world

the surreal meeting of Juan Roig and Ana Botín with IShowSpeed ​​at the World Cup

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For less than a minute, the president of a bank with almost a hundred billion capitalization spoke like a salesperson from one of its branches. Next to him, the owner of the largest supermarket chain in Spain was waiting for his turn to introduce himself. He streamer The one they were addressing, and which broadcast the match live, is IShowSpeed, with 57 million followers on YouTube. And I had no idea who these gentlemen were. What happened. On the night of July 14, Spain beat France 2-0 and sealed its place in the final of the 2026 World Cup. Among the VIP audience, along with Timothée Chalamet, Javier Bardem and Usain Bolt, were Ana Botín, president of Banco Santander, and Juan Roig, president of Mercadona. They both went to greet Darren Watkins Jr., the streamer known as IShowSpeed, which broadcast the game live. The exchange began with introductions. “It’s like the Walmart of Spain,” they explain pointing to Roig in reference to Mercadona. Botín was not far behind: he defined his bank as “the JPMorgan of Europe.” A few seconds later the commercial offer arrived: “You have to open an account at Openbank”, and ended with a sales pitch which surely captivated Speed: “We pay you 4% for your savings.” The young man managed to tell Botín that he would have to give him “a good credit rating”, but he responded between surprise, curiosity and pure stupefaction. Who is Speed? At just 21 years old, Watkins Jr, or IShowSpeed, has accumulated more than 57 million subscribers on YouTube, and more than 150 million followers across all of his networks. He has been broadcasting live from the stands for weeks at the 2026 World Cup, after his favorite team, Portugal, was eliminated in the quarterfinals. On the night of July 14, the Spain-France match, its live broadcast from the AT&T Stadium reached nearly 58 million connected accounts. That’s why it was Roig and Botín who approached him, and not the other way around. No conventional advertising campaign would have put them in front of a comparable audience, much less that profile: young, digital and absent from traditional channels. Who are the other people? The older ones, we say. We know this very well, but it doesn’t hurt to remember it, because it is their insane fortunes that turn this talk in the box into a piece of Celtiberian memorabilia to take into account. Booty has a personal assets of 350 million euros (Santander has a market capitalization that has touched 100 billion euros this year). A considerable fortune, but far from the 8.8 billion that Forbes attributes to Roig in his latest list of the greatest Spanish fortunes. Rich folks. Throughout the conversation, Roig does not utter a single sentence in English. It is his companions who present it, who seek the comparison with Walmart and act as interpreters. It is a very particular and very Spanish folksiness, which leads Botín to compare Mercadona and Santander with giant American businesses. And it’s not because they lack size or importance, but they find a very simple way to make themselves understood with Speed. Recent rich. This folksiness comes from the fact that Spanish wealth is not the inheritance of several generations of nobles. Mercadona was already born in democracy, when Roig bought Mercadona from his father along with his brothers and his wife, when the chain had eight stores; today exceeds 1,700 and employs nearly 110,000 people; Botín presides over a bank founded by his family in which he maintains a relevant but purely management position. But the type of wealth they represent does fit with a broader and documented pattern of how the Spanish business class was formed: at the death of Franco, two hundred families controlled more than a third of the shares of the country’s large companies and banks, a network of power very close to the State. It is not the aristocracy that endures in the United Kingdom or the United States, the famous old money that goes back generations in the past. In Spain we have rich people from powerful but self-made families, which explains this attitude that leads a multimillionaire to calmly sell the advantageous conditions of an account in her bank: the money has been inherited, but not from generations, they are provincial families with power, and hence the attitude towards the young influencerwhich they see as another possibility to make money. Even with the rich, Spain is different. In Xataka | Mercadona is doing the opposite of other large companies: freezing Roig’s salary to reinvest it

FIFA had been trying for years to get soccer into the US. In this World Cup it has been American culture that has entered football

