The week begins in a very dangerous way. As you know, Trump has announced attacks on Iranian power plants if Iran does not unblock the Strait of Hormuz Iran has warned that its response will be to attack the desalination plants of the Persian Gulf countries. You attack my electricity, and I'll attack your water.

Coinciding with the crisis in the rail sector, where the prices of some alternative transport options like air travel came under scrutiny from consumer organizations due to fears of abusive price hikes, the Spanish government has approved a royal decree-law with a mechanism to "limit prices of services or products" in an emergency situation that has disrupted the social and consumer situation. This was announced by the Minister of Social Affairs and Consumer Affairs, Pablo Bustinduy, at a press conference this Tuesday, after the Council of Ministers meeting.

Barcelona City Council will offer subsidies to residents who want to trade in their combustion engine mopeds for electric ones. This Monday, Mayor Jaume Collboni announced that the council will offer €600 in aid to all Barcelona residents who wish to switch from the more polluting 49cc mopeds to an electric model. The program will launch on March 1, 2026, last four years, and is exclusively for drivers registered as residents of the Catalan capital. The plan will have an initial investment of €15 million and, as Collboni explained – after arriving on an electric motorcycle – aims to have Barcelona "a 100% electric, zero-emissions moped fleet" by 2030. Currently, there are 32,000 registered mopeds in Barcelona, ​​25% of which are already electric (8,000), while the rest are combustion-engine mopeds, according to city council data. To receive the €600 subsidy, two requirements must be met: being registered as a resident of Barcelona and scrapping the combustion-engine moped. As Collboni explained, an initial receipt will be issued at the scrapyard, and the second required document is the purchase invoice for the electric moped. Finally, with both documents, a form can be completed to access the subsidy directly. According to the City Council, the €600 subsidy for the vehicle conversion covers between 16% and 40% of the total price of an electric moped.

Endesa earned €1.041 billion between January and June of this year, 30.1% more than the same period last year, according to a report to the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) on Tuesday. Although the first half of the year was marked by the massive power outage on April 28, the utility defines the result as "excellent" and links it to the good performance of its liberalized electricity generation and marketing business, but also to the disappearance of the extraordinary tax of the Spanish government, which has affected the accounts of the largest energy companies in the country over the last two years.

A technical debate has been raging in the electricity sector for months and is now entering a decisive phase: how much will have to be paid in the coming years to deploy and improve the electricity grid that allows light to reach our homes? The question involves a significant portion of the sector's companies, including Red Eléctrica, the electricity system operator, but also the National Commission of Markets and Competition (CNMC) and the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge. But the answers differ widely among the companies and the CNMC. One of the underlying reasons is the fact that it is the consumer who is directly affected by the final decision: the cost of the grid is passed on to the electricity bill.

The electricity companies' association Aelec, which includes Iberdrola, Endesa and EDP Spain, pointed this Monday to "poor management" by Red Eléctrica as the main cause of the massive blackout on April 28. A report by the association, prepared by Inesc Tec and Compass Lexecon with data from its members – who represent 45% of the installed capacity and 78% of the distribution networks – warns of "poor programming of conventional generation", such as nuclear, combined cycle gas, coal and large hydroelectric plants.

More than a month after the massive power outage that affected the Iberian Peninsula, the mystery surrounding the incident is not the only one arising. Solving the puzzle of the blackout's cause has added a battle for transparency, but also the question of who will assume the expected multi-million-dollar claims for the power outage suffered by businesses and families for more than eight hours. These are two fronts that have only escalated in recent days.

This Monday's historic blackout suddenly disrupted the routines of citizens and businesses, also causing millions in losses. For individuals, home insurance offers some useful coverage to address damage caused by this type of malfunction. One of the most important is protection against electrical damage caused by a power outage, a coverage that includes food and medicine stored in refrigerators. Unlike the DANA (National Insurance Plan), the Insurance Compensation Consortium—which replaces insurance companies—does not come into play in this case, as it would only be activated if the blackout was the result of an atmospheric phenomenon, a matter that has not yet been confirmed. An essential element is knowing the cause of the blackout, which helps determine who to claim against, explain Endesa sources.

Electricity prices skyrocketed last year as anyone who pays their monthly electricity bill well knows. This resulted in a sharp increase in the profits of these companies, which tripled, as ARA explained this week. What is not so well known is that during that year six directors, the main executives of large Spanish energy companies, were paid over €27m. In other words, the leaders of these companies were paid 5.2% more while, on average, their workers' salaries increased less than a third of that percentage, 1.5%.

The rise in the price of electricity in the wholesale market could cause the bankruptcy of small electricity companies, as has already happened in other countries, such as the United Kingdom. The president of the National Commission for Markets and Competition (CNMC), Cani Fernández, warned today in a meeting with journalists in Barcelona. "We fear that there are marketers who may go bankrupt," she explained, indicating that the agency is monitoring the situation.

The president of the Spanish government, Pedro Sánchez, has announced that he will cut energy companies' "windfall" to limit the price of gas and lower the electricity bill in an interview on Monday evening on TVE. Specifically, the measure the Spanish executive is considering seeks to confiscate firms' extraordinary profits and redirect them to consumers with the aim of "capping" the gas bill and thus reducing the electricity bill.

The bill that citizens living in Spain pay to plug in any appliance or turn on a light at home has already become a political issue that runs the risk of shifting the focus from the underlying problem: Spain has been, for some time, one of the EU countries with the most expensive electricity. This summer prices have escalated across the continent and are expected to continue to do so, but in the State a set of factors have combined to further damage its citizens's pockets every time. There is no single cause to explain it, nor is there a simple, single solution to solve it