the situation on a lack of resources caused by US blockades, especially AI chips and lithography machines. Their chips are not that powerful, so, as Tang says, all their computing power goes into serving their customers. This greatly limits them when it comes to continuing to scale their models. Shunyu Yao, former OpenAI and current chief scientist at Tencentis committed to focusing on solving bottlenecks such as long-term memory and promoting self-learning of future models. Independence. From the government is promoting technological self-sufficiencyprioritizing the use of national chips over American alternatives. The reality is that without access to the most advanced lithography machines, China is lagging far behind. One fact: Huawei and SMIC are ‘tuning’ old ASML machines and making authentic viguerías that have allowed them to obtain chips of 7 and up to 5nm. It’s a technical feat, but its chips are still several years behind the competition. The aces of China. It is clear that China is lagging behind in chips, but there are other areas in which it has an advantage that can be decisive, one of them being electricity. While The Chinese government subsidizes and bets heavily on renewablesin the US electricity has become a bottleneck for its increasingly numerous data centers. Another critical point is that The US has cut funding for academic researchwhile China has done so national priority. And that’s not to mention that they might lose the AI ​​race, but China is winning almost everything else: batteries, robotics, electric cars and especially renewables. Image | Gemini In Xataka | The US believed it had dealt a mortal blow to China when it deprived it of NVIDIA. He only accelerated one plan: ‘Delete America’

It had been a long time since a cell phone left me speechless. So I went to China to test the Honor Magic8 Pro camera

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If you asked someone from HONOR how they were going to improve the camera on their phones next year, the answer they would give you is that you hold the telephoto. A few weeks ago I was traveling to China to see first-hand the factory and the R&D laboratory from which the HONOR Magic8 Proa terminal that bets (almost) everything on the camera. And what a camera. Just stroll through the busy streets of Shenzhen or sit and enjoy the sunset in Hong Kong to discover that yes, HONOR has been working hard on its camera. I can’t talk about specifications, yet, but I can confirm that we have a wide angle, an angle and a periscopic zoom which is, without a doubt, the main protagonist. So much so that I ended up using it more than the main sensor for obvious reasons. That zoom was enjoyable A quality optical zoom not only makes the photo “look sharper”, but also gives a lot of play. The perspective we get with the telephoto cannot be achieved with a normal zoom (cropping of the sensor), since it is by using a longer focal length that we get that “compression effect” of the shots. Let’s say that the distance between two objects in different planes of the scene is reduced, something that is very useful in urban photography and allows us to achieve things like this. Photograph taken with the HONOR Magic8 Pro | Image: Xataka But let’s start at the beginning. Little can be said about the main sensor. It is a sensor that HONOR has clearly mastered and whose results speak for themselves. Good control of highlights and shadows, notable HDR work and faithful color representation, although some background work is noticeable to highlight the strongest colors. In this case, green. Photograph taken with the HONOR Magic8 Pro | Image: Xataka Photograph taken with the HONOR Magic8 Pro | Image: Xataka Photograph taken with the HONOR Magic8 Pro | Image: Xataka At night, the sensor knows how to surprise. It is no secret that there is a treatment for shadows and noise, but The result is one of the best I have seen to date.. These photos are really complex because you have fine details in highlights and huge contrast. The terminal resolves photos well, preserving detail, eliminating noise almost completely and keeping glare at bay. Photograph taken with the HONOR Magic8 Pro | Image: Xataka In this image we have to look not only at the enormous tubular building on the left, but also at its reflection in the next building. It is not a pastiche of lights without rhyme or reason, but the camera manages to perfectly capture the reflection without burning either the background or the building. Also notable is the definition not only of the lines of light, but of the light bulbs themselves hanging from the trees and the texts of the distant blocks. Photograph taken with the HONOR Magic8 Pro | Image: Xataka I liked it a lot during the day, but it’s at night when it really conquered me. If you told me 15 years ago that a gadget I carried in my pocket was going to allow me to take this photo, I probably wouldn’t have believed you. HONOR has done an excellent job not only in the camera, but in the processing. This image would be impossible to take freehand if there were not good stabilization, a good sensor and good background processing. Photograph taken with the HONOR Magic8 Pro | Image: Xataka But if this camera surprises, the telephoto is another story. The HONOR Magic8 Pro has a periscope with 3.7x optical magnification that we can digitally expand up to ten and 100x. The sweet spot, however, is x3.7. Because? Because we can get closer to the subject taking advantage of the full resolution of the sensor and take photos like these, I hope you are not hungry. Photograph taken with the HONOR Magic8 Pro | Image: Xataka Photograph taken with the HONOR Magic8 Pro | Image: Xataka In these photos you can perfectly see what I mentioned previously. Without an optical zoom we would not be able to achieve a blur as silky as this image. You don’t have to rely on portrait mode to crop your subject and blur the background, but you can achieve a superior effect by simply moving away from your subject and using the zoom. If you add a large, high-resolution sensor to that, you get a photo with exquisite textures. Photograph taken with the HONOR Magic8 Pro | Image: Xataka Photograph taken with the HONOR Magic8 Pro | Image: Xataka If we talk about urban photography, this periscope allows us to get closer to the scene and frame in ways that, normally, we could not achieve, either because it does not have a telephoto (something strange in the high range) or because the resolution of the sensor is not up to par. Photograph taken with the HONOR Magic8 Pro | Image: Xataka Photograph taken with the HONOR Magic8 Pro | Image: Xataka Photograph taken with the HONOR Magic8 Pro | Image: Xataka It also allows us to see things that we can only intuit with the naked eye. The advantage of having this resolution is that, even when cropping by zooming to 10x, we can achieve good results. Photograph taken with the HONOR Magic8 Pro | Image: Xataka Photograph taken with the HONOR Magic8 Pro | Image: Xataka The best thing is that the quality of the photos is preserved even when light is scarce. Normally, it is taking photos at night when I least enjoy testing a mobile phone. It is the most complex moment and where the seams are usually seen by the cameras. The HONOR Magic8 Pro is not exempt from those seams by any means, but the work that the Chinese firm has done is sensational. Photograph taken with the HONOR Magic8 Pro | Image: Xataka Photograph taken with … Read more