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Each match in the 2026 World Cup has been stopped twice for players to drink water. What FIFA sold as a medical standard has become one of the largest sources of advertising revenue in the history of football. The hydration break It is reminiscent of the one you already see in a LaLiga match in August, when the heat at four in the afternoon justifies it. Here, repeated in air-conditioned stadiums where more than one fan is seen wearing a cardigan, it sounds more like an excuse. It’s just the most visible symptom of something bigger. The panoramic. FIFA has been pursuing the American market for years without soccer finally gaining ground against basketball, American football or hockey. This summer he has changed his strategy: instead of selling football as it is, he has redesigned it with the cultural and television codes of the United States. Pauses that cut off the game, advertising in the middle of the game, celebrities paid to occupy the box, hospitality overflowing, very expensive tickets, a break from the final that doubles its usual duration to accommodate a concert… The tournament has also been played in Mexico and Canada, but it has not stopped sounding like the NFL and the NBA. The party has stopped being the product. He show prior, rest and show Later they are also products, they also compete for the same attention. In detail. The centerpiece is the hydration breaks: three minutes in the 22nd and 67th minutes of each of the 104 games, without discriminating by temperature. FIFA announced them in December as a health prevention and authorized television stations to fill the gap with up to two minutes and ten seconds of advertisements. It is not the only piece of the decoration: Halftime in the finals has been extended to about 30 minutes to accommodate a Super Bowl-style musical performance. One has appeared backroom VIP, very similar to the NFL boxes, where authorities, family and celebrities follow the game. Television production has adopted shots, access to locker rooms and tunnels that until now were the domain of American football. Between the lines. It is tempting to blame the United States for “Americanizing” soccer. But the one who has made every decision (breaks, calendar, 48 teams…) is FIFA, which has seen in the American entertainment model the fastest way to continue increasing income just when Europe, its traditional place, begins to show signs of stagnation. The French Ligue 1, without going any further, lost his television deals and has had to set up its own direct sales platform. behind the scenes. The change is not only a matter of changes in the regulations, it is also noticeable in how it is broadcast. The networks constantly cut to celebrities, boxes and reactions in the stands in search of the viral shot. Every break, every corner, every substitution is an opportunity for sponsorship, not just hydration. The fan in the stadium is no longer just a spectator, he is part of the set. The stands are lit, focused and edited, NFL style. In figures. The numbers explain why FIFA has been compensated for the change in model. The organization’s audiovisual income has grown by 36% compared to Qatar 2022, up to about 3,925 million dollars. Fox calculates entering between 250 and 500 million dollars only with the advertising of hydration breaks. A 20-second ad during a break has been sold in France for 425,000 euros. For the rights bid for 2030 and 2034, offers in the United States could start at $1 billion and reach $2 billion if both tournaments are packaged. Yes, but. Not all football has jumped on the bandwagon. The Premier League, the richest and least in need of new income, does not contemplate breaks: British regulations limit live advertisements and in England it is rarely as hot as would justify them. UEFA has said that He will not take them to the Champions League or the Euro Cup in 2028. And now what. CONMEBOL has already announced 90-second breaks for the Libertadores and the Sudamericana 2026. The MLS and the NWSL will negotiate their next rights with the World Cup precedent on the table. And FIFA is preparing the 2030 bid, with Spain as one of the venues, knowing that the networks will no longer pay only for the 90 minutes of the match: they will also pay for the minutes in which it stops. Featured image | FIFAXataka In Xataka | It is possible that today you will hear your neighbor sing Spain’s goal before you: the delay of streaming compared to DTT

