A good handful of European countries have suffered cyberattacks on supermarket chains in recent weeks. Spain, however, is currently immune to these types of cyber operations, which authorities in the European Union and the affected states frame within the context of hybrid warfare, as are the attacks on blood banks in France.

The challenges from Putin, Trump, and Xi have led Europe – including the United Kingdom – to formulate a policy, which has been called "strategic autonomy," that will have consequences for the competitive framework in which our companies operate, both those that exist and those that may come.

The Catalan Institute of Finance (ICF), the public investment bank of the Generalitat, has sealed an alliance with the Official Credit Institute (ICO), of the Spanish government, to channel the financing of housing and strategic business projects. The objective is to boost in Catalonia the resources of the public-private fund España Crece intended to provide continuity to the Next Generation European funds linked to the post-pandemic recovery plan –whose application period ended last August– and also the lines intended for companies.

A total of 109 companies and entities have contributed measures for more than a year to combat the climate crisis in the Barcelona metropolitan area. The proposals, within the framework of the so-called Climate Chapter of the business association Barcelona Global, were presented this Wednesday at the headquarters of the consulting firm EY in Barcelona. The report includes cases such as the manufacturing of a new Barcelona paving stone with 47% fewer emissions and 40% recycled aggregates by Sorigué, BSM (Barcelona de Serveis Municipals) parking lots converted into hubs with about 600 electric car charging points, or surplus fruit from Mercabarna that reaches social entities.

Catalan small and medium-sized enterprises are in good health. This is demonstrated by the latest edition of the Yearbook of the Catalan SME, prepared each year by the business association Pimec. According to the data in the document, presented by the organization this Monday, the smaller-sized companies in the Principality managed in 2024 to narrow the productivity gap that has historically separated them from larger businesses. According to the report, the country's small and medium-sized enterprises increased their productivity by 2.7%, to an average of 74,355 euros per employee; while large ones recorded a slight decline in the same year, of 0.1%, to 93,405 euros per worker.

Companies have discovered a very effective way to force us to do something without forbidding us anything: making the option they do not want us to choose more expensive, slower, or more difficult until we prefer the one we would have never chosen.

Catalonia retains the throne of technology transfer through companies in the State. This is revealed by the third edition of the report on the ecosystem of spin-offs of deep technologies in Spain, published this Thursday by the Mobile World Capital Barcelona foundation. The document detects up to 1,014 spin-off companies –that is, businesses created from scientific research in research centers, universities and other institutions– active in the Spanish fabric at the close of 2025; a year-on-year increase of 4.6%. Of these, 290 are Catalan, 28.5% of the entire ecosystem, and they generate 2,885 highly specialized jobs.

Gabriel Ginebra is part of the Regional Expert Council of the TUI (Time Use Initiative) and will be one of the speakers at the Time Use Week that is being held from October 19th to 21st in Barcelona. He is part of a family of twelve siblings, he has raised seven children with his wife, and now he has two grandchildren.

Catalonia retreats slightly in the incorporation of new commercial companies in August. Business creation has decreased by 1.1% in year-on-year terms in the Principality in the eighth month of the year, according to data published this Tuesday by the National Statistics Institute (INE). Thus, in the analyzed period, 1,469 new businesses were incorporated in the country. Despite the retreat, it is the fourth best figure for an August in the historical series, surpassed only by the two previous years, 2025 and 2024, and by 2016.

Catalonia maintains its status as a benchmark for entrepreneurship within the Spanish state. This is revealed by data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report, which shows that entrepreneurial activity in the country broke its historical ceiling in 2025. According to the study, the Catalan entrepreneurial activity rate (TEA, for its acronym in English) last year stood at 9.7%, a year-on-year increase of 1.1 percentage points and the highest value in the historical series, which began in 2004. Furthermore, it shows that the gender gap in the entrepreneurial world is practically closed.

The announcement by the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, of the dissolution of the Cortes and the call for general elections on November 29th has put the country's productive fabric on alert. The Catalan association of small and medium-sized enterprises, Pimec, has demanded that the main parties ensure the upcoming election campaign serves to "place the productive economy and SMEs at the center of the political debate." In a statement, the organization presided over by Antoni Cañete demanded that "the political situation does not sideline the reforms needed by the productive fabric."

