The Catalan economy grew above the Spanish and European average in the third quarter, a common trend since the recovery after the pandemic. Thus, the gross domestic product (GDP, the indicator that measures the size of an economy) of Catalonia maintains an upward trend despite the adverse international context caused by tariff tensions, high inflation, and the energy crisis derived from the war in the Middle East.

New meeting of business leaders and politicians within the framework of the Civet de Fonteta. The evening, organized by businessman Luis Conde in the Empordà region, was held this Saturday and brought together dozens of personalities from the economic and political world, both from Catalonia and the state level. Among others, the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa; the President of the Parliament, Josep Rull, as well as the Minister of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Courts, Félix Bolaños, were in attendance.

The president of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has entered the debate on the minimum interprofessional wage (SMI) and the taxation of labor income with statements that do not fully align with reality. In an interview this Friday on Cadena SER, the popular leader claimed that the Spanish government has made "a good deal" with the minimum wage increases because, according to him, the State collects more money through social security contributions and personal income tax (IRPF).

Eating from a set menu remains one of the common options for dining out, but it is becoming a bit more expensive each time. The price of the daily menu now reaches 14.7 euros on average in Spain, compared to 14.2 euros in 2025. This represents an increase of 3.5% in one year, according to the latest survey by Hostelería de España and Edenred, which analyzes the evolution of prices and the habits of establishments.

The other day I went into a shopping mall and I was stunned to see the price of a lipstick. Almost fifteen euros! At what point did we normalize it costing so much? I immediately remembered the first time I went to a supermarket that everyone knows today and that, more than twenty years ago, burst onto the scene with force. I left with two carts filled to the top and a bill of 16,000 pesetas, about 96 euros. Two carts! Today, with 100 euros, you barely fill half of one.

When it comes to money, states do not budge. The next European Union budget, which will set spending priorities for the 2028-2034 period, remains blocked and, despite the tug-of-war of this Thursday's negotiations—which have been going on for hours—the position of the capitals has moved very little.

Don't get overwhelmed. We aren't going to talk about out-of-body experiences here, but rather about possible economic leaders for the Spanish government after November 29th. And they don't need to be affiliated with the party. In his first terms, Pedro Sánchez turned to Nadia Calviño, an economist with good contacts in Brussels –where she was a director-general, for example–, who had also held senior positions with Pedro Solbes as minister in the executives of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Once appointed president of the European Investment Bank (EIB), in 2023 she was replaced by Carlos Cuerpo, former secretary-general of the Treasury. With a technical and low-key profile, this doctor of economics does not have a PSOE membership card, like Calviño, and projects a solvent image.

Barça Women continues its upward trajectory on the pitch –where it is the team to beat–, but also off the field of play. The blaugrana entity has closed the 2025-26 financial year with a positive profit of 8.525 million euros. Exceptional figures that make women's and men's football the only two branches of the club with a positive result. The data also show a clear upward trend for Barça Women, which has gone from having losses of 2.8 million euros in 2021 to a profit of 8.5 million in 2026. Furthermore, in the last year the result of the financial year has quadrupled, going from 2 million euros to 8.5 million.

Eight months pregnant, Mar Reguant (Súria, Bages, 1984) took her bicycle to buy her first electric car. She already had a daughter, lived on the outskirts of Chicago, and got around by pedaling alone, but she was soon to be a mother for the second time, and a big snowfall was predicted. “The car was very small and had a maximum range of 100 kilometers,” she recalls. When she returned from the United States after the pandemic, she moved to a development in Bellaterra with her two young children. And unlike her neighbors, for a year and a half she also lived without a car. “Now I think about it and I don't know how we did it – she explains, laughing –. The children were very young and it shows that it can be done, but sometimes activism weighs us down a bit.”

The economist and essayist Tim Jackson (United Kingdom, 1957) calmly and meticulously explains the radical shift proposed by his latest book, The Case for a New Economy (Arcàdia, 2026, translated by Anna Llisterri). It deals, in the form of an initiatory journey – which includes personal anecdotes and philosophical, historical, and ecological lessons – with two ideas that clash with prevailing capitalism: the first, that human prosperity has more to do with health than wealth; the second, that the economy should above all be concerned with care, in all its forms, and not with incessant growth, as it currently is. Jackson, of whom Catalan readers had only previously been able to read Postgrowth (Arcàdia, 2022), opens the doors of his English study where he works to ARA to discuss the ideas that have preoccupied him over the last five years.

