"Most people have a very good experience, but the main difficulties are stress and isolation". The doctor in business psychology and professor at the Eada business school Aline Masuda summarises the first year of formalised teleworking in Catalonia. A year ago, Eada led a study which sought to find out how working from home was being implemented; now, it aimed to study how the practice has evolved in the past year. And there have been changes: whereas then the main lesson was that working from home lengthened the working day, now the main problem has shifted to feelings of isolation from colleagues and a significant incidence of stress symptoms.

First half of the year and Catalonia has already accumulated more than 3,100 foreclosures. This is the name given to the proceedings that banks in particular initiate when the person to whom they have lent money falls into arrears, among other possible defaults, and more than 50% of these have been claims linked to natural persons. These types of procedures, which may or may not end in eviction, have tripled between April and June this year compared to last year and are more than twice as high as in 2019, when the pandemic did not alter the statistics yet.

Housing prices are already growing at rates more typical of a world without pandemic. According to data published Wednesday by the Spanish National Statistics Institute (INE), buying a home in Catalonia in June was 3.2% more expensive than a year ago and 2.5% more than three months earlier. All this coinciding with a period that several professional sectors involved in the real estate market have been celebrated as the best in sales in fourteen years.

The demonstration on September 19 against the expansion of El Prat airport is starting to gather supports. This Tuesday it gained a highly peculiar support: the Catalan Government itself has not ruled out turning up at the demonstration with some of its councillors. "I would not be surprised if someone participates," said the executive spokeswoman. The most remarkable thing in this case is that, if confirmed, it would show a Government protesting against itself, as it agreed this reform with the Spanish government. How is this justified? The Generalitat argues that it does want the investment to make changes at the airport, but demands that it has no environmental impact, which it considers Aena does not take into account. It does not want La Ricarda lagoon or any of the protected areas in the area to be affected. Meanwhile, the organisers of the protest are already beginning to present the details.

"Let it be over, let it be over!" The co-driver of this car does not hide his euphoria as he passes, for the last time, through the toll of La Roca del Vallès. There is another who, minutes later, will express the same emotion by waving to this iconic orange-roofed construction. Most simply opt for the horn. This is how they celebrate "the milestone", which is how the Spanish Minister of Transport, Raquel Sanchez, will refer to the end of tolls on the AP-7 and AP-2, and greet all the media waiting for her at the roadside. The head of this department arrives late to her appointment with the press due to the accumulation of traffic the toll generates. "Fortunately this image will be history in a few hours", she says shortly after arriving.

The first formal strike in the home delivery sector has managed to get noticed. About 150 Glovo supermarket workers have concentrated this Friday morning at the headquarters of the company and have repeated the action early in the afternoon in the centre of Barcelona to demand their direct hiring and certain improvements in their working conditions. This is the result of the first of nine strike days that will be distributed between this and the next two weekends. The first mobilisation has had a 100% of follow-up, according to CCOO union, and has paralysed the activity in the supermarkets that the company has in Barcelona.

"Despite the fact that we noticed an increase in tourists, the figures that we anticipated were bad and continue to be so". The general director of the Guild of Hotels of Barcelona, Manel Casals, has assumed that this summer is lost for some time now. And now the July data begin to confirm his suspicions: although tourism has doubled compared to last year, the levels are still 37% lower than before the pandemic.

The palpable increase of foreign tourism in the streets of Barcelona has not improved the situation of the city's hoteliers. The Hotelier Guild says that if it were a normal summer there would be about 60,000 people sleeping every night in hotels in Barcelona and that at the moment the number is below 15,000. "Three months ago were about 5,000, therefore, there is more tourism and it is normal to see some movement," explains Manel Casals, director general of the entity. This does not mean, however, that the situation is great.

An average price tag slightly over €4m makes Avinguda Rocaferrera the street with the most expensive housing in Catalonia. It is a street located in Sant Andreu de Llavaneres, a town of around 11,000 inhabitants in the Maresme area which does not even appear on the list of towns with the highest per capita income in Catalonia. Even so, according to the latest data from Idealista, this coastal town beats Barcelona, which until now was the city with the most expensive streets in Catalonia.

The three consecutive days of mobilizations by Glovo delivery riders have borne fruit: according to Unioin CCOO, the home delivery platform has informed its riders that it will make changes to the application after the protests. It has not advanced more details, saying only that they will be made public on Friday. Meanwhile, according to the union, dissatisfied workers have organised to boycott the system they complain about, and do not rule out an indefinite strike if they do not agree with the changes presented by the company.

