There are flowers with a scent that's almost impossible to escape. And this story of a thousand fragrances begins with one of them, the jasmine that gave its name to the street in Vilassar de Dalt where Antonio Puig Castelló was born on October 19, 1889. His father, Simón, was a farmer who had done well selling potatoes in the United Kingdom and had been able to move to London. From the British capital, he returned with various products to import, among them perfumes from the French firm D'Orsay. From that moment on, despite episodes such as the defection of his first business partner in America with his secretary or the sinking of a ship loaded with his products by a German submarine, his surname has remained inextricably linked to aromas. Puig is today a company with more than 4.3 billion euros in annual sales, selling its products to more than 150 countries and hiding behind such globally recognized brands as Paco Rabanne, Carolina Herrera, Jean Paul Gaultier, Nina Ricci or Charlotte Tilbury.

Who will be the winners and losers in an automation-based economy? How should we approach the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in the world of work? Much of Jeremias Adams-Prassl's research revolves around some of these questions, and many others that arise with the explosion of this technology and its already visible impact on our daily lives. The professor and Vice Dean of Law at the University of Oxford presented some of these ideas at a conference at the Macaya Palace of the La Caixa Foundation a few weeks ago.

It is still unknown what role Yolanda Díaz will play in the upcoming state elections. It is clear, however, that after relinquishing her leadership of the left wing of the PSOE, she will leave behind a legacy of seven years at the head of the Ministry of Labor, if the general elections are held in 2027. A union source closely involved with the government does not hesitate to describe the agenda of reforms and measures promoted by her ministry as a "turning point" in 2021.

In 2025, each Spanish worker performed 5.6 hours of unpaid overtime per week, according to an analysis presented this Monday by the CCOO economic team. This study concludes that €141 per week, equivalent to €7,355 per year, went unpaid in wages and social security contributions for employees due to this unpaid work. This represents 2.49 million unpaid overtime hours, affecting a total of 441,000 people, or 2.3% of the salaried population. In Catalonia, workers put in 495,000 hours of overtime each week, making it the second-highest autonomous community after Madrid (582,000 hours). In fact, Catalonia has 91,000 salaried workers who worked more hours per week than stipulated in their contracts for the same pay, also ranking second. Even so, in terms of the proportion of the total salaried workforce, it fell to fourth place, with 2.7% of Catalans working unpaid overtime. According to the CCOO union, using data from the Labor Force Survey (EPA) of the National Institute of Statistics (INE), there are 928,000 people who regularly worked more hours than agreed upon, without any data indicating that these hours were paid or subject to social security contributions. Within this figure, the report emphasizes, there are 568,000 workers with a 40-hour workweek who regularly worked more hours, "which, a priori, would violate labor legislation regarding working hours." The union estimates that the 2.49 million unpaid overtime hours averaged weekly in 2025 would equate to an annual labor cost of €3.243 billion that companies and public administrations failed to pay workers. This sum includes not only wages but also social security contributions and direct taxes that are no longer being collected by the Tax Agency. Education, the most affected sector

By sector, those with the highest volume of unpaid overtime were education (440,000 hours), transportation and storage (270,000), manufacturing (255,000), and retail (217,000). The teachers' union also has the most workers affected by this labor issue, with 72,000 people working more hours per week than agreed upon without any additional compensation. In contrast, if we look at the incidence, the electricity, gas, steam, and air conditioning supply sector and the financial and insurance sector have the highest percentage of employees working unpaid overtime, at 5.6% in both cases. Education ranks third, with 4.9% of its employees in this situation. On the other hand, the sectors with the highest average intensity of unpaid overtime are transportation (8.3 hours), agriculture and livestock farming (7.1 hours), and construction (6.5 hours).

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"We call the City of Justice twice a month and the answer is always the same." It's been almost eight months since Montse Aguilar... a worker from the cleaning services of the Barcelona City CouncilMontse died upon arriving home after a workday during the heat wave at the end of June. Since then, her family has been waiting for the final autopsy to determine the cause of death so they can take legal action and argue in court that it was a workplace accident, not a random death. "They tell us they have nothing. We haven't received any new information since September 8th," Clara Aguilar, Montse's sister, explained to ARA.