Now the World Cup seems further away than ever

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The promise: the joint Spain-Portugal-Morocco candidacy for the 2030 World Cup was presented on a dossier that included between 14 and 18 stadiums in total, with 11 Spanish, 3 Portuguese and 6 Moroccan venues. On paperthe tournament would be a lever for infrastructure modernization. Regarding the coffers and the laws, there are complications. There are just over three years left until the World Cup and it seems to be receding like a phantasmagoria. Let’s count. Last March, FIFA took a tour visiting stadiums in Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Bilbao, Zaragoza and Seville. There were gaps, too many. So the organization invited the respective organizing committees to put their notebooks in their suitcase and write down the good work of Miami and Dallas. The “Observer” program is, literally, an intensive master’s degree for the logic of an event like the 2030 World Cup: beyond infrastructure, airport management, visas, requirements in the commercial exploitation section, etc. In April, the president of the RFEF, Rafael Louzán, proposed creating a dedicated commission (and approving a State Events Law that covers the reforms). In May, some of these ideas fell apart. Because? The selection of the Ibero-Moroccan candidacy by FIFA is done, but in practice Spain has been losing weight: Málaga and A Coruña resigned, Valencia has been left off the official list of 11 locations and several key projects remain in the works or on plans. The condition was clear: many stadiums had to undergo renovations to meet FIFA requirements for capacity, access, decks and VIP areas. The moneys. Right now, these are the reform proposals and estimated cost. Although these are downward figures, this is the general map, starting with Morocco: Tangier Grand Stadium: €350 million (construction + expansions up to 75,000 spectators) Mohamed V Complex (in Casablanca): more than €95 million (major remodeling) Prince Moulay Abdellah (in Rabat): €480-500 million (practically complete reconstruction) Agadir Grand Stadium: €230 M (construction + modernization for World Cup) Marrakech Grand Stadium: €240 M (construction + upgrade) Fez Stadium: €250 million (construction + remodeling) Hassan II Grand Stadium (Casablanca/Benslimane): €1 billion (complete complex, including stadium and related infrastructure, with seating for 115,000 spectators) In comparison, Spain: Santiago Bernabéu (Madrid): €1,347 M (complete transformation project) Riyadh Air Metropolitano (Madrid): €310 M (original construction) Spotify Camp Nou (Barcelona): €1,450 M (Complete Espai Barça) RCDE Stadium (from Cornellà-El Prat): €60 M San Mamés (Bilbao): €211 million Reale Arena (San Sebastián): €80 M (comprehensive renovation 2017-2020) La Cartuja Stadium (Seville): €100 M (last remodeling for the 2030 World Cup) La Rosaleda (Málaga): €270 M (remodeling project) Gran Canaria Stadium: €174.7 M (project currently being put out to tender, El Cabildo is still negotiating to “lower some of its claims” because going all-in is already branded as “absolute suicide“) Riazor (A Coruña): €125 M (remodeling project) La Romareda (Zaragoza): €220 M The problem? What was suspected: the Federation itself has warned that many Spanish stadiums still do not meet the requirements and that we must go “from projects and good intentions to getting wet and guaranteeing works and investments”, while Morocco has already put specific figures and a schedule for the reform of its six fields. Let’s look at it case by case. 180 million for a team in third place. The New Romareda It has been justified from day one by the opportunity to host the World Cup: a stadium with around 43,000 net seats, designed to meet the FIFA minimum and bid for matches up to the round of 16. The initial cost was estimated at around 148.5 million plus VAT (close to 180). The Chamber of Accounts of Aragon raised the figure: it adds external developments, surveillance, certificates, ICIO and other concepts until it reaches at least 173.2 million. It is already suspected that will exceed 180 million if all the costs of the environment and modular stadium are included. Now comes the paradox: he builds a FIFA standard stadium for a city whose club, Real Zaragoza, currently plays in the First Federation, a place where it is better not to look. Using the World Cup as a political anchor for an investment that mixes municipal, regional and private funds It’s not sitting well with everyone.. The Accounts Chamber requested a “complete and traceable view of the costs” when detecting items assumed directly by the Government of Aragon. That is, they were not in society’s budget, precisely to prevent the World 2030 label from masking the real cost for the taxpayer. Saying “we did it for the World Cup” is not enough. Tic-tac and tiki-tac. Another work that race against the clock It is Nou Mestalla. The Valencian stadium is a recast on the skeleton built more than a decade ago. About 70,000 spectators capacity, light cover with tensioned cables and some 3,450 parking spaces They fall within your proposal. Beyond the World Cup, the City Council has signed an agreement that allows it to use the stadium for Cup, Euro Cup, and Champions League finals. The current calendar sets July 11, 2027 as the deadline to issue the Final Work Certificate (CFO). It is known that approximately 76% of the structure has been completed and that the total investment, including tertiary and surrounding areas, will far exceed 500 million euros, becoming the largest project in the club’s history. Then came the bickering: the RFEF left Valencia out due to the accumulated delays and the difficulty in guaranteeing deadlines. With the building permit already approved and aspiring to a UEFA category 4 stadium, the club reacted with a statement. Two years passed. FIFA did not get off its ass and indicated that in its bid book everything was clear. And Valencia pushed forward. The “World Cup renewal” mode does not work. In Seville, the La Cartuja Stadium aspires to be the third stadium in the country by capacity, with 70,000 gross spectators, lowering the level of the playing field, expanding the lower stands and changing facades and skin to comply with FIFA regulations. The first phase cost about 12 million … Read more

How to watch Spain – France: date and time of the World Cup semi-final match, and where you can watch it on any device

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Let’s explain to you How and where you can watch Spain’s match against France. This is the semifinals of the 2026 World Cup, a match of the highest level that could well be worthy of the final, in which two of the great candidates for the title face each other. Let’s make the article simple. First we are going to tell you the date and time to which this match is played. And then, we will tell you what your options are to be able to watch it from any device. Date and time of Spain – France Spain’s match against France will take place today, Tuesday, July 14. Both teams will face each other at the AT&T Stadium in the state of Texas, which during the tournament is being called Dallas Stadium. This semi-final will be played at 9:00 p.m. in Spanish peninsular time8pm in the Canary Islands. There can only be one left, and the winner will face the team that wins England – Argentina in the grand final tomorrow. Where to watch Spain – France As we have explained to you when we told you where you can watch the 2026 World Cupas it is a match for the Spanish National Team, you will be able watch it for free live through La1. This will allow you to see it both on DTT and on mobile phones or browsers through RTVE Play. Obviously, the party It will also be issued in the payment options that you could have to watch all the World Cup matches. It will be broadcast on DAZN and you will be able to watch it on any device if you have it contracted. You can also see it on the DAZN Mundial channel, available on both Movistar Plus and Orange TV. In Xataka Basics | Apps for football results: the best 14 applications to receive notifications and see match statistics

Due to the lack of steel, World War II ships began to be built with an unusual material: concrete

