The tourism fair B-Travel, the supermarket chain Ametller Origen, and the health sector knowledge business association Catalonia.health have announced changes to their leadership this week, which has also been marked by new appointments in the transport and real estate sectors. Furthermore, Anthropic, one of the giants of artificial intelligence (AI), has landed in the Spanish market with the appointment of a new head in the country, while in the United States, billionaire Warren Buffett has announced that he is leaving the chairmanship of the conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway to his son Howard Buffett.

More than a dozen prominent artificial intelligence (AI) researchers warned last week that the technology companies in the sector are building is becoming a risk to humanity. The problem, these researchers asserted, is that companies are not good at controlling the systems, no matter how hard they try. Following revelations that so-called OpenAI AI agents escaped from their testing system and hacked another company's computers, new alarms raised within the AI research world have accentuated fears that, for years, companies have prioritized development speed and money over safety.

The Núria valley is one of the most iconic mountain destinations in Catalonia. A tourist complex around a basilica from the early 20th century, flanked by the Puigmal and the Capçaleres del Ter i del Freser Natural Park, at an altitude of 2,000 meters, which can only be reached by walking or by the rack railway. The station, managed by Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya (FGC), is a pioneer in sustainability thanks to the Ecovall project. During the first half of 2026, the station generated more than 908,000 kWh of geothermal energy thanks to the implementation of 126 wells 100 meters deep that heat the water for all the facilities. This new system has saved more than 100,000 liters of diesel and prevented the emission of 309 tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere. Furthermore, the Núria station is the first FGC station in Catalonia open 365 days a year: it does not rely solely on the snow season, which is increasingly unpredictable due to climate change, but has reinvented itself by organizing all kinds of nature and hiking activities to attract the public throughout the year.

No one likes to go where they believe they will not be well received or where an ovation is not a given. That is what the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, must have thought, as he last attended the Family Business Institute (IEF) congress in October 2018 in Valencia. From 2019 to 2025, he stopped attending, even though this powerful lobby had invited him. It includes some of the main companies controlled by families, from Mercadona to Banco Santander, Barceló, Banca March, Mango, or Amancio López's Hotusa, which joined last year.

The latest PISA results once again place education at the center of public debate. In Catalonia, however, this time we have an even more elementary problem: we do not even know well enough where we stand. The exclusion of an excessive portion of the student body from the sample of students who took the PISA tests means that the results of Catalan boys and girls are not comparable. It is a significant technical and political fiasco. But perhaps we run the risk that the discussion about who is to blame prevents us from seeing a deeper issue. PISA is talking to us about mathematics, science, and reading comprehension. But it is also talking to us, indirectly, about democracy. The OECD points to a worrying decline in the reading ability of our children and identifies an especially revealing phenomenon: the number of young people who read quickly, superficially, and respond before having understood the text well is growing. At the same time, the use of social networks is increasing, and more than a quarter of the students state that digital devices habitually cause distractions in class.The issue, in my opinion, is not to totally demonize screens. Used well, technology can be an extraordinary learning tool. The problem is another: we are educating a generation in an ecosystem that rewards speed, constant interruption, immediate response, and emotional impact. And then we ask them to read with attention, to distinguish a fact from an opinion, to compare sources, to identify manipulation, and to listen to arguments with which they do not agree. These are not just school skills: they are democratic skills.The temporal coincidence is unsettling. While we discuss the PISA results, in Germany the far-right AfD has just obtained nearly 45% of the votes in Saxony-Anhalt. A year and a half earlier, it had already doubled its support in the federal elections and had become the second political force in the country. Germany is once again asking itself to what extent a democracy can see the values that sustain it eroded from within. It would be absurd, and too convenient, to establish a causal line between TikTok and the vote for the far right. The causes of the AfD's growth are much more complex, but we should not ignore the information ecosystem in which these concerns are transformed into political behavior. Networks do not necessarily invent unrest, but they can amplify it. They do not necessarily create polarization, but they reward content that outrages. And disinformation is especially effective when it confirms what we would already like to believe. That is why the problem of fake news is not just that we do not know how to detect a false piece of news. The most difficult problem appears when we know, or suspect, that information is false and, despite everything, we decide to share it because it reinforces our prejudices, harms the adversary, or reaffirms our identity.We are no longer just talking about digital literacy here. We are talking about democratic ethics. For many years, we have acted as if democracy were an infrastructure that, once built, functioned almost by itself: a Constitution, periodic elections, parliaments, courts, and freedom of the press. All of this is essential. But it is not enough. A democracy needs citizens willing to participate, capable of listening and deliberating, with the judgment to evaluate information and enough democratic resilience to continue respecting rules, rights, and opponents even when they are angry, afraid, or feel like they are losing. And these capabilities do not appear spontaneously when we turn eighteen. They are learned.This is where the school acquires a responsibility that goes far beyond recovering points in PISA. Obviously, we must improve mathematics, science, and reading. In fact, being able to understand a complex text is probably one of the best defenses against manipulation. But educating democratic citizens does not consist of adding an hour of "values" to the curriculum or memorizing how Parliament works. Democracy is learned by practicing it. It is learned when a student has to defend a position with arguments and listen to the opposing one. When they have to distinguish a reliable source from one that is not. When they work with other students with whom they do not share an origin, opinion, or interests. When they participate in a real decision of the school and discover that their voice has consequences. When they have to accept losing a vote. When they verify that being convinced of something does not equate to being right.Perhaps, then, after PISA we should formulate a slightly different question. Not just how many points we want to recover in reading or mathematics, but what kind of citizen we want to emerge from our schools. Someone capable of reading a long text. Of listening to an opinion they detest. Of distinguishing a scientific argument from a slogan. Of not sharing a lie even if it favors their own. Of participating without wanting to exclude. And of defending democratic rules even when the result is not what they would want. If the school does not help to form this citizen, the problem we have is quite a bit more serious than performing poorly in PISA. We need above all to teach how to live democratically in a world that will continue to be digital.

