On Provença street, almost at the corner with Roger de Llúria, there is a treasure. A Barcelonian treasure that is over a hundred years old. It is the Boileau publishing house, the oldest active music publisher in the State. A whole institution, a benchmark and a guarantee of quality both in the editing and in the dissemination of music for all kinds of audiences. Entering their shop is like taking an authentic leap back in time. Inaugurated in 1939 and designed following the inspiration of the GATCPAC architectural movement, it has been preserved just as it was on the first day.

On Barcelona's Rambla, a little further down from the Canaletes fountain, there's a scent. It's the same smell that wafts through Pelai street, near Plaça Universitat; close to Casa Batlló, and inside the Diagonal Mar shopping center. It's a sweet, toasted, and slightly spicy aroma, capable of whetting some pedestrians' appetites, but also making others wrinkle their noses. Where does it come from? You just need to sweep your gaze across the landscape to find the answer: it escapes from the establishments that the North American fast-food chain Subway has spread throughout the city. In Catalonia, it only has twelve: all in Barcelona except for one in Lloret de Mar. However, worldwide, the company accumulates staggering figures: around 40,000 restaurants in over 100 countries, making it one of the major restaurant franchises.For almost six decades, Subway was a business controlled by the families of its two founders, Fred DeLuca and Peter Buck. But in 2023, the chain passed into the hands of the North American fund Roark Capital, specializing in restaurant franchises. Subway had grown so much that, in some markets, its own model was beginning to show signs of exhaustion: locations too close to each other, tensions with franchisees, and increasingly strong competition from newer, smaller chains with a more current image. The brand, which had surpassed McDonald's in number of restaurants, needed to become desirable again. Subway has placed the Iberian market in the hands of Grupo Vierci with the aim of opening around 400 restaurants in Spain in the next ten years.But who were Fred DeLuca and Peter Buck? How did they manage to build a chain with tens of thousands of restaurants around the world? To find the answer, we need to travel back to the summer of 1965, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, United States. A doctor and a nuclear physicist

Fred DeLuca had just graduated from high school and had a clear goal: to study medicine. The problem was that he didn't have the money to pay for university. He worked in a hardware store, where he earned $1.25 an hour, but that salary wasn't enough to pay for his degree. A little discouraged, he decided to ask for advice from Peter Buck, an old family friend. Buck was a doctor in nuclear physics.The answer he gave him was unexpected: he proposed opening a submarine sandwich shop, a type of long sandwich very popular in the northeastern United States. Buck gave him $1,000 and became his partner. The first location opened that same August in Bridgeport, under the name Pete's Super Submarines, a tribute to the lender and the sandwiches they sold. The adventure, at first, did not seem destined to make history: it was a small business, thought especially so that DeLuca could pay his tuition.But the young man learned quickly. He understood that, in that sector, it wasn't enough to just make sandwiches: you had to choose good locations, keep costs low, offer a consistent product, and serve it quickly. He also discovered the value of an idea that would eventually define the brand: letting the customer see the ingredients and choose how they wanted their sandwich. In a market dominated by hamburgers, fried chicken, and fixed menus, that counter full of breads, cheeses, vegetables, and sauces was a new concept. A franchise too big

DeLuca and Buck's initial plan was to open 32 restaurants in ten years. By the mid-seventies, however, they had only launched sixteen, all in Connecticut. To grow faster, they turned to franchising, a formula they had previously seen as something reserved for large companies. Starting in 1974, Subway began to multiply with new franchisees. Over the following decades, the chain grew rapidly, with the promise of offering a fresher, more customizable alternative to traditional fast food. For a time, it even surpassed McDonald's in the number of restaurants. But the same model that had made it a giant also ended up creating problems for them. After DeLuca's death in 2015 and Buck's in 2021, Subway remained in the hands of the founding families until, in 2023, Roark Capital took control to relaunch the brand.

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In the summer of 1588, during the Battle of Gravelines, the famous Spanish Invincible Armada was shattered by the push of the English fleet led by Francis Drake. The historical event, which led to a phrase as well-known as it is apocryphal, attributed to the King of Spain Philip II, was that a storm, during the retreat towards the Peninsula, finished off the Spanish ships: "I sent my ships to fight against men, not against the elements." Sir Horatio Palavicino, Italian by birth, but already a banker to the Queen of England, was contemplating the Spanish defeat from a distance, rubbing his hands with glee (it has often been said that he himself captained a ship of the English fleet, but it has never been officially confirmed that this is true).