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Close your eyes and think about the main material of a boat. Very possibly wood be first that comes to mind, and it’s normal: we have been sailing in wooden boats for millennia, and we continue to do so. But it is also logical that the steel that dominated the 19th and 20th century shipsand the current sea monstersideas haunt you. And most likely you have not thought about another material: the concrete. But yes, for 150 years we were creating concrete boats, and far from being crazy, it was the most logical idea. And they were even used in the First and Second World War. a french. One fine day in the mid-19th century, a French gentleman named Joseph-Louis Lambot It occurred to him to build a boat. Not just any one: a reinforced concrete one. There was one problem: in 1848, they had no idea what reinforced concrete was. This material, basically, is the mixture between concrete and steel. Both combine to create something with much greater structural resistance and have been the basis of the most imposing skyscrapers, dams and almost any construction of the last century since its invention. Well, it was Joseph-Louis who came up with the idea of ​​combining the two materials. At least, it attributes the invention of reinforced concrete to this man. As always, there is controversy over the dates, who patented reinforced concrete, who built the first slab, etc. But anyway: Lambot wanted to test his invention and built a small boat of less than four meters with the aim of exhibiting it at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1855. Quite a few advantages. Basically, the interior was wire mesh covered by cement and Lambot’s idea was to completely replace wood. The invention was liked, but it did not really attract the attention of boat manufacturers. Some barges were created for European canals, but little else. Everything changed when the Italian engineer Carlo Gabellini built the Liguria in 1896. It is what we consider to be the first reinforced concrete ship designed to sail on the high seas. And, really, it made sense to create reinforced concrete ships. It is a material that has great resistance to corrosion, so the marine environment does not damage the hull, reducing maintenance (which also has it) and extending its useful life. It offered good thermal insulation, so perishable resources could be transported in better conditions and there were no fire problems. The Namsenfjord In the absence of bread… A few years later, the construction of these concrete ships expanded and other countries began to build them, especially cargo ships. But of course, we are in 1914 and that means that something happened: the World War I. And beyond the advantages of concrete over other materials, the world was forced to create concrete boats for a very simple reason: there was no steel. The militarization and industrialization of the belligerent forces caused a situation of steel shortage. The ships were important, since the naval supremacy It has always been a determining factor in a conflict, but with the steel necessary for a destroyer many other things could be created. And the problem is that they had to continue building ships because there were resources to move worldwide. The First World War. The revolution came with Namsenfjorda Norwegian ship that, in 1917, demonstrated that self-propelled concrete boats could be made. It was 26 meters long and weighed a whopping 400 tons and most importantly: the United States saw that there was potential in these ships beyond serving as freighters powered by an auxiliary ship. Thus, they created the Emergency Fleet Corporation program with the objective of producing 24 concrete vessels. It was a failure: those that were completed were done after the war, so they had to be used for other things. One was the SS Faithwhich was going to serve in the war, but in the end it was left to be used in transportation work in the United States. It was launched in 1919, was in service until 1921 when it was sold to Cuba and had a length of 97.54 meters. A year after Faith, the SS Selmaan enormous mass of reinforced concrete measuring 129.54 meters in length that was launched just the day Germany signed the Treaty of Versaillesending the First World War. It ended up being used as an oil tanker in the Gulf of Mexico. With sails and a secondary support engine Devastating disadvantages. With the war over, interest in concrete shipbuilding waned. It still had advantages, since building them was much cheaper than making them in steel or iron, but if we mentioned a series of advantages before, it is important to now know the disadvantages (which outweigh them, and by far). To match the strength of a steel hull, a concrete hull is thicker, which has several limitations. On the one hand, it weighs more, so it also has a greater draft, the ship’s movement is slower and more fuel is needed. Being thicker means that there is less interior space for cargo, since the useful volume is reduced. This weight means that the engines must be more powerful and the fuel tanks must also be larger, so the investment in this part is greater. The dam to build it must also be monstrous because parts cannot be welded, as in a steel one, and then there is the impact resistance. Second World War. Metal breaks, yes, but it has greater elasticity than concrete. This material, however, is much more fragile when faced with impacts. A collision causes a crack in the hull, and this in a boat that weighs so much is a condemnation. That is why, after the Great War, the concrete ship project was abandoned, leaving its construction practically limited to cargo barges, but then the Second World War arrived, and the steel needs of the previous one were repeated. However, the US program was not as ambitious as the one they started … Read more

There is something in which Uruguay is a true and overwhelming world power: generating elite footballers