Barcelona's Chamber of Commerce's economic report for 2020 is the bleakest in its 50-year history. Presented this Friday, it shows Catalonia has registered the most intense fall in GDP among the main European countries (-11.6%), almost double the average in the euro zone (-6.6%). Even so, the various people responsible for drawing up this report are convinced that on the other side of the balance there is a recovery so pronounced that it will place Catalonia among the economies that will grow the most between this year and the next. Their only reservation is the effect recent covid-19 outbreaks and recommendations not to travel to Catalonia from its main tourist markets may have.

The tourism sector is beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel. The online travel agency eDreams has surpassed the activity it recorded before the pandemic in June of this year. Specifically, the company has managed 2% more bookings than in June 2019, which it attributes both to the good rates of vaccination and the easing of restrictions aswell as the digital nature of the company, which is bringing customers who previously would have used other means. That said, these bookings are still on average for less than they were before the pandemic.

Sixteen months and a pandemic later, the new rules of the game are about to be activated. From Thursday, 1st July, e-commerce businesses selling to other EU countries will be taxed according to new criteria. Brussels is thus approaching a twofold objective: to become a real single market and to shield itself against fraud and competition problems generated by large foreign platforms. But what does this change mean, in practice, for small entrepreneurs?

If the financial crisis of some thirteen years ago highlighted Spain's dependence on bricks and mortar, the covid-19 crisis has shown that the only thing that has been done is to change the sector. That is, to become dependent on mass tourism. This is pointed out by the Cercle d'Economia, which in its latest opinion piece criticises that for decades homework is not done. According to the entity, practically the only opportunity to reform the production model now are the European funds, and to take advantage of them requires long-term political consensus, in addition to public-private collaboration and address the debate on the territorial model.

New historical milestone achieved by the pandemic and e-commerce. The impact that the two factors are having on trade in Barcelona has led to an understanding that until recently seemed impossible: an agreement so that stores can open every Sunday and bank holiday between May 1 and September 30. Two of the entities representing the sector, the foundations Barcelona Comerç and Barcelona Oberta - the second of which is a splinter of the first, precisely after disagreements around this issue - have explained on Monday that they have begun the process to make this happen in Barcelona starting next year, once they know that they have the support of the city council.

Norwegian has informed its workforce it intends to lay off 1,191 workers throughout Spain. According to Union Sindical Obrera (USO) and Sepla, this number of people involves 85% of the staff of the company in the State. The unions also add that the decision has been taken after "more than a year benefiting from the furlough scheme". In addition, this massive layoff means the end of long-haul operations from Barcelona, as well as "a brutal cut in short-haul operations".

Giving out your name: done. Grabbing the FFP2 face mask they hand out to you and putting it one: done. Run your hands through an automatic hydroalcoholic gel dispenser: done. Pick up a small portable gel dispenser: done. Head to the antigen testing area: done. Sign a consent form stating that you have no symptoms of covid, that you have not been in contact with any infected people (that you know of), and that you agree to let them know if you test positive in the next few days, among other things: done. Give your mobile phone so that the system will notify you of the result once the antigen test has been analysed: done. Go through the stick-in-nose issue: done. Waiting for a while in the open air space next door while the result is sent to your mobile phone: done. Show the message stating you are virus-free to the person guarding the access door: done. We finally hear: "Welcome to a safe event!"

When an organisation looks back on 2020, whatever kind of organisation it may be, it always brings up one particular point: the furlough scheme (ERTE) avoided a greater evil. On Monday, trade union UGT gave some supporting data: 1.2 million Catalans have been in this situation at some point between March 2020 and January this year. To reach this conclusion, which means that 38% of the working population of Catalonia have experienced furlough, the union has looked at the data of first-time recipients.

If a year ago the unemployment rate among women was 10.9% in Catalonia, now the figure is four points higher (14.9%). If this same year the unemployment rate among men was 9.9%, now it is less than three points higher (12.8%). If then the gap between the two indicators managed to narrow a few tenths, now it has widened again by two points. "Women have been more affected than men by the adverse consequences of the pandemic on the labour market", summarizes a report by the International Labour Organization (ILO). "The impact of the pandemic on the labour market has a woman's name", agrees the CCOO syndicate.