Catalonia closed the month of June with 2,142 new companies. According to the provisional data on the formation of commercial companies from the National Institute of Statistics, the Principality increased new business activity by 9.8% year-on-year, after a June 2025 that already approached historical records. In fact, according to INE records, it is the best June in terms of the inauguration of new companies in the historical series, with data available since 2008.

The Catalan economy maintains its positive trend –with an employment rate close to the historical maximum and growth higher than that of the European Union as a whole–, but the well-being of Catalans is not progressing at the same pace. As warned by the Council of Labour, Economy and Social Affairs of Catalonia (CTESC), the stagnation of productivity, difficulties in accessing housing, and the persistence of inequalities "condition the country's development potential" and "limit the opportunities of many people".

Catalonia lives with a large debt and pending tasks. The first, which exceeds 90 billion euros, means that every Catalan, at birth, is burdened with a liability of 10,999 euros, according to current census data, which exceeds 8.2 million people. The second is the obligation to reform a regional financing system that has been expired for more than a decade, cumbersome and complex, which causes the communities that contribute the most to end up below those that receive the most once the resources of the system are distributed.

Catalonia has many assets, talent and growth, but it fails in wealth redistribution. It is a repeated diagnosis that has re-emerged during the Forbes Catalonia Economic Summit, organized by the magazine that periodically publishes the ranking of the richest people, at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona. In an analysis from many perspectives, and with the participation of consultants, politicians, entrepreneurs and executives, the great values of the country have been highlighted, but also the pending issues.

Amidst the negotiations with the United States, and in a social situation on the brink due to the hardening of Washington's historic embargo, Cuba has approved a package of economic reforms aimed at liberalizing and decentralizing its economy. The measures involve significant modifications ranging from the approval of private banking to changes to attract capital from the diaspora. In summary, they mean shifting the centrality of the state, evolving a socialist model that for years had remained almost intact, beyond specific reforms like those of Raúl Castro in 2011.

His book Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013) catapulted him to global fame. But even then, the French economist Thomas Piketty had been one of the most respected names in economic theory for over a decade, as co-founder of the Paris School of Economics and co-creator of the World Inequality Database. A specialist in the study of inequalities and wealth distribution, Piketty now presents the Global Justice Report, an ambitious economic roadmap that outlines how global inequality can be eliminated and the climate crisis curbed before 2100.

The Spanish economy will maintain a "robust" growth rate despite the conflict in the Middle East and international uncertainty, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, the institution that groups the world's advanced economies). The economic body has revised its growth forecast for Spain in 2026 upwards by one tenth, to 2.2%, in line with the estimate maintained by the Spanish government.

L’ on the state of the Catalan economy has the quality one would expect from the group of economists who have produced it. It conveys a strong message, albeit full of nuances. The aspect that interested me most is the conclusion (in Annex 5) that Catalonia has a segment of its economy – including industry – which, in terms of productivity, is comparable, for example, to the corresponding segment in the Basque Country. It reaffirms me in the conviction that we still have a solid foundation on which, if we set our minds to it and Europe helps, we can build a first-class economy. I also believe that this requires the spearhead of our development policies to pivot on the impetus of the most advanced and productive sectors.The report observes that we also have a segment of the economy with low productivity that has induced, and absorbed, in a short time, exceptional demographic growth. As a consequence, the averages for productivity (of labor, per hour worked) and income per person have widened the gap compared to the European average. I note that this does not necessarily mean impoverishment, neither for the native population nor, obviously, for immigrants. I also agree that a country's income per person is more important than absolute income, but, even so, size matters. At least in Catalonia, it dilutes the weight of debt and increases political weight.

It is undeniable that the Catalan and Spanish economies are growing. On a macroeconomic level, the trend in gross domestic product (GDP) is positive, especially when compared to neighboring eurozone countries. Not even the war in Iran, which has had less impact than expected, has pushed these economies down from their leading positions in terms of growth.

The Fènix Report has been a very healthy wake-up call about the seriousness of the trajectory of the Catalan economy in recent years and in the last generation, with a GDP per capita that continues to drift away from the European average (twenty percentage points in the last twenty years –from 114% to 94%).