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Unless you are a real data and statistics machine, when asked about Which country produces the most elite footballers? Surely most of us would answer that Brazil, a country that has had five World Cups and is also a true exporter of talent with the ball at its feet. But not. Although the answer differs depending on the time frame you choose, there is one place in the world that has taken the world by storm in the last century: Uruguay. Uruguay has barely 3.5 million inhabitants, a figure similar to that of Madrid or Berlin, and despite being a small country, it has two World Cups, two Olympic medals and 15 Copa América to its credit. And an incredible reality: Uruguay is, per capita, the country that has produced the most famous soccer players in the entire history of soccer. Below these lines we attach a screenshot of the data project “The Atlas“, an interactive visualization that calculates, for each country, how many top (male) soccer players in the world by historical popularity there are per million inhabitants. We highly recommend playing around, since you can sift through countries, regions, number of soccer players and years. It doesn’t matter what you choose because Uruguay almost always wins. The data is devastating: Uruguay produces 11.3 elite football figures per million inhabitantsa very long way from the second, Croatia, which has 4.81. Third and fourth are the Netherlands (4.58 figures per million inhabitants) and Argentina (3.82). If you move the time bar to the year 1999, Spain takes over the gold in a timely manner. Uruguay produces more famous footballers per capita than any country in the world. The Atlas This interactive graph is the work of Argentine economist Daniel Schteingart and for its preparation he used two sources: on the one hand Pantheon from the MIT Media Lab, which measures the historical fame of each footballer according to their presence on Wikipedia and on the other, population data from Our World in Data, which allows us to calculate how many famous figures each country produces per inhabitant. However, the fact that Uruguay is an absolute winner is something that has also been documented The Observer with data from the CIES Football Observatory and RT. Three different analyzes with different methodologies and the same result: Uruguay wins by a landslide. The country that produces the most famous soccer players in the world is not Brazil or France The question is clear: what Uruguay that does not have the rest. According to ESPN Deportesthe key is in training: Uruguay has 28 professional clubs that train young people. For Argentina or Brazil to have that same proportion per inhabitant, they would need 336 and 1,624 clubs respectively, well above what they currently have, 103 and 168, respectively. This exhaustive commitment to young talent allows the Latin American country to detect and exploit that potential that would perhaps go unnoticed in other larger countries. The author of the chart explains There is also another reality that gives South American countries an advantage: “there is almost no competition from other sports for young talent. Here everyone wants to be a soccer player, while in Europe and the United States talent is distributed among several disciplines.” Of course, regarding the future he has a warning: “The technicalization and globalization of football may favor rich countries, but as long as South American footballers continue to return to their national teams, the tradition will continue.” The limitations of the graph are those of its bases: the graph indicator measures fame on Wikipedia, which does not necessarily imply measuring football quality objectively, which favors more recent players or those who are very popular and plays to the detriment of veteran stars, with a smaller footprint on the internet. In Xataka | We still don’t know who will win the 2026 World Cup, but we do know who is left without sleep: the devastating graphic of FIFA schedules In Xataka | 24 years ago Oliver Kahn sued EA and won. Then a new goalkeeper appeared in football games: Jens Mustermann

The fried pizza looks like something filthy from the US. It was actually “invented” to save Naples after the Second World War

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I love to cook, even though someone wants to banish the kitchensand I love to see cooking videos. However, the algorithm sometimes gets confused and shows me videos of people putting raw pasta with tomato sauce into a container and baking everything, or a lot of fried things. They are videos of Americans cooking, of course, but when I see someone frying a pizza, it doesn’t offend me for one simple reason: it’s almost as old as the Neapolitan pizza and played a fundamental historical role in post-war Italy. Feeding a city in which the ovens had been destroyed. Because Neapolitan pizza may be a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but fried pizza is the lifeblood of the city of Naples. The statutes of pizza. Italians are very particular about food. I have shared many trips with great Italian colleagues and they are very wonderful when they defend what is theirs. It’s great, but they are the first to burn the coffee (although we Spaniards are not here to give lessons on this, of course). Now, don’t let a Neapolitan get the pizza. He ‘I will discipline‘is the bible, the table of commandments which includes everything you need to know to make a Napoletana pizza. What types of ingredients, quantities and heart that should be put inside and on top of the dough. On a recent trip, talking about pizza and after eating in a fairly competent Parisian pizzeria, the topic of fried pizza came up. What would clearly be an affront to the pride of that Neapolitan boy caused a smile to appear on his face. And, as we say in Xataka, it makes sense. Zeppole. Long before Disciplinare and baked pizza, in Naples there was already an important tradition of fried dough. In it freedom from coquina from the 13th century describe fermented doughs, fried in oil and served with honey, but if there is a predecessor of fried pizza, it is the zeppole. They are like fritters that date back to sometime between the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century and have some variants, but a well-known one is filled with pastry cream and decorated with cherries in syrup. Although this is a dessert, there are also salty varieties to which other ingredients such as anchovies are added. Although they were eaten in several Italian cities such as Rome or Calabria, in Naples they caught on well and, when the more formal pizza began to appear, they became popular. started to differentiate between the pizzaiuolo (the one who makes baked pizzas) and the zeppolaiolo (the one who makes the fried foods, including fried doughs). Emergency. During the 19th century, texts began to appear that included recipes for stuffed and fried calzoncini as a more satiating product than the sweet variant and an explicit distinction began to be made between “pizza al forno” and “pizza fritta di cicoli.” Fried pizza was already establishing itself in the Neapolitan language before the 20th century as a street food to take advantage of leftover meat and fish, but then came the Second World War. The conflict devastated Naples and the postwar period was no better. The situation of extreme poverty and the destruction of the kilns by Allied bombings combined with a lack of wood. The city had to be rebuilt or the furnaces fueled, and the priority was clear. Furthermore, even if they wanted to make some pizzas, everything was missing and the ingredients were expensive due to the shortage. So, many Neapolitan families began to look at the zeppole and were occurred that they could make large disks of pizza dough, fill them with cheap ingredients like ricotta, vegetables and leftover meat if there were any, fry them and… that’s it. Fried dough with the ingredients on top “A ogge a otto“. Workers could take this as a filling lunch for breaks, it was economical and became a symbol. In the absence of “real” pizza, the new “pizza del popolo” was the one that helped in the reconstruction of the city and became a symbol. coined the “a ogge a otto”, which came to mean “eat today, pay eight days later”, reinforcing that role as a symbol of poor post-war Naples. American Coffee. Therefore, fried pizza was not invented in the postwar period, since there was a previous context of fried doughs, but it was the time of the popular explosion due to necessity. This Neapolitan boy was particularly proud when telling me the story because, although less known, Neapolitan fries are also a traditional dish, but the one that lifted the city after the war was… pizza. And it’s funny how my first impulse was to think that fried pizza was just another thing about Americans determined to fry things, when really it’s even something cultural for certain people. These types of stories are always fascinating to me, like the one about American coffee that we can think was invented in the United States when, in reality, it was an invention of the Italian baristas of the Second World War who they added water to the coffee because the American soldiers did not like the concentrated flavor. In Xataka | The pizza that is successful in China does not have pepperoni or pineapple: it has a fruit that smells like rotten eggs and sewage

