Lately, we see news of quite a few redundancy procedures: H&M is negotiating the departure of 106 people; Nestlé has proposed a redundancy plan for several hundred workers; Telefónica closed another massive layoff process a few months ago.What is surprising is that the economy is doing well. Spain, although with less strength than a few years ago, is still growing. The GDP is holding up. We are controlling inflation. Consumption is resisting. Restaurants are full. Airports too. People continue to buy. Why, then, so many EROs?Here appears Amazon. And not just Amazon, of course. But Amazon better than anyone summarizes the reason for the massive layoffs in an environment of economy that is not in crisis.In 2024, Amazon surpassed 8 billion euros in gross sales in Spain. It's half a point of GDP; an outrageous amount. The general e-commerce figure is, however, misleading. It's said to be one in every ten purchases. But in certain sectors, it has skyrocketed. For example, in fashion, almost 25% of clothing purchases are already made online.Here, what is happening with occupation is better understood. Fashion stores, for example, do not compete only against the store next door or the other brand. They also compete against the sofa at home, the mobile phone in hand, the desire to give yourself a treat, and, above all, a return without explanations or queues at the checkout.In economics we use a concept: friction. In consumption, friction is having to leave home, travel to the store, compare and search, look for fitting rooms, wait for your turn, try on clothes, queue at the checkout, carry bags... If something went wrong, you had to go back and argue.Now all of this is done in a few clicks. One click. Another click. In about twelve clicks, you have the product. Delivery the next day to your home and easy returns if it's not what you expected. The friction is minimal: the consumer encounters almost no obstacles.Word of honor: this week, a colleague told me that at five in the morning he woke up without sleep, grabbed his cell phone and bought himself a Bad Bunny t-shirt. It was Tuesday, not the weekend.Some redundancies are better understood from here. Employment is shifting. Fewer people at the counter and more in the warehouse; fewer at the checkout and more programming algorithms; fewer sales assistants and more delivery drivers…Buying in the afternoon and receiving the next day a product located perhaps 600 kilometers away requires data, prediction, automation, routes, intelligent warehouses, and systems capable of anticipating demand. This is also AI!The topic is not technology, but how it modifies social habits.

When I read that Puig and Estée Lauder were interrupting merger talks, I wasn't surprised. I don't have inside information. Call it intuition. Or memory. But, from what I knew of the company, I never quite saw clearly that it could work out. And, in a way, the news made me happy.I explain it from three perspectives.The first is personal. My first job was at Antonio Puig. It was 1991. The offices were on Travessera de Gràcia. The first day, don Mariano Puig received me. When years later I left, it was also he who said goodbye to me. Marc Puig had his office two or three doors from mine. In marketing, we were barely a dozen people. We often went to the factory on Potosí street. There I learned a great deal. The family delegated and gave people a huge amount of freedom.But, above all, I saw a family business in the deepest sense of the term. Not as a synonym for small, but for responsibility. For lived ownership. For commitment to the long term. For a way of understanding the business that did not entirely separate the surname, the project, and the country.I understand that family companies change. Branches multiply. Generations succeed each other. Management becomes complicated. Sometimes a moment comes when selling, merging, or diluting control seems reasonable. But, at least the Puig I knew, was not a Puig designed to lose command. It was not imaginable. It was not part of its culture.The second plan is for the country. Puig is listed on the stock exchange, yes, but it continues to be controlled by a Catalan family. The family retains around three-quarters of the capital and more than 90% of the voting rights. Companies with their decision-making center here generate rootedness, suppliers, talent, sponsorships, taxation, presence.In an operation with Estée Lauder, by relative dimension, it was difficult to think that real control would not end up shifting. Perhaps not on the first day. Perhaps not in the first board meeting. But these things happen slowly. First structures are shared. Then functions are rationalized. Later decisions are transferred. And one day you discover that a company from here no longer fully decides from here. We would have lost a part of Puig's Catalan identity.The third plan is economic. It was not a merger of equals. Estée Lauder invoices more than double Puig, but loses almost a billion when Puig earns 600 million. Valuations are very difficult.Be that as it may, Puig continues to be a great company. A company that began selling colognes and soaps, door-to-door, in a Seat 600 on the roads of Spain, and which has managed to become a global multinational in luxury, perfumery, fashion, and beauty.There aren't so many stories like this. They must be taken care of.