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Puig's latest results, the second it has presented as a listed company on the Ibex 35, have once again set records. The Catalan fashion and fragrance company achieved profits of €594 million in 2025, 11.9% higher than the previous year, and sales of €5.042 billion, a 5.3% increase. Although the growth rate has slowed compared to its last results (when profits soared 14.1% and revenue 11.3%), the multinational remains at all-time highs for the fifth consecutive year. "It's a record year, and we've grown above the premium beauty market," said the company's CEO, Marc Puig, this Wednesday during the press conference presenting the results. Adjusted EBITDA – the business's operating profit before accounting for financial and accounting effects – also increased by 7.8% to €1.045 billion, with a margin of 20.7%, exceeding the company's initial forecasts. Puig set its initial public offering (IPO) price in May 2024 at €24.5 per share, and it is now trading around €16.6, a drop of more than 30%. Regarding the company's performance after a year and a half on the stock exchange, Marc Puig explained that the five main companies with which they compete have fallen by 24% in the same period. "The sector had significant growth prospects, and that has had an impact. But we are not necessarily being valued for what we should be," the executive said. Today the stock market reacted well to the results, and its value jumped nearly 6% at the start of trading.

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Catalonia already hosts 203 hubs International technology centers, after 12 more have arrived in the last year. We are talking about centers of foreign companies that export digital services or products from the Catalan capital to the rest of the world and that now employ 46,080 workers, 10% more than in 2024. This data is collected in the fourth edition of the reportTech Hubs OverviewThe initiative, presented this Tuesday, is promoted by Mobile World Capital Barcelona (MWCapital) in collaboration with ACCIÓ, the Catalan government's business competitiveness agency, and the Barcelona City Council's Department of International Economic Promotion. In 2025 alone, 4,443 new jobs were created in these sectors. hubswhich expect to reach a workforce of 51,526 employees this year. "Many are professionals we must import because we don't have the capacity to generate qualified talent at the rate these companies are looking for," explained Francesc Fajula, director of MWCapital. In fact, according to the results of previous editions of the report, nearly 38% of these workers are of foreign origin, and the rest are local. That is to say, these centers have attracted approximately 17,500 foreign professionals.

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Fira de Barcelona is looking towards a near future where it will be able to compete at the highest level of European and international exhibition centers. The organization is beginning to consider the new possibilities that will open up when it acquires the 60,000 square meters of the new Hall 0 at its Gran Via facilities in Hospitalet de Llobregat, and with the expansion in Montjuïc, coinciding with the centenary of the 1929 Barcelona International Equestrian Exposition. The institution is also working on attracting trade shows related to the world of medicine and biomedicine, following the success of the congresses it has hosted in recent years at the Barcelona International Convention Centre (CCIB).

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The YouTubers And some social media profiles have found a new goldmine for generating discussion, tension, and therefore, more views for their content. The claim that young people (millennials and zetas) will have a much darker future than the present enjoyed by their parents and grandparents (boomersThis has reopened the debate surrounding the sustainability of pensions and a scenario of intergenerational conflict that is being particularly capitalized on by the far-right. That the system is under strain is something experts have been saying for years, but beyond the clashes between age groups, the question for the coming decades is different: how to guarantee pensions in the future?

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The gender pay gap is one of the clearest examples of inequality between men and women in the labor market. In Catalonia, this disparity resulted in women earning 16.75% less than men in 2023: the average annual earnings for men were €32,721.58, while for women it was €27,240.93. With these figures, the monthly difference amounts to €456.72 less for women. These are the latest available data explaining this structural phenomenon, presented in a report this Friday by the UGT (General Union of Workers) of Catalonia. The wage gap between men and women is greater in Catalonia than in Spain as a whole, where the gap stood at 15.74%.

