This week is marked on the calendar for many Catalan retirees, beneficiaries of other Social Security pensions, and their partners. Imserso, the Spanish government's social tourism program, is putting up for sale the trips for the 2026/27 season, which will begin in November and run until June.

The headquarters of Foment del Treball has been filled with proclamations in defense of Barcelona, Catalonia, and Europe not missing the train of artificial intelligence (AI), in the face of the flood of alerts and fear that has shaken the world in recent hours. The representative of the European Commission in Spain, Daniel Calleja, has clearly positioned himself in favor: "We must invest more and better in AI. Barcelona has a great opportunity, and so does Spain," he claimed this Tuesday at a congress organized by the Catalan employers' association.

Changes to the Trucafort wind farm, located in the Baix Camp and Priorat regions: it will go from having 91 wind turbines to 7, although it will have the same installed capacity as until now. Naturgy will allocate 45 million euros to replace all the equipment currently there with more efficient ones, a fact that will allow it to reduce the number of installed turbines.

Most people have opened a real estate portal and performed a search that fits their needs, whether to find a place to live—with a certain sense of desperation, in more than one case—or to conduct a homemade market study. However, what are the requirements for a future home and to what extent do they end up conditioning the final decision?

Room rentals are one of the loopholes that landlords in Catalonia have found to bypass rent caps. Consequently, in December, Parliament approved a law to regulate seasonal and room rentals, a pioneering initiative in Spain.

The American multinational technology corporation Oracle has closed a record-breaking first quarter in which, literally, accounting and financial indicators have hit highs. In the first three months of its fiscal year, which ended on August 31, the company specializing in data centers saw its profits soar by 60% compared to the same period last year, earning 4.679 billion dollars – about 4.032 billion euros.

Large housing holders are in the political and social spotlight, in the face of the serious housing crisis suffering in Catalonia (and the rest of Europe). The Government has the decree to create the Registry of large holders in the oven, which Parliament approved creating in March 2022. According to the draft, which is still pending final approval, and to which ARA has had access, the Housing Agency wants to be able to publish on its website the corporate name – the equivalent of the name – and the NIF (tax identification number) of legal entities that are considered large holders.

Five years after the end of tolls on the AP-7 and AP-2 —the main motorways in Catalonia—, some 250 economists and mobility experts spent Wednesday morning reflecting on the management of the country's main roads. "As economists, we know that apparently free decisions also generate costs and that, if they are not assigned explicitly and transparently, they fall on taxpayers or are passed on to the future," warned the dean of the Association of Economists of Catalonia (CEC), Carlos Puig de Travy.

Miquel (a fictional name) is 36 years old and is about to buy an apartment in Barcelona, in the Sarrià neighborhood. His mother "has paid quite a bit more than half of the apartment" and he will take out a mortgage to secure the rest of the financing. "Without my mother's help it wouldn't have been possible, and we had to have many meetings with the bank to see exactly how we would do it," he explains to the ARA.

The 50,000 Plan is the great promise of Salvador Illa's government. Two years after the announcement of the measure, the Minister of Territory, Sílvia Paneque, assured, in an interview on Catalunya Ràdio this Friday, that there are "practically" 10,000 apartments "finished," and that 28,000 more are "in projection." The data, however, do not coincide with those held by Catalan builders, who confirm that "there are only 3,000 apartments put out to tender and awarded", in the words of the president of the Chamber of Construction Contractors of Catalonia (CCOC), Lluís Moreno, this same Friday in the ARA.

A big day at the Port of Barcelona. The Chinese company Hutchison Ports officially announced this Thursday the incorporation of two state-of-the-art cranes at the BEST container terminal, which accounts for 42% of the wealth generated by the entire infrastructure. According to the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, "they are much more than just two cranes, they are the difference between being a transit port or a gateway."

The housing crisis affects all of Europe, especially in large cities and the most densely populated areas. According to a study by the Technical University of Vienna (TU Wien), 44% of Europeans with an average income level can only afford to buy a property of less than 50 square meters, that is, the equivalent of a one-bedroom apartment or a studio.

The rent cap has taken up almost all the media attention, but the declaration of a stressed residential market area (ZMRT) provides for other instruments to facilitate access to housing. This Wednesday, the Spanish government announced direct subsidies to these territories, as established by the state housing law: it intends to distribute 90 million euros among the five autonomous communities that have applied the measure. Of this figure, Catalonia will receive 60 million, as it concentrates 75% of the population living in an area where the housing market is stressed, and 85.5% of the municipalities.

The summer of historic results in tourism that the sector predicted in spring. This July, spending by foreigners in Catalonia has for the first time exceeded the threshold of 3.7 billion euros, according to data published by the National Statistics Institute (INE) this Tuesday. The increase in total spending has also been reflected in the average consumption of each visitor, which has also reached a new high, surpassing 1,500 euros per stay for the first time.

The Spanish stock exchange operator BME allows Holaluz to list on the stock exchange again from tomorrow, Tuesday. The Catalan company will rejoin the BME Growth market – the stock market for SMEs – once the ministry's procedure for Ecological Transition, which could have resulted in its disqualification as an energy marketer, has been archived.

After a summer with rising fuel prices, this Tuesday the subsidy for diesel will increase to 20 cents per liter. From September 1, the reduction in the hydrocarbon tax on diesel will return to its initial level. This is an initiative that is applied automatically, because the Spanish government foresaw its application if prices were to skyrocket by more than 15% compared to a year ago.

Tourism contributes nearly 12% to Catalonia's GDP, the indicator used worldwide to measure an economy's size and growth. However, who generates this wealth? The sector is made up of 133,752 companies and employs 451,990 people, according to the latest data from the Institute of Statistics of Catalonia (Idescat), corresponding to the end of 2023.

The figure of Rodrigo Rato is the icon of a political and economic era. Rato's story is that of a meteoric rise to the pinnacle of political and economic power, from where he staged a long and agonizing fall that led him to the cells of Soto del Real prison. What has become of the man who in 2011 euphorically rang the bell for Bankia's stock market debut?

The Spanish government has shelved the investigation it opened in mid-July against the Catalan company Holaluz, which could have led to the company being disqualified as an electricity marketer. "The company is sound," sources close to the matter told ARA.

Tension between the Spanish government and companies looking to promote data centers in the State. This week, Pedro Sánchez's executive has initiated the procedures to approve a royal decree that will toughen the requirements that projects must meet to be realized. The Spanish executive published the full text this Thursday, after meeting yesterday with the main sector employers' associations, Spain DC and Ametic.