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The month of June is key for the income tax return, as the deadline for submitting it ends. From July 1st, we also start counting the deadlines for them to return what we have overpaid. In fact, the Tax Agency has six months to pay us what it owes us from income tax without interest. Only if it does not return it to us from January 1st, do these start to be calculated.For taxpayers, the same does not happen. However, we have three ways to pay the amount if it is due. Firstly, they can charge the full amount to our account on June 30th. The second option is to pay 60% now, in June, and the remaining 40% in November. This installment option does not involve interest, in principle. However, you must ensure that you have the amount available because, if not, you will be charged a surcharge of between 5% and 10% directly when they claim it from you.Thirdly, we can split the payment as if it were a debt. In this case, you must choose the option to acknowledge a debt with the Tax Agency, and we are allowed to pay it in up to twelve monthly installments. This time, yes, with interest, although they usually amount to 1.5% and are therefore much more profitable than a usual loan. Here we must be very careful. If we split it into as many monthly installments as we want, but do not pay one of them, instead of just claiming the amount of that monthly installment, the financing "is lost" and the entire debt is claimed from us. Therefore, this financing option can end up going badly.In any case, and however it may be, while the Treasury can dispose of the money for free until January 1, 2027, we, in case of non-payment, are charged surcharges and interest from the first moment. Benefits of the administration.

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Indra has been restructuring its top management for several months, with recent changes in president and CEO, and the incorporation of new high-level directives. This reinforcement of the technology and defense company's top level also reaches Catalonia, where the company chaired by Àngel Simón has appointed a new territorial director, Enric Blasco. Furthermore, a lifelong banker, José Ignacio Goirigolzarri – he was CEO of BBVA, president of Bankia, and president of CaixaBank – is making the leap into the fashion world as a new independent director of Inditex, the company controlled by Amancio Ortega which owns brands such as Zara, Pull&Bear, Massimo Dutti, and Bershka, among others.

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The growth of the Catalan and Spanish economy is undeniable. And future estimates, despite a slowdown, confirm that we will continue to be the champions of GDP growth. The President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, did not fail to mention this during his speech at the annual meeting of the Cercle d'Economia in Barcelona, where he surprised the audience by announcing the steps to present the State budgets for 2027, which sound more like an electoral program than a real possibility.

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Adrià Argemí, co-founder and CEO of the aerospace company Pangea Propulsion, meets with theCompanies among bankers, presidents, and executives of the Ibex, during the Cercle d'Economia Meeting. Argemí, an engineer by training and a Europeanist by vocation, has been one of the profiles chosen by the Barcelona bourgeoisie club to speak about the topic of the year: European defense.

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In recent months, various reports and analyses have argued that a part of the current economic problems stem from an excessive specialization in low value-added activities. However, this approach runs the risk of simplifying a much more complex reality and presenting the economy as a confrontation between "good" and "bad" sectors. The fundamental issue is not which activities are developed, but how they are developed. International evidence shows that countries with higher wages are not necessarily those that have eliminated labor-intensive sectors, but rather those that have managed to increase the productivity of their entire economy. It is not about reducing activity, but about improving what is being done.

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Actress Sílvia Bel (Barcelona, 1970) discovered the “artistic bug” at a very young age. She came from a humble family: “At home they were very poor, they were republicans and had lost the war.” Her father had started working in a factory at just 14 years old and had always had a great intellectual curiosity: “He had always wanted to go to university, but he didn't have the opportunity due to life circumstances.” For this reason, he placed many hopes in his two daughters and wished they would study a university degree. Although initially she didn't quite fit in at home, Bel decided to study dramatic art at the Institut del Teatre.

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The first steps you take when you enter Puzzlemania is to step on a puzzle displayed on the floor representing a selection of the world's most popular monuments. A puzzle with 42,000 pieces! It was made by the cousin of Caroline Bellés, the owner, and it took her a year and a half to complete it. Entering this shop on Diputació street next to Enric Granados is like entering a museum, you see a selection of the world's best art, landscapes from all over, fantastic scenes and animals, many animals. All in puzzle format, you can choose from about six thousand possibilities, a truly spectacular selection. And all the puzzles are displayed, as if they were paintings, which is greatly appreciated, since in most department stores and toy shops, they are on their side and you have to take them off the shelf to see if you like them or not. It is the advantage of the large space of the premises and a specialization that has lasted for three decades.

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At El Prat airport, just before boarding the plane, Revolut is everywhere. The logo of this bank appears in vinyls on the boarding bridges, in flashing advertisements in the terminal corridors, and also on ATMs that allow you to get one of their cards in a few minutes. The promise is simple: pay with different currencies in any country and reduce the commissions that have traditionally accompanied travel. The same scene is repeated on the other side of the journey. In cities like Budapest, Lisbon, Paris, Milan or Amsterdam, it is increasingly common for someone, between coffees, taxis, dinners, and transport tickets, to take out their mobile, open the app, and pay with Revolut's virtual card.Neobanks are on the rise. They are entities born on mobile that have taken advantage of the fatigue with traditional banking, the expansion of digital payments, and the normalization of traveling without cash. Revolut is today one of its great exponents. In 2025, it closed with 68.3 million individual clients, 30% more than the previous year, and a turnover of 5.2 billion euros. Now, the company no longer wants to be just the card that many activate when they go on a trip, but the main bank for its users. In this offensive, Barcelona plays a prominent role: after opening its technology hub for Southwest Europe, Revolut will inaugurate the first physical store in the world there. It is an almost paradoxical move for a company that has grown by promising that its bank would fit inside a mobile phone.But where does Revolut come from? Who is behind this branchless bank that has managed to sneak into the pockets of millions of people? The answer can be found in London in 2015.The drama of commissions