AI already accounts for more than 60% of global investment in startups, according to a report by PwC and South Summit collected by ARA a few days ago. In 2022 it was 30%. By 2025, two out of every three dollars in global venture capital will go to artificial intelligence companies. As always when money runs faster than caution, the magic word appears: bubble.Well, I don't see it that way. The fact that many AI companies have to disappear doesn't mean AI is a bubble: it means we are facing a technological race. And in a technological race, not everyone wins. Few win. Very few. The rest are left behind.It happened with the internet. It happened with mobile applications. It happened with social networks. It happened with electronic commerce. From each wave, two, three, or four giants emerge. Behind them remain thousands of dead projects, burnt investors, exaggerated promises, and PowerPoint presentations. In the case of the dot-com bubble, the problem is that there were approaches that never generated any value nor were they a business.But no one would say today that the internet did not generate value. No one would say that the mobile phone did not change the economy. No one would say that e-commerce was smoke. There was excess. There was naivety. There were losses. But there was also real transformation.With artificial intelligence, something similar happens. 95% of start-ups will lose their investors' money. Perhaps even more. Many applications will have no market. But this does not turn the phenomenon into fiction.A bubble appears when the price completely separates from value. When it is bought only because tomorrow someone will buy it at a higher price. When there isn't enough business below to justify the investment. In AI there will indeed be business. A lot. The question is who will capture it.Venture capital funds know this perfectly. They don't invest thinking they will get it right: they invest accepting that they will lose in almost all investments. They look for one. The one that multiplies by a hundred, by two hundred, or by a thousand. This single investment pays for the entire previous graveyard.It's the logic of the gold rush. There are thousands running to the mountain. Most find nothing. Some sell shovels. A few find a vein. And these, who are few, explain the stampede. But there is gold. What happens is that there isn't enough for everyone.That's why it's important not to confuse two different things: that a technology generates value and that everyone who invests in it makes money. AI will be a brutal concentration of profits in a few hands. AI is not smoke. It is a technology that is already entering companies, offices, factories, hospitals, banks, and administrations. Another thing is that many are paying the entrance fee for a party where there will be neither drinks nor food for everyone.

According to a study cited by Cinco Días, 70.8% of users of the betting platform Polymarket lose money. At the other extreme, 0.1% concentrate 58.5% of the winnings and 1% accumulate 84.1%. Many enter thinking they are participating in an intelligent market. Very few take home almost all the money.Polymarket presents itself as a prediction market. Its users bet on future events: elections, judicial decisions, inflation, sports results, political appointments, or military conflicts.Betting on whether a footballer will score a goal, well, that's fine. But betting on whether the United States will launch missiles against Iran, honestly, I don't understand it. Even less so on a legalized platform.Its defenders use a fallacious argument. They claim that thousands of people, incentivized with real money, incorporate data, analyses, and intuitions. And that, thanks to this, the sum of all these bets results in a form of collective intelligence faster and more precise than any news or official communication from a public or corporate body.Let's see, betting on who will win an election already poses dilemmas. Betting on whether one country will bomb another opens the doors to immorality. Furthermore, leaked or insider information is an opaque advantage that turns into money.The U.S. Department of Justice announced charges on April 23, 2026, against a U.S. soldier accused of using classified information to earn over $400,000 on Polymarket through bets related to the military operation to capture Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.There were also suspicions surrounding bets linked to attacks against Iran. Several newly created accounts on Polymarket reportedly won around $1.2 million after betting, shortly before, that the United States would attack Iran before February 28, 2026.A market can be technically sophisticated and morally miserable. It can produce useful information and, at the same time, incentivize repugnant behavior. It can be called prediction, investment or financial innovation. But when someone makes money because other people will be bombed, captured or murdered, the word market falls short.What collective intelligence are we talking about? I would speak more of collective immorality. War already generates too many indirect benefits. Turning its probability or calendar into a direct bet goes beyond obscenity. The tragedy of others begins to have a price. Pain transforms into contract. And death, into an opportunity for profitability through gambling.How disgusting.

