The Girona-Costa Brava airport continues to grow. Looking ahead to 2027, it adds to its flight offerings a new first-rate company that will operate on the Girona runways. It is the British EasyJet, one of the most important low-cost airlines in the world, with 370 aircraft and nearly 100 million passengers annually. It will operate two new routes to the United Kingdom, the country with which Girona airport has the most connections.

The price of gasoline maintains its upward trend in Spain and has added its twelfth consecutive week of increases, hitting a new annual high, while diesel has resumed the hikes that thus eliminate the effect of a large part of the tax cuts due to the activation of the safeguard mechanism in September.

The Spanish government plans to increase the capacity of the electricity grid in Catalonia by 50% by 2030. Thus, 3,800 additional megawatts (MW) will be added to the electrical system, which will allow for meeting the growing demand from both private individuals and various investments in public infrastructure. This increase is Catalonia's share of Pedro Sánchez's executive plan to improve the electricity grid throughout the State, which includes investments worth 17 billion euros in all autonomous communities over the next four years.

The European Union is making a major commitment to strategic autonomy in the face of the growing threat that China poses to the competitiveness of the community bloc. Brussels' latest legislative proposals to boost industry include a criterion to prioritize European products over those manufactured outside community borders in public tenders in strategic sectors such as automotive, steel, clean technologies, semiconductors, and electric vehicles. It is the requirement known as made in EU (made in the European Union, in English).

The European automotive sector is in a difficult moment. Electrification, Chinese competition, and stagnant consumer demand have pushed the European Union to take measures to protect the sector. But they are leading the industry down the "wrong" path. Brussels is trying to protect the European industry from foreign competition instead of making it more competitive. This is the conclusion of a report by the prestigious think tank Bruegel, on European policies, published this week, in which it warns that the continent's prosperity "is at stake".

The French neobank Qonto, specialized in offering solutions to shorten management times for SMEs, enters a new phase of growth in Europe with the inauguration of its headquarters in the heart of Paris, an 11,000 square meter space located in the city's business and technology district, the Silicon Sentier, also known as the French Silicon Valley.

The Codorníu Raventós group has announced the sale of its California winery –Artesa Winery– to winemaker Jean-Charles Boisset, owner of the French wine sector company Boisset. In a statement issued this Wednesday, the company argues that the operation is a response to "a strategic review of the portfolio aimed at focusing investments and resources on regions that are priorities for the company." As company sources have detailed to ARA, Codorníu is divesting its entire stake in the capital of the American winery.

A report by the Labour, Economic and Social Council of Catalonia (CTESC) confirms that Catalan self-employed workers retire later and receive lower pensions than salaried employees. Specifically, while self-employed workers end their professional careers at 66.5 years of age –1.4 years later than the average–, their average retirement pension is 1,063 euros, which is 657 euros less (38.2%) than that of salaried employees, which is 1,720.6 euros.

The listed socimi Colonial, which until now only dedicated itself to the office building market, has entered the student residence market with the creation of a joint venture with the British group Vita, which will begin with a portfolio of three assets located in Madrid valued at 1 billion euros, the company reported this Wednesday. In a first phase, Vita Group contributes to the joint venture Vita Student Oria South, which opened its doors this September; Oria North will join in 2027, and Santa Hortensia, one of the projects in Colonial SFL's urban transformation plan, will be added after the delivery of the assets, scheduled for 2028.

Significant step for Salvat laboratories. The Catalan family pharmaceutical company has decided to concentrate its entire production capacity at the factory it has in Alcalá de Henares, in Madrid. The move from the Esplugues de Llobregat plant will be progressive until 2030, according to its new strategic plan approved in July. The company is open to negotiating possibilities of geographical mobility for its staff "responsibly, maintaining dialogue with the legal representatives of the workers during the different phases of the transition".