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Prices in Catalonia began the year following the downward trend, with year-on-year inflation reaching 2% in January, four-tenths of a percentage point lower than the previous month, according to data published this Friday by the National Statistics Institute (INE). The decrease is mainly explained by the evolution of energy prices and consolidates the slowdown that began in recent months. This also places it three-tenths of a percentage point below the national average (2.3%), and for the eleventh consecutive month, the cost of living has risen less in Catalonia than in Spain as a whole. The Principality was the sixth autonomous community with the smallest increase in the Consumer Price Index (CPI, the indicator that measures the evolution of the cost of living), after La Rioja, Murcia, Galicia, Castilla-La Mancha, and Asturias, where the rate fell by a further tenth of a percentage point to 1.9%. In contrast, the regions where prices rose the most were the Community of Madrid (+3%), Ceuta (+2.9%), and Cantabria and the Valencian Community (+2.5%). In Catalonia, the product groups that saw the largest price increases in January compared to the same month of the previous year were insurance and financial services (5.9%), alcoholic beverages and tobacco (4.5%), followed by restaurants and accommodation services (3.7%), while transportation (-0.7%) registered decreases. By region, Tarragona led the year-on-year increase in the CPI at the start of this year, with a rise of 2.1%, followed by 2% in Barcelona and Girona, and 1.6% in Lleida. In Spain, year-on-year inflation stood at 2.3% in January, six tenths of a percentage point lower than the previous month's figure and one tenth of a percentage point lower than the initial estimate from the National Statistics Institute (INE). This is the largest decrease since March of last year and is mainly explained by the moderation of energy prices. The final figure published this Friday thus reaffirms the trend of price moderation observed in recent months. With this result, inflation continues to approach the European Central Bank's (ECB) target of around 2%. The Ministry of Economy has highlighted that, over the course of 2025, the aggregate purchasing power of households increased by 1.5% thanks to wage increases that outpaced average inflation for the year. Food Prices

As for core inflation—which excludes energy and fresh food prices due to their greater volatility—this indicator remains stable at 2.6% for the third consecutive month. Food prices, which had previously been at the forefront of the price crisis, moderated their increase by one-tenth of a percentage point compared to December.

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The Catalan perfumery chain San Remo has permanently closed its doors. Last Wednesday, the company ordered the closure of all 25 of its stores in Catalonia – 23 in Barcelona, ​​one in Sabadell, and one in Girona – and, according to the CCOO union, as reported in the ARA newspaper and confirmed by the Catalan government's Department of Labor, has filed for a temporary layoff plan (ERTE) due to force majeure. Furthermore, the company has informed its staff that it will file for bankruptcy. As a result, since Wednesday, February 4th, up to 115 employees have been awaiting news from the company and have been instructed not to report to work.

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Last year, 109 workers died in work-related accidents in Catalonia, a 22.5% increase compared to the previous year. Data from the Observatory of Labor and the Production Model sheds light on the trend of workplace accidents in 2025, a year in which the number of victims reached its highest level in the last 14 years. One has to go back to 2011, when 113 people died, to find a higher figure.

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The Dutch multinational AkzoNobel –which bought the former Titan Industries in 2020AkzoNobel has launched a workforce reduction plan (ERE) that could affect 120 workers at its plant in El Prat de Llobregat. The CO.BAS union, which holds a majority of the workforce representation, considers this business decision "completely unjustified" and believes it was made "with the intention of repressing union activity at a plant with a long and strong tradition of struggle." The union points out that in recent years, union action has prevented the implementation of wage cuts and other "measures that degrade working conditions," unlike what has happened at other AkzoNobel workplaces in Catalonia. The Colectivo Ronda cooperative of lawyers, which advises the workers, explained in a statement that the proposed layoffs would reduce the current workforce of approximately 200 people by about 60% and "the virtual disappearance of the plant's productive capacity." In January, AzkoNobel announced the transformation of its El Prat plant into a production center exclusively for water-based paints, with an investment of 11 million euros. This change has led to a workforce reduction plan (ERE) and 120 layoffs. "The company is approaching this process with the utmost respect for its employees and their legal representatives, and with a full commitment to reaching a mutually beneficial agreement," the group stated. When contacted by ARA, management declined to comment further "out of respect for the negotiation process." CO.BAS, the Basque Country Workers' Union, emphasized that the multinational completed an investment and modernization plan for machinery and processes at these facilities last July and expressed surprise at the changes observed in recent months. "Since last June, the El Prat de Llobregat plant has seen increases in all activity levels recorded since 2019. Overtime hours worked by the workforce have multiplied, an extraordinary night production shift has been added, and in many cases, vacations planned for 2025 have even been postponed. This has resulted not only in a dramatic increase in production at the plant, but also in an increase in business volume and profit margin. In this context and under these circumstances, what sense does it make to lay off 120 people, almost all of whom are dedicated to plant production?"