Incredible. Taylor Swift has patented her voice and an image from her concerts as a trademark. The singer wants to protect two phrases spoken by her and a specific image from her The Eras Tour in front of unauthorized uses of artificial intelligence. Matthew McConaughey has done something similar with his voice, his gestures, and some recognizable elements of his public identity. It is incredible that we have reached this point. For years we have registered trademarks, logos, compositions, literary works, graphic and industrial designs, inventions, characters, products... That is to say, we have registered what we produced, what we invented, what we generated from our skills and intelligence. Now we take a step further to confront AI. We patent our voice. Not what we do, but what we are. A voice acquires the rank of an industrial asset. A way of looking, of speaking, of appearing on stage or greeting the public can become legally protected material. The human enters the commercial register. The United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted several of Swift's applications, as well as those of other singers in recent months.Artificial intelligence has changed the nature of copying. A voice can be cloned. A face can be reconstructed. A performance can be reused to create another. An unknown singer may discover that their timbre has been used to fuel a song they did not sing. Any artist can end up as raw material for a creation they neither know, nor authorize, nor are paid for. Registering voices is like trying to catch the moon in a basket. AI does not need to copy a voice exactly. It can evade it with another formulation. It can approximate it without touching the protected perimeter. It can learn from millions of anonymous voices uploaded to musical applications, social networks, home videos, contests, tutorials, or any platform where, when we download it, we press “accept the legal conditions” without reading them. Let's get realistic. It will be impossible to stop the use of humans to create digitally.The path will have to be different. It will be necessary to identify. Distinguish. Certify. Just as there is an ISO for certain processes or a designation of origin for a wine, we will need a clear signal that says: made by a person. I call it: "human designation of origin." Sung, written, or performed by a person. It is information that the consumer has the right to know. Here will be the true value. In a market flooded with synthetic content, humans will need guarantees, traceability, and a seal.The future of creation will not consist in competing against the machine, but in preserving the origin. Like good wines. Not only the result will matter. It will matter to know which land it comes from.

This week marks 40 years since Chernobyl. Nuclear power plants are the great challenge, social, economic and energy-related, of the coming decades. It is an issue without political consensus, with social repercussions and a large economic impact. Now, additionally, also geopolitical.In the EU, electricity generation is distributed approximately as follows: 44% renewables (wind, solar, and hydro), 23% nuclear, and 33% fossil, mainly gas (20%) and coal (10-13%).Spain presents a slightly different profile: renewables exceed 50%, nuclear is around 20% and gas also hovers around 20%, while coal is already residual.More than half of European electricity is linked to inputs from outside the EU, as gas and coal are, for the most part, imported. The other 50% corresponds to energy generated with own resources: renewables and nuclear. Renewable energy is variable and nuclear provides continuous generation.If the objective is to eliminate fossil generation in order not to depend on other regions, we need an energy source to cover the third of the European electricity system that fossils provide. Replacing this 30-33% solely with renewables would require massive oversizing accompanied by large-scale storage, still costly and insufficient.As of now, the only alternative is to expand the nuclear base. In approximate terms, the European Union currently has around 100 operational reactors. To completely replace gas and coal, it would be necessary to add on the order of 120 to 150 new standard-sized reactors to the European total. This is more than doubling the current capacity and would require two or three decades, with a distribution among the main countries.The argument of safety is often invoked as a brake. However, the evidence shows a system with very high standards. Since Fukushima in 2011, there have been no serious accidents in the developed world, and in Western Europe the nuclear park has been operating for decades without incidents of systemic impact.It makes little sense to invoke fear of an accident. Europe already coexists with nuclear energy. Expanding it does not introduce any new category of risk. The risk already exists.Nuclear offers a stable, predictable, and emission-free base. It allows the system to be sustained when there is no sun or wind and reduces dependence on unfriendly countries. For industry, it means more stable prices. For the economy as a whole, less vulnerability.Forty years after Chernobyl, Europe faces a difficult decision. But there is no alternative.