The most viral player of the 2026 World Cup owes his global popularity to AI and Chinese fans

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Erling Haaland has been one of the most talked about players for weeks in a World Cup that is giving endless topics of conversation beyond the games, which at this point are a bit of the least important thing. His imposing physical presence, his deadly style of play and his apparent affability off the field they seem almost scripted to build a cult figure. And there is a little of that. The famous video. In mid-June, a video began to circulate of the Norwegian striker having dinner in a restaurant, and being startled when he saw his own reflection in a mirror. One post on X alone racked up over 31 million views in a matter of days, and currently has more than 42. In reality it is not Haaland, but a sketch by Chinese comedy duo Jin Long and Qiu Qiumuch more exaggerated and clearly false. The comic was polished to make it more realistic and Haaland’s face was superimposed using AI. The account, specialized in shocking videos made with generative artificial intelligence, published similar videos from other points of view in successive days. All false: the internet was already immersed in an unstoppable fever. Big in China. Before the World Cup, Haaland was already a cult figure in China. The forward joined Weibo and Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, on June 6, and in less than a month he added 1.6 million followers on the first platform and 5.2 million on the second. The hashtags related to him have exceeded 490 million views on Weibo alone. The two Haalands. Chinese fans have two versions of Haaland: on the field he is the “Nordic cyborg”, an almost inhuman scoring machine. Outside of him is Habao, a clumsy and charming giant. Besidesin recent months he has starred an advertisement for a Chinese herbal drink and he has tried to speak Mandarin on camera, fueling that contrast that his fans find irresistible. A song about him, titled “Haaland (Ha Ha Ha)” and set to the melody of ‘Moskau’, by the German Eurodisco group Dschinghis Khan, can be heard in Chinese AI montages, including the advertisement. Your personal Snapchat accountwith more than 5 million followers, works as the raw material of this entire ecosystem: selfies from unflattering angles, comparisons to ‘Shrek’, improvised questions and answers. Some real content, made by oneself, which is then reprocessed by others with generative tools until it is impossible to distinguish the origin. Official AI. Not all the synthetic material with Haaland was born without permission. In 2023, photographer David Yarrow He portrayed Haaland alonewaist-deep in an Oslo fjord, dressed as a Viking. Looking ahead to this World Cup, the Norwegian football federation called Yarrow again to repeat the session with the entire team. The result, titled “The Vikings are coming“, shows the 26 players armed with swords and shields in front of a longship, and it was Haaland himself who promoted the idea of ​​this sequel. From there, the iconography got out of hand. Fans flooded the networks with AI-generated variants (Haaland in full battle, with armor and ax raised) that blur the line between mythology sponsored by the federation and fiction conceived by fans. Furthermore, as could not be otherwise, far-right accounts attracted to Haaland as a symbol of a white, blond and physically imposing man, have especially actively shared this Viking content. The fanon. According to Wired in its article, AI is facilitating a new relationship between fans and their idols: fanon (as a nod to “canon”): material that the public invents to fill in the gaps left by the official canon. There has always been this approach to the lives of celebrities, but generative artificial intelligence summarizes the artisanal work of before, of photomontages and manipulated videos, in a few minutes. As a source of astonishingly realistic material (how many of the hilarious images of Haaland on the field of play that you have seen are real?), sponsors, federations and representation agencies have before them a new panorama, which does not only affect footballers. Singers, actors, influencerscelebrities of all kinds… if they don’t have an attractive enough life or personality, fans will make it up for them. The abyss that opens before them is obvious. In Xataka | The biggest mystery of the World Cup is why all the boots are pink: the answer is very simple to understand

GPT-5.6 is probably the best AI model in the world. And precisely for that reason, the majority does not need it.