The First Vice President and Minister of Economy, Carlos Cuerpo, confirmed this Wednesday in Congress that the new decree on aid for the inflationary crisis derived from the conflict in the Middle East will be approved at the Council of Ministers next Tuesday, September 29. Some of the current measures will cease to be in force on October 1 if they are not extended.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has again revised upwards Spain's growth forecast for this year to 2.6%, four tenths of a percentage point higher than the estimates made in June. Furthermore, the organization has also revised upwards by one tenth of a percentage point Spain's forecasts for 2027, due to an improvement in domestic demand of one tenth. Thus, the growth of the gross domestic product (GDP, the indicator that measures the size of an economy) of the State for 2027 is placed at 1.8%.

The wine group Raventós Codorníu, owned by the North American private equity fund Carlyle, closed the 2026 fiscal year –from July 1st of last year to June 30th of this year– with a new revenue record while it continues working to find a buyer. According to the data presented this Tuesday at an event in Barcelona, the company achieved gross sales of 234 million euros, a figure that represents an improvement of 1% in year-on-year terms. Likewise, the net profit rose to 14 million euros, surpassing the 12 million in earnings corresponding to the previous fiscal year.

Exports reached 9.533 billion euros in July in Catalonia, 3.6% above the 9.2014 billion of the same month last year, according to data updated this Tuesday by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Business. The figure represents a record in the historical series for foreign sales for a month of July in Catalonia. In parallel, imports rose by 2.7% year-on-year, to 10.6561 billion euros, which is also the highest figure recorded so far for this month. The comparison between exports and imports yields a negative trade deficit of 1.1231 billion euros in July in Catalonia, which is 4.4% less than in July of last year.

A report by Foment Pime –the SME sector of the Catalan business association Foment– maintains that the lack of affordable housing is no longer an "exclusively social" problem, but has also become a "labor and economic" difficulty, especially for SMEs, which have more difficulty hiring staff than large companies. In a press conference, the president of the Territorial Council of SMEs –which brings together about twenty territorial organizations of Foment–, Pep Garcia, explained that the residential emergency "is a direct barrier that affects the competitiveness of SMEs" and has appealed to seal a great public-private agreement to facilitate access to housing in Catalonia.

After starring in a certain withdrawal, families are once again entrusting their savings to the stock market. Last year, the weight of households in the Spanish stock market rose to 16.7%, the highest level in the last four years, according to Bolsas y Mercados (BME), the operator of the Spanish trading floors, a subsidiary of the Swiss firm Six. Its historical low occurred in 2024. Another relevant fact is that foreign investors accounted for a historical record of 50.4% of the total.

The European Union has announced a new trade agreement with the Philippines. Negotiators from the European Commission and the Philippine government have closed a "substantial agreement" to facilitate trade between the two territories, as explained this Tuesday by the European Commissioner for Trade and Economic Security, Maros Sefcovic.

Catalonia is once again recording a new record in tourist arrivals and closes an unprecedented summer. Despite the heat waves and the rise in ticket prices due to the effects derived from the conflict in the Middle East, the country received almost 2.9 million visitors in hotels this month of August, a figure that represents an increase of 5.6% compared to the same period last year and a figure never seen in the entire historical series, which collects information since 1999.

The Data Protection Commission (DPC) of the Republic of Ireland has imposed a 403 million euro fine on Google Ireland Limited for infringing the European Union's (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the processing of its users' geolocation information. The penalty, one of the highest imposed to date by the Irish authority, is the result of an investigation initiated in February 2020 following several complaints filed by consumer protection organizations.

He wants to explain economics in jeans and the photo on his phone doesn't lie: informal, on a trip to Morocco ten years ago. He never wears a tie and doesn't have LinkedIn either. He studied economics because he listened to Fabià Estapé on TV3 and now he uses economics to explain day-to-day decisions. He is an associate professor at UPF and UVic-UCC, founder of the Kapital platform (which has 23,000 subscribers on Substack and 30,000 listeners on Spotify) and author of Fuck you money (Península).