The supermarket chain Condis, backed by the investment fund Portobello Capital, completes the integration of Roges Supermercats, a family business based in Sallent (Bages) with more than 80 years of history. The culmination of this process, initiated in June 2024, comes after the National Commission on Markets and Competition (CNMC) authorized the operation last week, as detailed by Condis this Tuesday through a statement.

Michael S. Carolan is one of the most influential voices in global food policy. A PhD in sociology and co-director of the Food Systems Institute at Colorado State University in the United States, in 2023 he published the third edition of his book The Real Cost of Cheap Food. The latest version, translated into Catalan by the publisher Raig Verd and distributed starting in 2025, addresses the major challenges of the current food system and the contradictions of a landscape that promises accessibility and abundance, but generates negative externalities that society and the environment end up paying for.

The vineyard landscape is an inseparable element of the municipality of Sant Sadurní d'Anoia. This town of just over 10,000 inhabitants in the Alt Penedès is home to more than 60 sparkling wine producers and its fields full of vines, which have turned the region into a benchmark for wine production in Catalonia. But among the clayey soils and the most imposing farmhouses, there hides an agri-food company that, in its own way, also revolutionized the world until it became a beacon within its sector.

Shattering profit records has become the new normal for major Spanish banks. After a 2025 marked by an increase in commercial activity in an environment of falling interest rates, the new geopolitical and economic context has given the sector a new boost. With skyrocketing inflation and a European Central Bank (ECB) forced to implement a restrictive monetary policy to avoid a loss of control over prices, the new wave of interest rate hikes has catapulted the results of the main entities, which are forecasting a historic year.

The Reus-based company MaserGrup has acquired the largest business of the American company Skjodt-Barrett, focused on manufacturing food for third parties in the so-called pouch format, a type of more flexible plastic packaging to contain liquid or gelatinous texture products. As detailed by the group in a statement, the operation includes the incorporation of an industrial complex of 130,000 square meters that houses a production plant of 50,000 square meters in the city of Lebanon, in the state of Indiana.

BBVA continues to break profit records in an environment favorable to the banking sector. During the first nine months of the year, the Basque-originated entity reached a profit of 9.066 billion euros, 13.6% more than in the same period last year. The group presided over by Carlos Torres attributes the figures to the good performance of its recurring income, divided between the net interest margin—the difference between income and financial costs—and banking fees. In this sense, the gross margin until September—the indicator that reflects an entity's total turnover—reached 32.072 billion euros, 16.3% more in year-on-year terms.

The mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, is determined to recover the so-called Amazon tax, a measure promoted by the city council itself that intends to make large postal operators who deliver purchases made online pay for occupying the city's public space with their delivery vans. Despite the ruling of the High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) that declares the tax void, the Supreme Court decided, at the beginning of this year, to admit for processing an appeal filed by the City Council against the ruling. This Wednesday, within the framework of the conference retail from Comertia, Collboni has insisted that he will continue fighting in the courts. "I am sure that we can win", he has stated.

The reindustrialization of the former Nissan factory site in Barcelona's Zona Franca is progressing. Following the arrival of car manufacturers Chery and EV Motors, the Catalan frozen dough group Europastry will land in the space starting in 2027. The food company will launch a new macro-logistics center for cold storage, a construction located near the port of Barcelona, right in front of Mercabarna, and with a total surface area of almost 9,000 square meters.

For years, relaunching the industry has been one of the great priorities in Catalonia. With the eternal promise that the sector must reach 25% of the gross domestic product (GDP, the indicator that measures the volume of an economy), the Government sealed a major pact with employers' associations and unions at the beginning of the summer to strengthen the weight of industry within the economy, which since the great financial crisis of 2008 has remained at around 17%. And in a context in which dual-use technologies –for civil and military use– are becoming increasingly relevant in the face of the Russian threat, this activity can become key to the country's growth and prosperity.

The Bon Preu group is finalizing preparations to introduce a pioneering artificial intelligence assistant in the country that aims to improve users' shopping planning through its application. The new functionality, developed jointly with the Catalan start-up Shoptimus, will begin to be available over the next few weeks for the company's internal staff as a trial.

