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%). 

Let's think for a moment about the work behind the Phoenix Report, published this May. Six economists of undisputed prestige —Xavier Cuadras Morató, Jordi Galí, Modest Guinjoan, Guillem López Casasnovas, Miquel Puig and Jaume Ventura, coordinated by Xavier Roig— have had to agree on more than one hundred and twenty pages of analysis, accept external arguments, renounce their own personal positions, and put their academic and social capital at stake to achieve a greater good: to awaken a country. To hold it up to the mirror. To proclaim, with data and rigor, that the emperor has no clothes. And the king is naked because while Catalonia's GDP has grown above the European average in the last 25 years, GDP per capita has fallen 12 percentage points compared to our European partners. A quarter of a century ago we were six points above the European average. Today we are six points below. We have created wealth, yes. But we have distributed it among more and more people and in a worse and worse way. This is where we need to stop and think. Because there is a deep confusion, whether interested or naive, about what distributing wealth means. The State tends to understand distribution as providing more services to those who cannot afford them. And it is true that in an advanced society collective solidarity reaches where the individual cannot reach alone. But there is no better distribution of wealth than increasing people's wages. That fewer and fewer people have to depend on public resources to have a full life. That every worker can feel responsible for their own future and have control over their life. Jarvis Cocker, from Pulp, sang it with bitter irony in "Common People": "how does it feel to live your life without no meaning or control?" It is a song about the romanticization of poverty. Today it could be the soundtrack to a growing part of Catalan society. 

After decades dedicated to politics, the former Prime Minister of Luxembourg and then President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, delivered the best sentence of his life: "We all know what needs to be done, what we don't know is how to get re-elected once we have done it" (2007). The difference between knowing and doing, or between diagnosis and solution. And here we are, in the permanent struggle between what knowledge tells us, what the quality of public debate is capable of agreeing upon, and what is politically executed. We are talking about democratic politics, of course, which has many more limitations than autocratic regimes, which in the same way that they approve a five-year plan, make a minister disappear or make a dissident fly out of a window.

The Nobel laureate in economics Paul Krugman very well described the importance of an economic variable that is fundamental, although it may be unknown to most citizens. "Productivity is not everything, but in the long run, it is almost everything," he said. The fact is that growing is one thing, and progressing or prospering is another. Or, more simply, volume or quantity is one thing – gross domestic product (GDP) is increasing and in Catalonia it has already exceeded 300 billion euros – and quality is another, that is, how this pie is distributed among all those who live in a given economy.

The pharmaceutical company Esteve accelerates its scale-up. The multinational headquartered in Barcelona has closed the 2025 fiscal year with net revenues of 828 million euros, a figure that represents an 11% growth (based on gross turnover) compared to the previous year and confirms the solidity of its strategic plan. Although operating profit (ebitda) has soared by 19% to 151 million, net profit has stood at 72 million euros – a slight decrease of 4% – due to the impact of the dollar exchange rate and the absence of extraordinary financial income that marked 2024.

The truth is that in January everything looked good: sales growth, controlled inflation and interest rates falling. It seemed like a perfect year from an economic point of view. Today, however, it couldn't be further from reality. Oil at $100 – even if it was only for a month or so – has altered everything. You already know: when energy goes up, all prices go up. And, even though the conflict has cooled down, the price isn't coming down. It's raining on a wet field and we are amplifying inflationary pressure.For families, the impact is increasingly serious. Not only is there inflation, but Euribor has also risen and, consequently, mortgages will become more expensive. Furthermore, interest rates have not fallen and, right now, the best news would be that they do not rise again in the coming months.Meanwhile, stock markets have turned a page on the conflict and are once again marking historic highs. Two months ago it seemed like the world was ending and that no company was worth anything; today, on the other hand, the vast majority are, apparently, essential again. And it is here where the big unknown appears: what has really changed in just a few weeks? The conflict has cooled down, yes, but its effects remain fully in force in the form of high energy costs and pressure on prices. Rarely have I seen the stock market and oil at their highs at the same time.In the current context, not everyone is winning. Energy and banking benefit from high prices and high rates, while families, especially indebted ones, suffer the consequences. Inflation and the rising cost of mortgages reduce consumption and accentuate growing inequality. And, in the end, families keep taking economic blows, one after another, in a situation that has long been critical. I'm sorry, 2026 will not be better.

The Generalitat Valenciana intends to implement the 35-hour weekly working day for its employees on January 1, 2027. This was announced this Friday by the Minister of Economy, Finance and Public Administration, José Antonio Rovira, at the meeting of the General Negotiating Table for autonomous civil servants, statutory personnel, and workers.

Three of the major European economies –France, Italy, and the United Kingdom– are the three new headaches in European debt markets. The three countries are in the investors' crosshairs due to the high cost their governments pay to issue public debt, even though on paper and historically they are three states with solid economies.

The Generalitat de Catalunya, through Fira 2000, is negotiating the purchase of the offices in the administrative district of the Zona Franca from the company AXA, where various departments have been located since 2020. Three meetings have already taken place, and very soon, in May, there will be a fourth meeting. These negotiations aim to put an end to 11 years of shadows surrounding this operation promoted in 2015 by the owner of the Zona Franca land, Fira 2000, a commercial company whose majority shareholder (53.6%) is the Generalitat and which also includes the participation of the city councils of Barcelona and L'Hospitalet and the Diputació de Barcelona.