The story begins in the British capital eleven years ago. The protagonist is Nik Storonsky, a former trader with Lehman Brothers and Credit Suisse used to moving between currencies, markets, and airports. Like many other travelers, Storonsky had suffered the drama of commissions: returning from a trip and discovering that the bank had charged him more than he expected for paying, withdrawing money, or exchanging currencies. Moving money around the world continued to be slow, expensive, and not very transparent. That's why he imagined a multi-currency card that would allow spending and transferring money abroad with less friction than traditional banking. Vlad Yatsenko, a computer engineer with experience in large investment banks, soon joined the project. Today, Revolut is one of the most valuable technology companies in Europe.The official launch of Revolut took place in July 2015. The initial proposal was very specific: an application and a card designed to spend money abroad with competitive exchange rates and without the small print that had often accompanied traditional banking. It was very well received. In fact, by 2016, Revolut had already reached 300,000 customers and had raised 15 million dollars in a funding round. It was still a young fintech, but it had already found a market niche.From here, Revolut accelerated. In 2017 it launched Revolut Business, the premium plan and the first cryptocurrency operations; in 2018 it obtained the banking license from the Bank of Lithuania and raised 250 million dollars; and in 2019 it already had 7.8 million customers and began to expand outside of Europe, entering Australia and Singapore. The pandemic further pushed digitization: in 2020 it surpassed 11 million customers, raised 580 million dollars, and landed in the United States and Japan. In just five years, the card against travel fees had already begun to resemble a global bank.In 2021, Revolut raised 800 million dollars in a new round and launched services linked to travel and expense management. In 2022, it already surpassed 26 million individual customers; in 2023, it entered Brazil and New Zealand and began offering local IBANs in markets like Spain. In 2024, it reached 52.5 million users and was valued at 45 billion dollars. In 2025, coinciding with its tenth anniversary, it made another leap: it reached 68.3 million individual customers, opened its first own ATMs in Spain, and received a valuation of 75 billion dollars. Today, the fintech that was born to avoid travel commissions is starting to play in the league of big global banks.

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On Saint John's Day in 1826, a historic event occurred in the center of Barcelona which, despite its great significance, is not entirely known. Generally, the beginning of public street lighting is remembered as the moment in 1843 when the Societat Catalana per a l'Enllumenat per Gas, founded by Pere Gil Babot and Charles Lebon, began to operate. But the reality is that a few years earlier, a solitary entrepreneur named Josep Roura Estrada illuminated a building in Barcelona for the first time using gas. The Saint John's Day we mentioned a few lines back was the date chosen by Roura to install a lighting system in the Llotja building, which was the seat of the Junta de Comerç school.

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In Catalonia, in 2025, 158,000 home sales were formalized. According to the College of Notaries, 46% were made without a mortgage, that is, in cash. If we consider that the average price of a home in Catalonia is around 220,000 euros, the figure is, to say the least, surprising. But there's more: in 2024, this percentage reached 49%.

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Changes in the governing bodies or management positions of companies are not only driven by new hires. Sometimes, departures gain more weight. In just a few days, two of the main Ibex-35 companies have experienced this firsthand: Naturgy and Indra. In fact, a question mark hangs over the composition of their boards of directors due to the departure in Indra's case of the Escribano brothers, who held 14.3% of the company's share capital, while at Naturgy, it was the English investment fund CVC (13.8%) that divested. Other musical chairs are added to these movements.

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All advances and new technologies generate concern and fear. We have seen this throughout history. And this is what is happening with artificial intelligence (AI). There are many studies pointing to the loss of hundreds or thousands of jobs, and the potential of this new technology is still in its infancy. But we have already seen many headlines like that of the weekly The Economist a few days ago, "The jobs apocalypse". The impact it can have cannot be denied, and not just on repetitive and low-value-added tasks.

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Xavier Berneda, executive director and co-owner of the Catalan sneaker manufacturer Munich, receives the ARA shortly before giving a talk at a meeting of the Catalan Fashion Cluster (Modacc) at Món Sant Benet, in Bages. As expected, he wears the X symbol on his feet and jacket, which is also sported by many of the collaborators who greet him.