The Valencian supermarket cooperative Consum has launched a new logistics platform in the Zona Franca of Barcelona to manage the waste generated by its supermarkets. The 9,330-square-meter facility has received an investment of 12.4 million euros and employs around fifty workers. As detailed by the company this Wednesday in a statement, it is estimated that the space will manage, each month, a total of 800 tons of cardboard, 50 tons of plastic, 140,000 pallets, and 800,000 reusable containers.

Spanish public debt remains below 100% of GDP for the second consecutive month, a fact that had not occurred since the outbreak of the pandemic. After the State managed to position itself below this psychological barrier last July, the latest data from the Bank of Spain confirm the downward trend. According to the estimates released this Wednesday, Spanish public debt at the end of August would be at 99.7% of gross domestic product (GDP, the indicator that shows the size of an economy), two tenths below the ratio recorded in July and 3.1 points less compared to August of last year. In absolute terms, the liability of the public administrations as a whole would rise to 1.75 trillion euros at the close of August, 2.9% more in year-on-year terms.

The US multinational Hologic, specialized in women's health, has reached an agreement to acquire the biotech company Reveal Genomics, a firm founded in Barcelona in 2020 and focused on the development of genomic tests for the personalized treatment of breast cancer.

The association of Catalan family businesses in the retail sector, Comertia, has demanded from the various administrations a “fierce” defense of physical commerce in Catalonia, in the face of “unequal” competition from large platforms such as Amazon, Shein, or Temu. In a media briefing held this Tuesday in Barcelona, the president of the organization, Ignasi Pietx, has claimed the importance of competing “on equal terms” with online sales giants that already account for 70% of the parcels arriving from outside Spain.

The Titan Desert in Morocco is one of the toughest races in the world of endurance cycling. Over the course of six stages, participants cross the Atlas mountain range and the dunes of the Sahara Desert to complete a route of nearly 600 kilometers and more than 6,000 meters of positive elevation gain. And the 2026 edition, held between late April and early May, had a Catalan seal. The brand Inverse, based in Mollet del Vallès, was chosen to design and manufacture the official jersey for the competition, a garment adapted to withstand the heat, wind, and sand of the landscape, which several of the 475 cyclists who took on the challenge wore.

On October 16 of last year, Banc Sabadell and BBVA definitively buried any possibility of a merger. After 17 months of open warfare and tug-of-war, a statement to the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) confirmed it. The offer from the entity presided over by Carlos Torres had achieved only 25% acceptance from the capital of the Valles-based bank, below the 30% minimum threshold that the Basque-origin group had set to continue with the operation. The group presided over by Josep Oliu had won the battle. But twelve months later, time has shown that, after the failed takeover bid, the final outcome has turned out to be happy for both.

A thousand farmers paralyzed the heart of Barcelona this Wednesday with their tractors as well as buses and private vehicles in a demonstration to demand immediate solutions to the "structural crisis" situation the sector is experiencing. The demonstration, called by Unió de Pagesos, mobilized around 200 tractors—according to the organizers' data—coming from various points of the Catalan territory that gathered in front of the headquarters of the State government delegation, the Department of Agriculture, and the Palau de la Generalitat. The march blocked a large part of Passeig de Gràcia and Via Laietana for more than four hours—with impacts on different bus lines—and also caused slow-moving traffic in both directions of the Ronda Litoral when the farmers were returning home.

The European Commission anticipates that the upcoming vote in the European Parliament to ratify the trade agreement between the European Union and Mercosur (comprised of Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay) will be "hard-fought". While there is still no defined date for the European Parliament to issue its position – it is estimated that it will take at least a year, pending a judicial resolution from the Court of Justice of the European Union–, sources from the community executive highlight the strong "political burden" of the debate and point out that there will be "many factors" that could enter into the equation.

The Generalitat is launching an unprecedented offensive in the wine sector to assess whether grapes are being purchased below their production cost. As ARA has learned, the Department of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Food is investigating a total of 50 contracts suspected of infringing the Food Chain Law 16/2021, the state-level regulation that prohibits this practice. As sources close to the department point out, the inspections began in August, some of which were prompted by complaints from farmers, organizations, or other professionals in the sector, and others initiated ex officio.

American academics Robert Hall (Palo Alto, 1943) and Michael Woodford (Chicopee, 1955) have won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Economics for their studies on "microeconomic foundations and macroeconomic stabilization", as announced this Monday by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.