From being born in Prussia to managing the finances of the English Crown, being friends with Winston Churchill, and having a granddaughter married to Louis Mountbatten. There is no doubt that the life of Sir Ernest Cassel was fast-paced.

In times of high inflation, like the ones we are living through, any investment measure that allows us to compensate for it, even partially, is more than recommended. Investing does not mean we have to buy risky stocks or cryptocurrencies. Today, one can also invest without taking risks.

The Consorci de la Zona Franca de Barcelona has strengthened its influence among international free trade zones with the appointment of its general director as vice president of the AZFA. For its part, Banc Sabadell has deepened its roots in Catalonia with a new territorial advisory council formed by renowned business leaders, and the technology center Eurecat has renewed its general management. Consum has reorganized its executive structure, while the Barcelona Comerç association has elected a new president.

The era of maximum ease for mortgages has not ended completely, but it is losing steam. Banks are detecting that the demand for credit to buy homes is deflating. The growth rate of new production is decelerating and, surely, it will continue to do so, taking into account the prices that housing has reached and the increased cost of its financing.

The latest round of results from the major US tech companies has eroded market euphoria for artificial intelligence (AI). Companies on the scale of Amazon and Alphabet (Google's parent company) have made investors' knees shake because of their spending forecasts on computing infrastructure, which much of the market considers excessive. Even Microsoft, which has managed to save face with positive cash generation, has been far from the stock market exaltation that the giants associated with AI had experienced.

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.

Housing conditions the emancipation of young people, the decisions of families, and the ability of companies to attract workers. The response requires assuming public responsibilities and expanding supply. Seeking culprits among those who can provide savings, land, and the capacity to build will hardly bring us closer to a solution.

What started as a game, with balls and ribbons given to her for her birthdays, became a vocation for rhythmic gymnast Natàlia Garcia (Barcelona, 1994). At thirteen, she was selected to represent Spain at the junior individual European Championships: "Dozens of girls show up and they pick two. That was when I said: 'Wow, this is no longer a joke'". She continued training at the High Performance Center (CAR) in Catalonia and went on to become a five-time Spanish champion.

It is Saturday morning, in a housing development of single-family homes. In one of the gardens, a man has been aiming a high-pressure water jet at the terrace tiles for a while. With each pass, the dirt accumulated over months disappears. The machine is yellow and black. A few streets away, a neighbor is using a similar device to make their car rims shine. It is also yellow and black. Meanwhile, inside another house, a woman is running a machine over the windows to clean them without leaving any marks. Yellow and black.

In 1982, the scandal of Banco Ambrosiano, a nearly century-old Italian financial institution that collapsed like a house of cards after maintaining a very close relationship with the Institute for the Works of Religion, an entity popularly known as the Vatican Bank, hit all the headlines in the international press. In the plot of the bank's downfall, besides the Vatican, other major actors appeared, such as the rogue Masonic lodge Propaganda Due (P-2) or the Sicilian financier Michele Sindona. Just after the bankruptcy, Roberto Calvi, who was the president of Banco Ambrosiano, was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge on the London Thames, while Paul Marcinkus, the head of Vatican finances, was removed from his post and sent to his hometown in Illinois. For his part, Licio Gelli, the Grand Master of the P-2, was sentenced to prison.

Let's continue putting data to housing. According to the Bank of Spain, 98.6% of rental properties are in the hands of small owners: 76.1% own one, 15% own two, 7.5% own between three and five, and only 1.4% own more than five. If we wanted to join this trend, would it be worth it for us?

The Catalan Institute of Finance is renewing part of its board with four relevant appointments within the country's business ecosystem. Meanwhile, Renault Trucks Iberia announces who will be its new general manager for Spain and Portugal, while Cegasa Energía incorporates a brand new product development director. In the international ecosystem, the online fashion platform Zalando hires an ex-Amazon and Uber executive to occupy the senior vice presidency of B2B.

Since the launch of the first ChatGPT models, Catalan companies have looked at artificial intelligence with curiosity. Adoption has been, according to several studies, rapid but lacking order: according to a report prepared by OpenAI itself, creator of the famous chatbot, 96% of small and medium-sized Catalan companies already use AI in some area of their business. However, nearly 40% declare that they still do not have a formal policy for using it.

Do not rule it out. After the general elections on November 29, a new state-wide business association could be born. Once the link with Conpymes was broken by the Catalan Pimec, which was a founder, and a group of 18 other organizations, this state entity is beginning to be glimpsed to defend small and medium-sized enterprises. Those who have unsubscribed consider that Conpymes is now left as "a group of friends with little representativeness", while from the organization chaired by José María Torres they ensure that the entities that have left already had an expulsion file open and state that they maintain some 60 organizations as members.

The eternal debate over the pension model in Spain has returned to fill headlines with reproaches. Supporters of the current model argue that it is perfectly sustainable, while opponents try to perform balancing acts to justify at the same time that they will be able to pay future retirees and that changes to the system must be applied.

Ali Baba's cave is full of treasures. Cabini's cave, too. Treasures that excite you and satisfy your memory. This cave is called La Bola and it is on Carrer Sepúlveda in Barcelona, right by Plaça Universitat. Cabini is Jordi Viñas, but everyone calls him that because it was the name of his father's transport company and the huge letters on the truck have remained in the memory of everyone who saw him enter and leave the Encants every day. Half a century has passed since then, and Jordi has spent many years turning his little corner, on the border of Eixample and Sant Antoni, into a temple for fanatics of all kinds of collecting.

“I found out that this email existed three weeks ago.” “No, that is not a satisfactory answer. Ms. Hoggett, did you write this email? Your name is on it.” “Yes, and I accept full responsibility for it.” “You were aware of it when you first wrote it. It was a conscious decision to write it and send it. This is not post-truth. Now you can say: ‘Oh! Now I am aware of it.’ When you wrote that email, you were a conscious, living, breathing person earning a million and a half dollars a year.”

You open the fridge and grab a bag of salad. The plastics used to package food can contain materials like Lupolen or Ultramid. They are manufactured by the chemical company BASF. You put on your Adidas to go for a run. Some models in the Boost range incorporate a material called Infinergy in the sole. Also from BASF. On the way back, you pass by a toy store and see some Playmobil: the hands and joints of the figures have been manufactured with a plastic called Ultraform. From BASF. Even the building where you live may be insulated with Styropor, a type of expanded polystyrene. It has been manufactured by BASF since 1951.

In the seventies and eighties, the UFO craze took a leap in scale with the release of films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, both directed by Steven Spielberg. Amidst this wave, an aviator with ties to the CIA named John Lear came to public attention, who in 1987 claimed that the United States government was maintaining relations with extraterrestrial beings and that there was a secret committee called Majestic 12, which had unspeakable pacts with the visitors. From that moment on, Lear's figure became a central character in American UFO conspiracy theory, but as the years passed, he was gradually forgotten and his theses were considered a mere fantasy. What surprised the United States most about the emergence of Lear as a great propagator of these theories about aliens is that he was not just any citizen, but the son of one of the main aviation magnates, the businessman and inventor Bill Lear, founder of companies that still bear his name today.

Do you know that Spanish public debt increases by about 1,000 euros per second? The current debt of the Spanish public administrations, including the autonomous communities, is 1,921,590,810,000 euros –try reading that number–. This is indeed a problem, and nobody talks about it.