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A recent report prepared by specialized technology companies has shown that nearly half of Spanish companies have already suffered losses related to the climate emergency. From supply chain disruptions due to extreme weather events to factory shutdowns due to floods or droughts, the private sector is already beginning to feel the environmental tensions that threaten to turn the planet upside down on its balance sheets. The figures are more than eloquent: in the worst cases, some companies have registered losses of up to 500,000 euros due to just one unforeseen climatic phenomenon. The company behind the study, the Catalan Mitiga Solutions, has been one of the pioneers in observing, calculating, and –as the name suggests– mitigating this devastation. "We offer climate intelligence to identify climate risks in different assets, from infrastructure to a company's business model," explains its founder and CEO, Alejandro Martí, in conversation with Empreses.

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From the bed to the blanket, in addition to being a home textile shop since 1952, it is a nerve center of Gràcia. A kind of information center and tourist guide. People come in to ask where the market, the post office or the frankfurt is, as well as to buy a new set of sheets, towels, cushion covers or kitchen cloths. Oh! And to ask how on earth we are supposed to put on the duvet cover properly. It takes three degrees and two master's degrees to achieve this. Before there were ties and buttons, but people didn't like it, they prefer to complicate their lives by matching the end of the duvet with that of the cover.

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In Västerås, an old industrial city located on the shores of Lake Mälaren, about a hundred kilometers from Stockholm, winters are long. The cold clings to the streets, the sky darkens early, and the lake's water further accentuates the feeling of living in a gray environment. At first glance, this corner of central Sweden has very little in common with cities like Paris, Milan, or London. However, against all odds, it also occupies its own place on the world fashion map: it is the birthplace of H&M, a giant with 4,100 stores, a presence in 81 countries, and around 132,000 employees, which in 2025 had a turnover of approximately 20 billion euros.But where did H&M come from? To begin with, it's necessary to clarify what these two letters hide. They are the abbreviation for Hennes & Mauritz. Hennes was the name of the first store that Erling Persson opened in 1947 in Västerås, dedicated only to women's clothing; Mauritz comes from Mauritz Widforss, the establishment selling hunting and fishing articles that the founder bought years later in Stockholm and which opened the door for him to also sell men's clothing. Behind the business is the Persson family, one of Sweden's great business dynasties. Erling was the founder; his son Stefan led the group's great international expansion, and his grandson, Karl-Johan Persson, has also held top responsibility positions.The journey that changed everything

Before dressing millions of people, Erling Persson had sold almost everything. The son of a gourmet products merchant from Västerås, he soon left his studies and moved to Stockholm with two hundred crowns in his pocket. With a friend, Björn Wennberg, he started by selling office supplies and, later, Christmas decorations. Fashion was not yet part of his horizon. In fact, what attracted him was something else: the gears of commerce, the way of buying, displaying, selling, and starting again.The turning point came in 1946, during a car trip through the United States. Persson discovered a way of selling there that was not yet common in post-war Europe: establishments with large volumes of product, low prices, and constant turnover. That model impressed him enough to import its logic to Sweden. A year later, he opened his first women's clothing store in Västerås. It was called Hennes and started from a key idea: fashion could also be affordable.The idea worked. Five years after opening the first store in Västerås, Persson opened another one in the center of Stockholm. Little by little, Hennes began to grow within Sweden and project itself beyond its natural market. In 1964, it made its first international leap, with the opening of a store in Norway. But the most symbolic change would arrive a few years later, with a purchase apparently little related to fashion.In 1968, Persson acquired Mauritz Widforss, a Stockholm store specializing in hunting and fishing articles. The move allowed him to gain a commercial presence in the Swedish capital, but it also had an unexpected consequence: the operation included a stock of men's clothing. Persson took advantage of it, and Hennes began to also sell items for men. With that expansion, the brand left its original name behind and became Hennes & Mauritz. In 1974, it went public on the Stockholm stock exchange and, two years later, opened its first store outside Scandinavia, in London.A model designed to scale

From here, H&M turned Persson's initial intuition into a model designed to grow: affordable prices, large volumes, well-located stores, and an offering capable of rapid renewal. The company did not want to compete with haute couture, but rather to bring the language of fashion closer to the general public. Distribution, more than design, became the heart of the business.Over the years, the group accelerated its international expansion, entered the United States, and diversified with brands such as COS, Monki, Weekday, Other Stories, Arket, or H&M Home. It also turned collaborations with designers into a global marketing resource. Today, H&M remains one of the world's giants in the sector, but it competes in a market increasingly pressured by Inditex, Shein, and new consumer habits.

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In January 2024, we explained the life and miracles of Andrew Carnegie, the steel magnate who built a great fortune when he integrated his company, Carnegie Steel Company, into a large consortium devised by John Pierpont Morgan called US Steel. Behind the formation of this great company, in 1901, was the Connecticut banker, but also a less known financial artist than Morgan named William Henry Moore.

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