“you should spend all your time practicing vibe coding”

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Alexandr Wang is only in his twenties, but under his responsibility he has the greatest minds in AI in his position as head of the Meta AI Lab. In one of his last interventions during the coverage of the Meta Connect event in the TBPN podcastissued a very direct recommendation to adolescents and young people concerned about their future work: “you should spend all your time practicing vibe coding“. The idea behind his statements is that the sooner you begin to familiarize yourself with the new ways of programmingthe more options you will have when AI is involved in almost everything we use. ​Everything will be “vibe coding”. Wang assured in his speech that the work of software engineers had changed a lot in recent years and that, even for someone who had been in the job market for as few years as he had, it’s going to change a lot more in the next five years. The Goal Manager and founder of Scale AI assures that it is no longer so much about being good at programming in Python, C++ or JavaScript, but about learn to converse with the AI ​​models that are already programming in those languages ​​and explain to them precisely and with natural language what you want to achieve, and monitor its results until the result works. According to Wang, the future of programming inevitably involves he Vibe Coding. The best thing is to start now. Wang’s strongest message is aimed directly at teenagers. “If you’re 13, you should spend all your time coding with Vibe Coding. That’s what you should do,” said the young Meta manager. Wang compared the current technological moment with the computer technology boom of the late 70s and early 80s with the flourishing of the computer industry. “When personal computers emerged, those who spent more time with them and grew up with them had a huge advantage in the economy of the future, like the Bill Gates and even the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world. I think that moment is happening right now,” stressed the founder of Scale AI. Practice new skills. Wang takes that idea even further when he talks about the dedication necessary for today’s young people to acquire those programming skills for their future work. “If you spend 10,000 hours playing with those tools and discovering how to use them better than others, that will be a big advantage,” encouraged the Meta executive. His criteria are based on his own experience, since at just 19 years old, Wang fundó Scale AI, a company dedicated to labeling content for training AI models and only 25 years old, entered the list of millionaires of Forbes with a fortune valued at more than $1.1 billion. The future of programming. According to Wang in his speech, it is clear to him that AI will not only help with programming, but will also write by itself practically all the code that a person like him has produced in his entire career. However, Wang does not believe that the role of the human engineer will disappear, but rather that it will shift to another point in the process. Your job will be to know what to ask for, how to combine different tools, how to review what the AI ​​produces and how to turn it into real products. That is why he insists so much that children and adolescents get used to this as soon as possible. new way of workingso that the youngest learn to use the Vibe Coding and integrate it naturally into their way of working as we already do today with computers and programming languages. In Xataka | “In a year or two, code editors will not exist”: four programmers explain the vibe coding revolution to us Image | Scale AI

