The technology center Eurecat has received the National Award for Knowledge and Innovation Transfer 2025, awarded by the Generalitat de Catalunya, in recognition of its continuous work to improve business opportunities and social welfare through applied research, technological transfer, and innovation.

Avalis, the public-private company promoted by the Generalitat that offers guarantees to SMEs and self-employed workers, is joining forces with the banking services firm Kenta Capital and launching a debt fund to finance small and medium-sized Catalan enterprises (SMEs). The instrument, presented this Wednesday in Barcelona, is launched with an initial volume of 50 million euros and offers financing conditions that are until now unusual for SMEs: unlike a common loan, companies will have access to a structure known as "bullet".

Anthropic, the creator of the artificial intelligence chatbot Claude, has suspended public access to its most advanced artificial intelligence models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5. The decision comes at a time of maximum tension between the company and Donald Trump's administration.

In the summer of 1588, during the Battle of Gravelines, the famous Spanish Invincible Armada was shattered by the push of the English fleet led by Francis Drake. The historical event, which led to a phrase as well-known as it is apocryphal, attributed to the King of Spain Philip II, was that a storm, during the retreat towards the Peninsula, finished off the Spanish ships: "I sent my ships to fight against men, not against the elements." Sir Horatio Palavicino, Italian by birth, but already a banker to the Queen of England, was contemplating the Spanish defeat from a distance, rubbing his hands with glee (it has often been said that he himself captained a ship of the English fleet, but it has never been officially confirmed that this is true).

Indra has been restructuring its top management for several months, with recent changes in president and CEO, and the incorporation of new high-level directives. This reinforcement of the technology and defense company's top level also reaches Catalonia, where the company chaired by Àngel Simón has appointed a new territorial director, Enric Blasco. Furthermore, a lifelong banker, José Ignacio Goirigolzarri – he was CEO of BBVA, president of Bankia, and president of CaixaBank – is making the leap into the fashion world as a new independent director of Inditex, the company controlled by Amancio Ortega which owns brands such as Zara, Pull&Bear, Massimo Dutti, and Bershka, among others.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become the center of business debate. For this reason, the BBVA board of directors has met in Barcelona to analyze its opportunities and the strategy linked to it, and has also gathered a hundred client companies from all over Spain during corporate banking days.

Musical chairs in the Catalan technology sector. The former CEO of Cellnex – the main telecommunications tower company –, Tobías Martínez, will move to lead Openchip, while Pedro Mier will take over the direction of Open Cosmos. Furthermore, the president of Indra, Àngel Simón, continues with the revolution at the company's top and is already looking for a new CEO, who will possibly be announced this Tuesday, after dismissing José Vicente de los Mozos – seemingly in agreement with the Spanish government –, who is the main shareholder of the technology and defense company.

The co-founder and managing partner of Asabys, Josep Lluís Sanfeliu, has been endorsed by the Barcelona Global supervisory board as the new president, an appointment that will be ratified by the partners' assembly on June 19. Sanfeliu, who will succeed Ramon Agenjo (Damm) for the new term until 2028, will have as vice-presidents Rafael Fontana, lawyer and honorary president of Cuatrecasas; Lluís Seguí, co-founder and CEO of Miura Partners; and Carmina Ganyet, corporate director general of Colonial, the only one to repeat in the same position. The supervisory board has endorsed Sanfeliu's candidacy and the board.

Catalonia is one of the territories with the most clinical trials active in the world. In 2025 it participated in 5,768 studies, which catapulted it to seventh place in the world ranking, according to the BioRegion of Catalonia Report. The United States, with 38,218 trials underway, and China, with 17,321, led the list of countries.

"If I'm asked, I think the options between merging or not merging Puig Brands with the American Estée Lauder are at 50%.". This is the statement of a person who knows the negotiations between the two family beauty and fashion companies, which became known at the end of March. One of the points that makes it difficult to reach an agreement is the price of the Catalan group, which is worth around 10 billion euros, compared to Estée Lauder's 30 billion dollars (26 billion euros).