Aena digs in. Aena president, Maurici Lucena, on Thursday once again shut the door on any real transfer or co-management of Josep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat airport and, at most, agreed to study for Catalonia an body similar to the Basque one: bilateral, yes, but only consultative and without decision-making capacity. The airport network will continue to be managed from the center, with unified criteria, and communities can be heard, but they do not decide.Aena defends that the integrated management of the Spanish airport network allows for the coordination of investments, tariffs, operation, and planning of the whole, and recalls that 49% of its capital is in private hands, so any transfer of management would open a political, regulatory, and probably judicial conflict.From the directive logic, the argument is understandable. From the territorial logic, it is not. Today, an airport can no longer be seen merely as a transport infrastructure. It is a first-rate economic lever. It orders tourist flows, connects business ecosystems, influences conferences, investment, talent, and international projection. And all of this impacts a specific territory, not an administrative abstraction. The airport belongs to a network, but its effects fall on a determined city, region, and economic model.Here Catalonia is entirely right to demand more than just being heard. If the Generalitat wants to guide its tourism policy, it needs to intervene on one of its main entry channels. A territorial policy for tourism or the promotion of certain international markets cannot be designed without impacting the infrastructure that conditions these movements.Centralized management can make sense in aspects such as security, air navigation, network technical coordination, or regulatory homogeneity. Nobody disputes this. But the economic impact of an airport should be decided by its regional government. This is where the Spanish model goes wrong.Barcelona Airport needs a strategic direction linked to the interests of Catalonia. The role that Barcelona should play as a business, trade fair, and scientific hub corresponds to Catalans.If a territory bears the urban, environmental, economic, and social costs of an airport, it must have the capacity to intervene in its orientation. Today's economic Europe increasingly operates through metropolitan regions, logistical hubs, and territorial production systems. Continuing to treat airports as a piece moved solely from Madrid reflects an old idea of power and an overly centralized vision of the economy.

I will tell you a real anecdote.A close relative submitted their final master's thesis a month ago. The center ran the thesis through Turnitin, a program that calculates the probability that a thesis was generated by AI. If it's very high, they reject it and require it to be redone. It came out at 8%.The thing is that when we received the correction from the tutor, it seemed a bit strange to us. It was too impeccable and with somewhat baroque expressions. Strangely precise points to correct. How strange, we said to ourselves! We uploaded it to a detector. Result: 80% probability of being AI. I promise it's true.It's no reproach! I think what the tutor did is perfect, as long as he had read the work and polished the AI's correction. But the anecdote shows us that it is absurd to try to expel artificial intelligence from the educational system.It happened with the calculator, and with the internet. And with Google! Do you remember when it was forbidden to use search engines for schoolwork? Little by little we saw that the issue was not spending three hours looking for a piece of data that could be found in thirty seconds. The important thing, from an educational point of view, was to know what to do with that data.Introducing AI into the educational system is quite a challenge. We must differentiate between using a tool and using thought. A student can use AI and force themselves to order ideas, compare approaches, correct an argument, imagine examples, or improve a complex theory. To think!The problem is the student who doesn't think, only copies or pretends a competence and delivers an empty text.So before he will have to learn to write, of course. You cannot put a child in front of an AI before they learn to write well, to read, to order ideas, to sustain arguments... Just as you don't teach to use a calculator before knowing the times tables, we will have to introduce AI after the student has achieved these skills.Once this threshold is overcome, introducing AI will allow us to develop in our young people the skills that are already most in demand in the labor market: judging, refining, correcting, reinterpreting, contrasting, personalizing…Therefore, this is not about whether the student can use AI. The question is at what age they start using it, how they should use it, and to develop which skills. We will have to design exercises in which AI raises new skills: asking for processes, demanding intermediate versions, introducing oral debate, having a student explain why they have accepted a suggestion and why they have rejected another.This is the future. And it will require great masters... in person!