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Yesterday OpenAI publicly released GPT-5.6its new family of AI models with three variants: Sol, the most powerful, Terra, more balanced, and Luna, the most cost-efficient. One idea stood out in that release: that GPT-5.6 is probably the best model in the world. And precisely for that reason, the vast majority will never need it. As part of the launch, he published a nice video in which he showed how a farmer in Japan, an entrepreneurial couple in New York and a mathematician in Poland had used it for their work. Then we go back to the video and those three scenarios. But a preview: two of those three stories demonstrate just the opposite of what OpenAI wanted to demonstrate. In the official announcement OpenAI also told us about how this was the most capable family of AI models they had ever released and they included the traditional huge string of internal benchmark results to prove it. According to internal tests, GPT-5.6 Sol is the best existing AI model both in programming and in the use of agentic tools in the terminal (among many other scenarios). Source: OpenAI. Their data revealed that we are facing what theoretically it is the best AI model in the world currently. And the interesting thing is that independent studies like those of Artificial Analysis They corroborate it: in several of its tests GPT-5.6 even surpassed Fable 5, Anthropic’s frontier model that until now was the great reference in this industry. Source: Artificial Analysis. The model certainly appears to be spectacular. Those responsible for ARC Prize, that benchmark in which most AI models repeatedly crash, commented how GPT-5.6 Sol was still the first frontier model to solve one of the puzzles of their new benchmark, ARC-AGI 3. No other had come close to that milestone, and according to this organization “it is the best model when it comes to orienting yourself in a situation that you have never encountered.” All that these tests validate is the idea that we are facing a prodigious model. And the problem is precisely that: that most users will probably never need it. Too powerful for most of us Let’s go back to the video at the beginning. Of the three use cases mentioned, two are quite trivial. GPT-5.6 helped the Japanese farmer create a remote control system for his greenhouse with a Raspberry Pi. He helped the New York couple build a curious cereal box business. Nothing in those two tasks seems to require the best model in the world. In fact, they are precisely the type of projects that have been being resolved for months with much cheaper models. With the third scenario, that of the Polish mathematician, things change: this academic was trying to solve a conjecture that he had been working on for three years. No previous model had been able to help him, but with GPT-5.6 he managed to reveal a totally new idea, he says. One of his final comments precisely makes it clear who GPT-5.6 Sol is for: “If you have that kind of audacity to try to do something really big, you won’t be scared of the incredible computing power because you can organize it with the model.” That is the key to the issue: most users are not trying to solve mathematical conjectures that are almost impossible to solve. Most we use tools in a much more everyday wayand that is completely logical and reasonable. That’s why there are many more more modest and affordable models, and why the GPT-5.6 Sol, even if it makes sense, will be a very unprofitable model for most people. It is not a model for counting R’sof course. In fact, every time a new model comes into our hands, It is very difficult to appreciate if it is really better than the previous ones because the tasks we propose are usually solved very well with the existing ones. There are cases in which differences are seen—in especially complex programming, for example—but here we are faced with a situation that we have lived before on several occasions. This happens, for example, with modern hardware: very few people need the most advanced processors or an RTX 5090 to play, because more modest CPUs and GPUs give access to a truly fluid experience. We don’t usually need a camera either. Hasselblad of 15,000 euros for our vacations, and a good cell phone of 500-1,000 euros at this point solves the problem wonderfully. The good thing about all this is what also happens with those examples that we mentioned before: what is extraordinarily expensive and powerful today will end up no longer being so because other even better (and probably more expensive) AI models will appear on the horizon. The question is no longer “which model is more “intelligent”?”, but “Which model is smart enough to solve this task at the lowest cost?“. That explains why there are variants like Sol, Terra and Luna. Maybe in two years GPT-5.6 Sol will be the cheap model we use to correct an email or plan a vacation. The recent history of AI invites us to think precisely that: today’s frontier models end up becoming tomorrow’s everyday models. Perhaps that is the true meaning of GPT-5.6. Not that today almost no one needs so much intelligence, but that in a few years we will probably we all take it for granted. In Xataka | OpenAI just launched GPT-Live: ChatGPT voice mode has learned to listen, shut up and respond better