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Collective bargaining is the forum where representatives of workers and companies meet to negotiate all aspects of working conditions, from wages and holidays to working hours. These agreements are formalized through collective bargaining agreements, a mechanism that, ironically, experienced a 16.89% drop in Catalonia last year. The employers' association Foment del Treball has indicated that in 2025, a total of 310 agreements were registered in the Principality, affecting 611,698 employees and 64,153 companies. This data is included in its latest report. Labor market and collective bargaining report, which was published this Thursday.

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In 2026, an estimated 301,884 cases of cancer will be detected in Spain, 166,764 in men and 133,120 in women, according to data from the Spanish Society of Medical Oncology (SEOM). Of these, approximately 5% would never have occurred without exposure to carcinogens in the workplace. The CCOO union published the report this Tuesday. Workplace cancer, the leading cause of death at workCoinciding with World Cancer Day, the organization states, according to its own calculations, that this year there will be 15,999 cancer cases and 6,126 deaths from this disease attributable to workplace exposures in Spain. Cancer is the leading cause of work-related deaths in the European Union, accounting for 53% of all work-related deaths each year, compared to 28% for cardiovascular diseases and 6% for respiratory diseases, according to 2017 data from the European Commission. Carcinogenic agents remain a challenge for many companies. In fact, they emphasize that one in four Spanish workers is exposed to workplace carcinogens, while in Europe the figure is one in five, according to estimates from the CAREX database.

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The Spanish National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC) has imposed fines totaling €20.5 million on several Repsol Group companies and banned them from participating in public contracts, the agency, chaired by Cani Fernández, announced on Tuesday. Specifically, the CNMC sanctioned Repsol Comercial de Productos Petrolíferos, Solred, and Campsa Estaciones de Servicio for implementing an "abusive" profit margin reduction policy, to the detriment of independent service stations with which it competes. According to the agency, during the sanctioned period, the energy company held a dominant position in the wholesale market for automotive fuels at service stations nationwide. "Competition law requires that companies in a dominant position bear particular responsibility for not restricting competition," the CNMC added.

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January is always a challenging month for the job market, following the loss of many contracts at the end of the Christmas season. The total number of registered workers in Catalonia started the year with a drop of 47,941 compared to December, a 1.24% decrease, according to data published Tuesday by the Ministry of Social Security. This is the sharpest decline, at least, since 2013, when hiring practices were still heavily influenced by the devastating effects of the Great Recession.

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The High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) is the first in Spain to rule that a teacher's sick leave due to adverse effects from a defective batch of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines should be considered a workplace accident. This was explained on Monday by the Col·lectiu Ronda cooperative of lawyers, who represented the secondary school teacher, a substitute. The teacher was vaccinated before most of the population, in February 2021, due to her status as an essential worker, along with security forces and healthcare personnel. Even so, given her age group, she would not have been eligible until June of that year. A few weeks after the campaign began, authorities issued a safety alert and halted the supply of the ABV5300 vaccine batch from the British manufacturer, as some patients who had received the dose had suffered severe cases of thrombosis. 228,000 vaccines from that batch arrived in Spain.

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Everyone has a general idea of ​​how their salary compares to their peers. But do you really know if your salary is high or low compared to the rest of the population in your region, any other region, or even in Spain as a whole? We offer a calculator that will allow you to discover how many people earn more and less than you and where your income falls in relation to the national and regional salary scales. Here it is:

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