Ouigo and Renfe unleash a price war like we have not seen in a long time

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Who was going to tell us 20 years ago that we would change the traditional races at the doors of El Corte Inglés on January 7 to burn the F5 on the Renfe website. Or, much more inconceivable, that of another French company that was going to compete with the public company to take us on high-speed trains through our country. However, this is how we are. January sales. Since yesterday, January 7, Ouigo has put it up for sale train tickets at reduced prices. So reduced that it is possible to find options for nine euros because 80% of the available tickets are discounted. The maximum price of these tickets is 33 euros. The offer will last until next January 14th… as long as there are tickets available. An almost carbon copy maneuver Renfe has undertaken. Since January 8, the Spanish company has opened juicy discounts on its train tickets. In this case, the offer extends until January 18 on AVE, Avlo, Alvia, Intercity, Euromed and AVE Internacional tickets, but it is not specified how many tickets are available with discounts that offer AVLO tickets at seven euros and AVE tickets at 15 euros. CNMC source: https://www.cnmc.es/sites/default/files/6291881.pdf New year, cheap trains. It has been a constant since competition entered the Spanish railways. Train prices in our country plummet every beginning of the year, as shown in the graph above referring to the Madrid-Barcelona corridor from the Railway Traveler Report presented by the CNMC every quarter. The image above refers to the most used broker in our country and, therefore, the least susceptible to price changes. Obviously, the image is repeated on trips to Andalusia or the Levant. Thus, all companies lower prices with juicy discounts at the beginning of the year. Then they rise due to Easter and the arrival of summer and suffer a small drop again in the third quarter before picking up again at the end of the year. It repeats. If we take a look at the report that collects data from just one year ago, we see how the number of passengers has been increasing in recent years but that prices had to drop to transport a passenger with fewer incentives to move in a quarter without major holidays and worse weather prospects. That made it so that in 2025, according to data from the CNMCin the first quarter of the year, AVE prices fell by 9.2%, Iryo prices by 11.2%, Ouigo prices by 16.1% and AVLO prices by 19.5% compared to the previous quarter in the Madrid-Barcelona corridor. And December is one of the most expensive months of the year to buy tickets and this is repeated in all corridors. With leaden feet. Although the offers are attractive, we must not lose sight of the fact that it is a specific ticket sale and that what sets the trend is the average price at which most tickets are sold. And the last few months tell us that ticket prices are going up. This quarter’s performance is something we will have to wait to find out but if we look at last year’s data from the same Madrid-Barcelona corridor, only Iryo lowered prices in a representative manner when compared to the previous year. It did so by 5.4%, followed by AVLO which lowered prices by 3.9%. However, the AVE only fell by 0.9% and Ouigo raised prices by 5.6%. On average, the price only fell by 0.9%. It is true that in the Andalusian corridors and in Madrid-Valencia, prices fell significantly last year, with drops in the average ticket price of between 10 and 17%. Of course, it must be taken into account that these are destinations where the seasonal influence is more pronounced than in Madrid-Barcelona, ​​a more stable corridor in passenger volume. Fewer offers and more profitability. We give this notice because in recent times we have seen how the prices of Spanish trains have been rising. According to the latest report from the CNMCwhich refers to the third quarter of 2025, the average interannual price of this period increased by more than 25% in Madrid-Barcelona and remained more or less stable in all corridors except Madrid-Málaga, which Until last year it did not have the Ouigo factor. However, from all companies they have paved the way so that we get the idea that the price is going to rise. So much Iryo as Ouigo They have announced that they are ending losing money to enter a new market. Both have made changes in management and from Renfe they have warned that If the competition raises prices they will follow. Photo | Xataka In Xataka | When Iryo and Ouigo began to compete with Renfe they did so by lowering prices. Those days are not coming back