The European Union faces one of the most important economic debates of the coming years: should competition rules be relaxed to allow the creation of large European companies capable of competing with North American and Chinese giants? Or, before easing merger control, should Europe complete its single market?

Four and a half years ago, in December 2021, we talked about Gaspar Remisa, from Osona but based in Madrid, who pulled the strings of state finances during the first half of the 19th century. One of the figures he was often associated with was a French investor named José Buschental, who would also be a key figure in the Spanish Treasury of those times.

The Minister of Business and Labor, Miquel Sàmper, has established dual industry –with applications in the defense and civil spheres– as one of the levers to "generate a transformation of the current labor market", in the face of the employment regulation files (ERE) in Catalonia, such as those of Nestlé, Ficosa, and Nissan.employment regulation files (ERE) in Catalonia, such as those of Nestlé, Ficosa, and Nissan. According to Sàmper, "defense is one of the clearest examples to understand where we are."

The Catalan electric car charging system company Wallbox has signed an alliance with vehicle manufacturer Slate Auto, in which US magnate Jeff Bezos holds a stake. For now, it will supply chargers made in Barcelona for Slate Auto's facilities in Indiana, although the two companies "are exploring new collaboration opportunities," Wallbox reported in a statement this Thursday.

Sweden's prestige as a driver of the green industry in Europe suffered a very hard blow with the bankruptcy of Northvolt in the year 2025. The electric battery manufacturer could not live up to expectations and became the biggest industrial failure in the modern history of the Nordic country. A year later, another emblematic company of the green industrial revolution driven from northern Sweden has avoided a similar fate.

In full negotiations with Estée Lauder for a possible integration, Puig Brands, the Catalan fashion and beauty multinational, has announced its first-quarter results for this year, with sales of 1,215 million euros, an increase of 0.8%. The rise is 4.7% at constant perimeter and exchange rates. The company insists that "no definitive decision has been made" with the US firm, with whom talks were confirmed on March 23. It adds that "until an agreement is reached, it cannot be guaranteed that there may be a transaction nor its terms".

On December 16, 1877, an exceptional event occurred that placed Catalonia at the forefront of global technology. On that day, at the School of Industrial Engineers of Barcelona, the first telephony tests in the entire country and some of the first in the world were conducted.

The journalist, historian, and writer Jaume Clotet (Barcelona, 1974) grew up in a family of bankers – both his father and mother worked there –, but that world never appealed to him: “They had a good understanding of family economics, finance, investments, bonds, stocks... and I’ve been quite uninterested in that in life”. He did inherit the values of saving and prudence: “If my mother invested in the stock market, it was in very controlled and prudent things”, he explains in statements to Empreses.

The major distribution companies in Spain have warned that private consumption shows "slight signs of exhaustion" caused by the war in Iran, at the annual meeting that the entity grouping them (Aecoc) held this Tuesday in Barcelona. Domestic consumption and investment have marked the good performance of the Spanish economy once the pandemic hecatomb was overcome. Now, the president of Aecoc, José María Bonmatí, has assured that "we are still in very positive ratios", but has warned that "the consumer confidence index is not particularly sky-high". "Crises begin and end when the consumer perceives it that way," he recalled.

Puig Brands, the Catalan multinational family group for beauty and fashion, which is negotiating an integration with the American Estée Lauder, three times larger, brings to the table the process of ownership change of local companies that has been occurring over the last 20 years. This very week, the Japanese Marubeni Corporation has bought 85% of Factorenergia, founded in 1999 by Emili Rousaud, former candidate for the presidency of Barça, for 204 million euros. The ownership changes of Catalan companies have not stopped. Between 2005 and 2006, the sales of Panrico, by the Costafreda family, to the fund Apax Partners were closed; and that of Chupa Chups, founded by Enric Bernat in 1958, to the Italian Perfetti Van Melle. Bernat's heirs today operate Casa Batlló on Barcelona's Passeig de Gràcia, one of Antoni Gaudí's iconic buildings, which they bought in the 90s.