Holy Week. In Spain it means processions, floats, saetas, brotherhoods and entire cities organized around a calendar that is not only religious, but also cultural. In Catalonia it also means jesters, palms and palmons, family getaways and visits to emblematic places linked to the Christian tradition. Many Catalans of Andalusian origin return to their land these days to reconnect with Holy Week, which continues to have enormous strength.All this coexists with a certain intellectual contempt. Not on the part of everyone, of course. But in a large part of the political and urban progressivism, the Catholic religious tradition is usually viewed with a mixture of contempt, irony, and moral superiority. It is tolerated as a picturesque custom, an ancient remnant. Religion is questioned and its symbols are caricatured.The curious thing is that this same country that despises its traditions turns them, when April arrives, into a formidable economic machine. Renfe has scheduled three million places for this Holy Week. In many destinations, hotel reservations are close to full: Cuenca, Toledo, Andalusia, to give some examples. Tradition moves people, fills hotels, sustains restaurants, activates businesses, generates temporary employment, and gives economic meaning to many territories.Seville has even sophisticated the public management of its processions with maps, capacity control, and special mobility devices. Barcelona maintains the Fira de Rams on Rambla de Catalunya, where palms and laurel are sold. Catalan pastry shops are already exhibiting their "monas" as small works of competitive craftsmanship. All of this is real economy.The paradox deserves attention. The legacy is undervalued and then its impact on hospitality, transport, and domestic tourism is celebrated. The symbol is criticized and the box is applauded.Welcome to all this economic activity. But that is not the important thing. The important thing is that they are part of our legacy. Of a historical, cultural and moral heritage that has contributed to shaping us as a society. One may not be a believer, not practice, not share the Catholic faith and, even so, perfectly understand that one cannot live ignoring the Judeo-Christian tradition that has shaped a large part of our culture, our sensitivity, our idea of good and evil, our way of understanding life in common.Each person embraces these dates from a different place: from faith, from family emotion, from memory, from custom, or from simple inheritance. All of this is legitimate. What is poorer is to look at them with dogmatic contempt, as if they were an uncomfortable relic that is only tolerated because it makes money. They are part of us. And it would be advisable to remember this also for Easter.

I don't know about you, but I've been leaving the house without cash for a while now. And I don't mean going down to buy bread. I mean taking a high-speed train, going to Madrid, spending the whole day there, and coming back without a single coin in my wallet. Not a bill. Nothing. At most, a card. And often not even that: my phone. I suppose that was progress. That's why it's somewhat comical that the European Central Bank is now recommending that we keep cash at home. Not much. Between 70 and 100 euros per person, more or less what would be needed to last 72 hours in case of an emergency. In other words, the same system that has been pushing us towards an increasingly digital, more traceable, and more dependent world of screens, networks, batteries, keys, and platforms for years, is now asking us to keep a few bills in a drawer in case all this technical marvel fails for three days. The news is amusing. First, they get us used to not touching money. Then they turn cash into a somewhat inconvenient relic, even suspicious and frowned upon. Then they close ATMs, reduce branches, normalize paying by swiping a finger over a screen. And, when the process is already quite advanced, they warn us: "Don't forget to have a little cash just in case." Just in case of what. Just in case what almost everything now depends on fails.The ECB explains it in technical language: resilience, contingency, operational continuity. All very credible. But translated into everyday Catalan, it means something quite simple: have cash, because we know the system can fail. And when it fails, you won't eat with a password. What strikes me most is not that they tell us to have cash at home, but that they have had to say it. It doesn't show that the authorities are giving up on digital money. It shows just the opposite: that they know perfectly well how much we have handed over our daily lives to a payment and collection infrastructure that we do not control. So much so, that they are publicly releasing a contingency plan that consists of returning, for 72 hours, to something that was supposed to be despicable and old. They don't recommend it to us from a daily perspective, but as a monetary first-aid kit, like someone who advises having flashlights, batteries, or cans of preserves. Honestly, it makes me laugh. Put 100 euros in your emergency kit for blackouts.The message: it's not that cash is still alive; it's that we've advanced so much towards its daily irrelevance that the central bank has had to remind us that real money (the kind that works when everything else fails) still exists, and that we should try to keep some at home. We are a society that, in effect, has already given up on cash.