Yesterday a friend told me: "The Ibex-35 has risen 13% this year, but there are several companies that have fallen 30%. I'm going to buy them, it's their turn now." Will my friend be right? Probably not.

As much as everything is digital today, as much as gaming, entertainment, and competitions have conquered online ground, it is still just as exciting to receive an award or recognition in a physical format. This does not go out of style. A cup, a medal, a plaque, a winner's trophy, second, third, fourth place, or, in most cases, a participant's trophy. That immortal cliché “the important thing is to participate” remains current and in operation. And to attest to this, there is the fascinating world of trophies. And Laudo’s is an absolute reference in this field. This year they celebrate their fiftieth anniversary and are experiencing it to the fullest.

In New York, the young journalist Andy Sachs has just started working as an assistant to the feared editor-in-chief of the fashion magazine Runway. She spends the day running through the corridors writing down her orders in a black notebook. In Paris, Amélie Poulain also carries one in her hands. She is a waitress from Montmartre who is trying to find Dominique Bredoteau, the owner of a box of memories that she discovered hidden in her home. She has located three men with that name in the phone book and has written down their addresses to start ruling them out.They are two scenes from different movies –The Devil Wears Prada and Amélie–, but they share the same object: a Moleskine. It is a notebook with black covers, rounded corners, and an elastic band that, since the turn of the millennium, has become a design icon and the flagship product of a brand with a presence all over the world. In 2025 the company had a turnover of 117.8 million euros and during the first half of 2026, sales grew by 2.2%, to 52.2 million. But where did these notebooks come from? And how did Moleskine manage to turn such a simple object into a brand known all over the world?Bruce Chatwin's notebook

The story begins almost 40 years ago. For a long time, the British writer and traveler Bruce Chatwin had used small black notebooks that he bought at a stationery store on the Rue de l’Ancienne Comédie, in Paris. They were simple notebooks, handcrafted by a small family business in Tours, in central France, that Chatwin took on his travels to take notes, draw maps, and jot down everything that could later end up becoming material for his books. In France, that type of notebook was known as moleskine, because of the black, waxed material used to cover its cover.In 1986, however, the manufacturer closed. When Chatwin returned to the Parisian stationery store to buy more, the owner told him that the notebooks were no longer being made. Before leaving for Australia to live a new adventure, the writer tried to collect all that they had in the back room. He ended up explaining the episode in The songlines, the book about that trip which he published the following year.Almost a decade later, the book fell into the hands of Maria Sebregondi, a designer who worked for Modo & Modo, a small Milanese company. In the mid-nineties, the company was looking for a product that could connect with a new generation of readers, travelers, and creatives. Sebregondi was reading The songlines when she stumbled upon the story of the lost notebooks.Sebregondi proposed to the company to reproduce that small black notebook, preserve its most recognizable features and convert the generic name with which the writer had described it into a brand. In 1997 Modo & Modo put the first 5,000 Moleskine notebooks on sale.From notebook to global brand

Success, however, did not depend solely on the design. Modo & Modo decided to sell the Moleskines mainly in bookstores and design shops, instead of treating them as a simple stationery item, and incorporated into the product the story that had inspired it.The formula worked: by 1999 it could already be bought throughout Europe, in the United States and in Japan and, over the years, the company expanded its catalog with planners, writing instruments, bags and other accessories. The appearance of laptops and, later, smartphones did not slow down its expansion. On the contrary, the notebooks generated communities of enthusiasts on the internet who shared photographs of their notebooks and contributed to turning them into a cult object.The growth ended up attracting investors. In 2006, Modo & Modo was acquired by a group led by the fund Syntegra Capital and the company definitively adopted the name Moleskine. In 2013, it went public on the Milan Stock Exchange, but its time as a listed company was short: in 2016, the Belgian group D’Ieteren acquired control of it and the following year withdrew it from the stock exchange. Almost three decades after those first 5,000 notebooks, Moleskine remains part of the Belgian group and has turned the small notebook that Bruce Chatwin missed into a business that generates more than one hundred million euros annually.

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In the spring of 2011, the painter Huguette Clark died in New York City, just a couple of weeks shy of turning 105. Her death and her life had been full of mystery. Upon dying, she left a legacy of 500 million euros, but no descendants. The reason for the fortune she possessed is found in the figure of her father, a great copper magnate who conceived his daughter at an age when most mortals retire.