Madrid wants the largest Ferris wheel in the world. For now he is settling for a French merry-go-round

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Fifty-nine years old. That is the amount of time that has passed since the noble Madrid Amusement Park has not had a new tender that allows a new company to manage the more than 30 machines that attract approximately one million visitors each year. A single operator. The concession worked in favor of a single company: for an initial period of 35 years, until 1992, the concessionaire could thus fully amortize the investment in civil works and attractions. And so much: it is estimated that more than a million people visit these attractions every year. The term was extended: first, an extension of 24 more years, until 2016; then another extension to the September 27, 2027coinciding with successive major internal reforms—more thematic areas, roller coasters, Nickelodeon expansion—that justified maintaining the same operator. almost six decades of continued exploitation since the concession to Parques Reunidos that began in 1967. And now, Madrid wants to “resurrect” it under two clear rules: a non-renewable eight-year concession and a complete overhaul. And, on the horizon, that gargantuan attraction that we have talked about on occasion. London Eye twice. Literally, Madrid dreams of the largest Ferris wheel in the world. Behind the capital’s Business Forum, which has been defending a structure of about 260 meters for years, doubling the 135 meters of the London Eye. Carlos Rubio’s design proposes an elliptical apparatus higher than the Ain Dubai (250 meters), with panoramic cabins and a multi-story observation deck in the center. The problem is that a good part of Madrid does not want to talk about the Ferris wheel. In 2025, the City Council commissioned a geotechnical study to assess whether it was viable to plant something of such a scale in the Enrique Tierno Galván park, within Arganzuela. The report concluded that technically it could be done. And the neighbors opposed it, suspecting that this move would be the prelude to the privatization of a green lung, an idyllic area to walk the dog or read for a while. The Delicias para Todos neighborhood association warned of the impact: 300 fewer trees, almost a thousand meters of lost soil and a stolen public landscape. They gathered more than 14,000 signatures against it in a few weeks. Finally, a municipal plot next to the EMT garages, next to the hospital Peace in Madrid Nuevo Norte, even without a formal project registered with the City Council, will presumably be the new home of this star wheel. A French merry-go-round. At the same time, the City Council has decided to put out to tender the management of the legendary Casa de Campo Amusement Park. José Luis Martínez-Almeida, mayor of the city, announced during the State of the City Debate that those almost twenty hectares will go to competition. Aim: modernize it. Among the conditions there is a very specific jewel to preserve, maintain and restore: the wooden merry-go-round, the oldest of all the machines, built in France in 1927 and acquired for the inauguration of the park in 1968. A fair trader from Madrid bought it and took it to the San Isidro meadow, to finally pass into the hands of the City Council and install it in Casa de Campo. It is considered “one of the pieces with the greatest heritage value in the complex” and protected under a wooden pergola to prevent it from deteriorating. Taxidermy and memory. This merry-go-round is an artisanal attraction in the art deco/modernist style, handcrafted by French cabinetmakers, with horses, tigers, elephants and even pigs carved in wood, some with glass taxidermy eyes, and period melodies that recreate the atmosphere of the early 20th century. A little murky for current childhoods, although the memory of the carousel outweighs any scare. During its last major restoration, completed in 2012 by artist Félix Rego, figures were disassembled and recomposed, damage after decades spent outdoors was corrected, and everything from the hood to the chrome was repainted. The idea was for the carousel to continue spinning as something active, not to leave it relegated to a museum piece. Madrid already had its ferris wheel. Compared to the 260 meter tall monster, Ferris Wheel Vision was modest, to say the least. Installed in the 70s next to the central lake and dismantled in 2011, this attraction offered views of the Casa de Campo. It was part of a period of expansions along with Jet Star, La Casa Magnética and Las Alfombras Mágicas. His disappearance was experienced as a small trauma. After 40 years of service, he received a tribute video official when he retired to make way for more intense speeds, like the Abyss or Tarantula. And she wasn’t the only one to die either. Seven Peaks, the Cafeteria Tree, the Ghost Ship… most of them have been falling in favor of roller coasters. New times, new rhythms. With the cable car under renovation —47 panoramic cabins Swiss-made, with glass floors in some of them, sensors, AI and almost double the speed—it seems time to check the nostalgic button. That today the City Council protects an almost hundred-year-old French merry-go-round at the same time that it opens the door to a gigantic structure says a lot about the moment: the capital wants to play in the league of global icons – “a Ferris wheel is worth a ride,” it is often said – but it knows that its true emotional heritage continues to float on the artifacts that have been spinning at 10 km/h in the Casa de Campo for decades. Continuous circular motion, the cycle of life. Images | Madrid Amusement Park; own assembly In Xataka | Madrid has been obsessed with having the largest Ferris wheel in the world for years. And it’s closer than ever to getting it. In Xataka | The best amusement parks in Spain: a selection of getaways full of fun and strong emotions

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