Ciutadilla, Castellserà, Agramunt, Palacio de Anglesola, Bell-lloc, Bellvís, Alamús, Juneda, Bovera, Torregrossa, Torrefeta, and Florejacs… Bread ovens, especially small ones, have been proliferating in rural areas in recent years. Although still tentative, the opening of new businesses is counteracting a trend that seemed dramatic. "What was in decline until now seems to be a trend," says Toni Frias, the current president of the Bakers' Guild of the Lleida region. But this is no coincidence. At least, not in the eyes of the industry. "It was the result of time and a lot of dedication," Frias states. In recent years, the Guild has dedicated significant effort to promoting and organizing courses and training for new bakers and shopkeepers who have converted to traditional bakeries. "Now we are reaping the rewards," concludes the president of the organization.

I've had the opportunity to observe female entrepreneurship both through social research and my own experience. This dual perspective allows me to state quite emphatically that when women become entrepreneurs, they not only create companies, but they also silently challenge the model of leadership and success that we have thus far taken for granted. It's not just about how many companies they run, but about how they design them, what relationships they build, and what kind of impact they seek.

Beatriz del Castillo (Barcelona, 1975) is an entrepreneur and creator of Bix, a zip-up underwear that improves the autonomy and intimacy of women with reduced mobility.

She studied at IPSI, the San Isidoro Pedagogical Institution. "I didn't like school because I preferred to be at home playing, creating, and drawing. I also hadn't found my group of friends," recalls Beatriz del Castillo. She repeated eighth grade. "Even though the reason was very sad, it was lucky because I found the people I fit in with. I was a real geek." of cinema and I found a friend who if I told her I loved Cary Grant, she knew who I was referring to," she explains.

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"In the age of machines, perhaps we should think about this: humans know things and so do machines, but they don't know them the way humans know them, although, depending on how, they know them better. The fact is that it's not just what is known that's important, but also how it is known," wrote philosopher Josep Maria Terricabras in his book Dare to think, published in 1998. Artificial intelligence was not yet being discussed, but the thinker was already advocating the need for tools and aids to think better and reflected on the "usefulness of rigorous thinking in everyday life," as the book's subtitle stated. It was this book that inspired the awards named after Manel Xifra Boada, founder of Comexi, one of the largest companies in Catalonia, a world leader in the flexographic printing machinery construction sector, which today exports 90% of its production, with an annual turnover of more than 100 million euros.

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The company that made Galician folk art fashionable closed one of its factories this Thursday, amid uncertainty about its future. A few days ago, the legendary Sargadelos ceramics factory received a notice from the Labor Inspectorate resulting in a "significant financial fine" for 36 sanctioning reasons for negligence or incorrect manufacturing procedures. The owner of the Galician company, Segismundo García, known for his stoicism and for having managed to refloat the company when it was completely bankrupt, responded by announcing the closure of one of its two factories, the most historic one, located in Cervo, Lugo, without clarifying that it will close the second one, in the town of Sada.

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Pau Riba has been trying for 22 days to complete an online procedure with the Business Creation Information and Network Centre (CIRCE), a digital platform that depends on the Ministry of Industry and that allows you to create or close a company in the State, as well as process a registration or a deregistration in the Special Regime for Self-Employed Workers. The platform "went down", says Riba through the social network X and considers it "shameful". And he is not the only user who has recently complained. This January alone, 6,815 procedures were carried out through CIRCE, of which 2,693 were related to the creation or closure of a company and 4,114 affected self-employed workers.

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Measuring blood sugar and injecting insulin. This is the first thing Pau Ribas does every day. He is a 28-year-old engineer and entrepreneur who was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at the age of 21, a chronic disease characterized by the inability of the pancreas to generate the insulin needed to regulate blood glucose. With these first two morning actions, Pau's daily routine as a diabetic patient has only just begun: throughout the day he will have to inject insulin again (in his case, four to ten times) and he will have to adjust the dose according to what he is about to eat. He will also have to calculate the amount of carbohydrates contained in each food or meal, since the intake of this component increases blood glucose (sugar) levels and diabetes patients must keep it under strict control to avoid damage to the heart, blood vessels, tissues, kidneys, and blood vessels.

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The Cercle d'Economia has denounced this Wednesday that "neither Barcelona nor Catalonia have a model of shared prosperity and with the complicity of administrations, workers and businesses". The business lobby group lamented that both the country and its capital could be trapped "in a spiral of economic irrelevance, of slow but inexorable decline".

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