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The former secretary of state and technology specialist Carme Artigas and the Empordà businessman Antoni Escudero are two of the prominent names in the Catalan business world who have been involved in appointments this week. Furthermore, the entry of new executives into the leadership of the tobacco company Philip Morris in Spain and the French automotive group Renault, which has a new vice president, also stands out.

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The fact that the European Central Bank (ECB) is raising interest rates is the main measure it has to fight against the high inflation we are experiencing, largely caused by the cost of fuel. As individuals, how does this affect us? In short, money will be more expensive for everyone. If the price of money is higher, financing will be too. Consider that, when a bank calculates the interest rate of a loan, the operating margin is added to its cost. Therefore, we can expect an increase in the cost of new consumer loans.

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The news fell like a lead weight on millions of Americans. On April 1st, Danone made official the discontinuation of its coffee-flavored yogurt –Dannon Coffee Yogurt, also known by the acronym DYC– in the United States, a product with 85 years of history and wildly loved by a large number of consumers. In a recent article, the Wall Street Journal had even defined it as "the main reason for Americans to get out of bed." Since then, collective madness has taken hold of the most loyal fans, who are filling social media with petitions to demand the return of the product while looking for formulas to recreate it as accurately as possible.

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The Minister of Business and Labour, Miquel Sàmper, stated in a recent meeting with Catalan representatives of the quantum industry that Catalonia "is arriving in time to lead" what is set to be the next technological revolution. Among the fifty companies that, according to Acció, are dedicated to this technology in the Principality, Qilimanjaro Quantum Tech stands out with its own light: the company, which has developed the three quantum computers for the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, is one of the leaders in European quantum computing, an economic field in surprising growth. Its CEO, Marta P. Estarellas, receives Companies at the company's headquarters to talk about a technology that "is a bit scary" and is "not very intuitive" for the general public, but whose applications will be unique and will stand out in the country's future.

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The real estate crisis that erupted nearly two decades ago has remained etched in the collective memory. The impact was profound, persistent, and uneven, and forced measures to be taken to prevent it from happening again. For this reason, the sharp rise in housing prices fuels the fear that the lesson has not been fully learned. According to data published this week by the INE, in Catalonia, housing prices continue to rise at a rate of 10.1% annually. This is a rate slightly lower than the 11.7% recorded last year, but still very high. The concern, therefore, is justified.

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Communicator and sommelier Meritxell Falgueras (Barcelona, 1981) grew up among wines, bottles, and labels: “I remember my grandmother, my mother, my father, everyone working in the shop and me doing my homework behind the boxes”. Her first job was also at the family business, the Celler de Gelida, in Sants: “During the summers, with my brother, we had to wrap bottles so that the old labels, from before the war, would not get damaged”.

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On Ramón i Cajal street in Barcelona, right by Joanic square, Vell Món is an authentic temple of antique furniture. Siblings José María and Cristina Ruiz run a furniture restoration and sales business where you can either bring in worm-eaten or unglued furniture to be repaired, restore a table with great sentimental value, or buy a beautiful piece of furniture that has decades (or centuries) of history impregnated in its wood. It is addictive and fascinating to hear a lifelong artisanal trade spoken about by an artisan who knows it, because the craft is their life.

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An eraser, a ruler, a pair of pens. Also two highlighters, a pencil sharpener and, of course, a few pencils. This week, with the return to classrooms, pencil cases have been filled again with school supplies. And on the back of many pencils –especially those that students will use for the most artistic subjects– there will be stamped the same name: Faber-Castell. They are the two surnames of a German dynasty that has been manufacturing them for more than 260 years.

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On June 6, 1981, a voracious fire engulfed a historic building in the city of Barcelona, which was located at the confluence of Pelai Street and Ronda Universitat. It was not just another building, because years earlier it had been the headquarters of the El Águila department stores, one of the most important in the Catalan capital for decades. The emblematic image that the press reflected the next day was that of the figure of the eagle that presided over the building completely surrounded by smoke. It fell a few minutes later and put an end to a long history.

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The academic year has begun in Catalonia with a substantial change at the helm of Parlem, one of the key companies of the business independence movement of the last decade. Furthermore, the end of summer marks, for all intents and purposes, the starting point of Marc Armengol's tenure as CEO of Banc Sabadell, with various organizational changes and a focus on digital activity. In the chamber sphere, the Association of Real Estate Agents (COAPI) has chosen its representative to the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce; while the Spanish government has appointed a new Secretary of State for Housing and Urban Agenda.

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Imagine entering the website of an appliance store to buy a refrigerator. The company, through your personal data, knows if you live in a rented property or if you own your home, detects your zip code, and recognizes if you have children. It also knows what you do for a living, what brand your mobile phone is, and how many times a month you go to a restaurant. Taking all these variables into account, it shows you a price just for you, different from what might appear to the neighbor next door or your friend who lives three streets away. In the end, the goal is to charge you the maximum amount you are willing to pay for a product according to the calculations of an algorithm. It is what is known as surveillance pricing.

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