On September 15th, I had the great fortune of sitting on the stage of the Illa Diagonal auditorium with José María Batalla, founder of La Casa de Carlota, a creative studio where people with Down syndrome and autism spectrum disorder are part of the team. I left with a question that keeps going through my mind: what talent are we failing to see? Often, when we look for it, perhaps it is not that talent is lacking, but that we lack the eyes to see it.

Surrounded by a strong smell of liquorice and equipped with gloves and hairnets, operators knead blocks of a tar-black color with an elasticity similar to bread dough. They place them on various trays to let them dry while, in another room, the pastes that have already completed their resting process are rolled and cut into small portions to then be packaged. The image, straddling the scenes of a bakery and those of a pharmaceutical laboratory, is the day-to-day life inside the Juanola lozenge factory, located in Sant Quirze del Vallès (Vallès Occidental). The legendary cough drop brand is celebrating 120 years and is doing so by preserving the essence of its product, while at the same time opening up to new business lines to reinvent itself for the future.

"We will always be there for Japan". With these words, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, explained his government's intervention at the beginning of August to curb the fall of the yen, the Japanese currency, in the markets. The declaration of support and friendship, however, has been followed by certain tensions between him and the Asian country's Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, as the White House considers that she is not doing enough to stop the decline of her currency.

Noelia Acosta is the second vice president of the Association of Chartered Accountants (auditors) and a partner at Baker Tilly. Acosta, 49, asserts that her profession, to which she has been dedicated for 25 years, is subject to many regulatory changes that often arise in the wake of financial scandals. An expert in measuring the sustainability of companies and entities, she receives Companiesat the collegiate headquarters, the Torre Moré, a modernist mansion in the Barcelona neighborhood of Pedralbes, remodeled by the architect Òscar Tusquets, whom this organization, with some 2,000 members, will pay tribute to next Wednesday. Precisely on that day, they will celebrate the 30th anniversary of the creation of the association and its headquarters with challenges such as artificial intelligence (AI) and improving the balance between men and women. In the group as a whole, there is still a significant gap: 80% men and 20% women among the members. Among practitioners, the difference is reduced among those at the base: 65% men and 35% women. On the other hand, regarding executive partners, the presence of women is below 30%.

Labor productivity growth has doubled in the United States, going from a 1% annual average over the previous decade to 2% during the last five years. It is too early to attribute this fact to AI (artificial intelligence) and it also does not seem to be the result of better performance or a higher weight in GDP of the activities most directly associated with ICT (information and communications technologies). The main cause must be found in those service activities that have learned to make more effective use of ICT in recent years, adapting their organizational and commercial systems to new technologies. From this side of the Atlantic, it is surprising to observe how in the US between 2019 and 2024, productivity growth in retail trade and hospitality has stood above 4% and 2% on average per year, respectively, surpassing the manufacturing industry in both cases. In fact, productivity in American manufacturing stagnated throughout the previous period, 2000-2019, being widely surpassed by retail and hospitality. Other service activities such as wholesale distribution, education, or technical and professional services have also recorded productivity growth rates higher than the average for the American economy.

The average remuneration of directors of listed companies who held the position for the full financial year increased last year by 12.2%, to 477,000 euros per year. That of executive directors, who have management responsibilities, grew more than double that of non-executives, with a rise of 26.3% and an average of up to 2.4 million, according to the report by the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) on corporate governance and remuneration of directors of listed companies in 2025. These documents include information from 113 companies listed on the stock exchange.

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 history of spas is closely linked to the use of medicinal waters and the evolution of ancient bathing spaces into new centers for health, rest, and summer holidays. They were also a new economic activity and a true industry, which knew how to turn the properties of the waters into a business linked both to the stay of the bathers and to the commercialization of their products. Some establishments even went as far as bottling their waters to market them. A part of these establishments had their origin in springs known for centuries, while others were born as a result of the expansion of the spa culture that, during the second half of the 19th century, spread throughout Europe.