Oil prices are rising again. Brent crude is hovering around $110 and has even touched $120. This isn't a one-off spike. It's a jump that could last for months.

Judging by the headlines surrounding the Iran war, there's a fear that the West will enter the war and we could end up in a third world war. However, when one examines the international system from an economic perspective, another conclusion emerges: a large-scale, protracted war is profoundly irrational for almost all the actors involved.

Today I'm taking a brief break from my economics articles. On Saturday night, at the Palau de la Música, the show about Maragall that I had the privilege of composing and which the newspaper ARA co-produced premiered. Before returning to my usual topics, I feel I must simply say thank you. To everyone.

Revenues are growing. Spending is growing. The deficit remains. The 2026 budget projects non-financial revenues of €48.231 billion and total spending of €49.162 billion. The difference is small in relative terms (a deficit of 0.1%), but the economic message is more profound: in the midst of the expansionary phase of the cycle, we are still not generating a surplus. Spending increases by €9.126 billion compared to the last approved budget. That's a jump of 22.8%. Revenues, driven by the strong economic performance and the financing model, are also growing strongly, although the Catalan government doesn't present the comparative data with the same political forcefulness as it does for spending. The key is this: practically all the increase in revenue is absorbed by higher structural spending. In economic terms, this means that the permanent size of the public sector is increasing, taking advantage of the tailwinds of the economic cycle. Is this prudent?

The government has created a single state registry for tourist accommodations. A mandatory registration number. One-stop shop. Digital traceability. And appeals have already been filed with the Supreme Court alleging an overreach of authority. Andalusia and industry associations have challenged it. The autonomous communities are defending their jurisdiction. The central government wants to centralize the data.

Gold is back at record highs, over €4,200 per ounce. Since July of last year, it has experienced a meteoric rise. Those who invested back then have almost doubled their initial investment. Just three months earlier, a wholesaler in the jewelry sector recommended I invest in gold. I didn't because I never speculate or invest in things that don't offer clear returns.

Several banks have announced that they will tighten mortgage conditions throughout 2026. Prices will rise, and lending standards will be stricter. This shift comes after a record-breaking 2025. The official explanation cites prudence and the need to avoid future risks in the real estate market.

This week, new ads have appeared for entire villages for sale at five hundred thousand euros. I confess: I'm one of those people who spends time looking at these ads, driven by a kind of fascination, a dream, and awe all at once. "Should we sell our apartment and move there?" I often ask my family, knowing I'm suggesting the impossible.

This week, the ARA reported on a study by four German economists analyzing millions of import transactions in the United States. The conclusion was devastating: between 94% and 96% of the cost of the tariffs imposed by Washington has not been borne by foreign exporters, but by Americans themselves. Prices have not fallen. They have risen. The tariffs have functioned as a hidden internal tax. An own goal. Read this way, the message seems reassuring for Europe. If the tariffs are paid by Americans and everything remains more or less the same, the damage is limited. This interpretation is incomplete. And, above all, misleading.

This January 14th, I strolled down a shopping street in Barcelona and… Hearts. Red. "Give love." "Surprise them." Gift sets. Ribbons. Valentine's Day was on full display as if it were imminent.