how to use it to see which ones are activated in real time in Spain

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Let’s tell you how to use the V-16 beacon map with which you can see in real time all the ones that are activated in Spain. As of January 1, 2026, V-16 beacons They are mandatory in Spain, so that if we have an accident or breakdown we can activate them and so that the DGT signs on the roads notify the rest of the cars of our position. But you can also check the data sent by the beacons in real time with a map. It is not about DGT mapbut from a third party that uses public data from official sourcesalthough it does not seek to replace official traffic information warnings or assistants. It is also not a map linked to any specific brand of beacons, and shows all those that have been activated at any given time. It is, therefore, an information tool created by an individual. See activated beacons in real time To access the V-16 beacon map you have to enter the website Mapabalizasv16.es/#mapa. This will take you to a map of all of Spain, including the archipelagos, and you can navigate through it and zoom in to see specific areas of the country. On this map, you will be able to see currently active beacons and those that were recently activatedso that you can have a context of current problems and others that have been recent. Also, at the top you will have a button to update it at any time. When you click on one of the active beacon icons (the ones that are on) or the recent ones (their icon is off), it will open a window with event information. You will be able to see what time it was activated, the road, the direction and the province and municipality. Additionally, in the window that opens you will also have buttons to open the exact location in a map application, and you will have a share button to send the incident to someone. In Xataka Basics | V16 beacon without eSIM or connectivity: what the DGT says about them from 2026

2,000 years ago, Seneca said that “it is not that we have little time to live, but that we keep wasting it.” Science agrees

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20 centuries ago, a man from Cordoba who had been quaestor, praetor, senator and consul of Rome and tutor to Emperors sat down to write a small treatise on the brevity of life. That was where he wrote that “it is not that we have little time to live, but that we waste a lot.” That phrase has spanned decades and decades, sticking in the minds of thousands of people and illuminating their lives. Or, simply, filling out internet pages that we have learned to consume as if it were any other entertainment product. A very popular one, by the way. In recent months, the Internet has been filled with Seneca quotes. The head of this report is one of them, but not the only one (“If you want to find true happiness, do not look for it in the great or the new, but in the serenity that simplicity brings.“, “there is no favorable wind for those who do not know where they are going“, “It is not that we have little time to live, but that we waste a lot“, etc, etc. ). And it’s curious… Does it make sense to go back to types from 2,000 years ago to solve our modern-day problems? And surprisingly it may be so. That’s what Philosophy professor Christopher Gill asked himself a few years ago.What if all that philosophical gossip goes further? “To what extent can we moderns recognize in these essays a plausible response to mental illness?” he asked. His answer, after studying Stoics and Aristotelians, is that Seneca’s texts; but, in general, these “philosophical essays were designed to function as a psychological analogue of the ancient medical regime.” What we would call today “lifestyle management” or “preventive medicine.” And, therefore, beyond the ‘pop philosophy’ of recent years, it is possible to find something of value in all those classic texts. Some of value, but not everything. In 1965, when she entered the Chinese Academy of Traditional Medicine, chemist Tu Youyou entered into a very long race to analyze each and every one of the remedies that the ancient Chinese civilization had been selecting. Most of them were pure pseudoscience, of course. A mixture of superstition, credulity and placebo. However, hidden among the trickery, there were real gems. The best example is the artemisinina revolutionary treatment against malaria. A treatment that earned him the Nobel Prize in 2015. It was sold like a Nobel Prize for traditional medicine, yes; but in reality, it was a Nobel for the slow work of screening, testing and discarding by the Ningbo scientist. That is what should be done with the practical philosophy of the Greeks and Romans. And, in this case, it seems that Seneca was right. First of all, because we have systematic biases that they push us to postpone and waste time. Secondly, because much of the “lost time” is not even conscious: it is pure “cognitive friction” (interruptions, multitasking, attention waste, etc.). And finally, because, according to available evidencewhen we reduce the lack of time, well-being increases. That is to say, it is not so much that we lack time as that we do not have a “well-lived” life. How do we fit all this together? Well, very good. Because “all this”, moreover, fits into the general idea not only of Seneca’s pamphlet in which it appears; but in the general outline of Stoic philosophy. And it is worth remembering that under all the naturalistic scaffolding of the philosophy of the old Stoics there was, above all, an ethical question: an imperative to live in accordance with nature (a, by the way, very rationalist vision of nature). In this sense, the Stoics they used to pay attention to what the human being could or could not do: since you have limited control over the length of your life, you must focus on how you live it; They told us while they invited us to order our behavior through moral criteria by dint of attention and peace of mind. Image | Fabio Comperelli | Prado Museum In Xataka | What is Stoicism, the Greek philosophy from 2,000 years ago that has become fashionable again today

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