Renfe has already accepted France’s rejection of its growth plans in the country and is now looking to Portugal as a new internationalization bet. The company has started the process to homologate its Talgo trains of series 106 and 107, with an eye on the high-speed corridor being built between Lisbon and Porto, and later on the one that will connect Lisbon and Madrid.
The Ibex 35 tries this Tuesday to hold on to 20,000 points after four consecutive sessions of declines and on a day again marked by tension between the United States and Iran. The Spanish benchmark started practically flat, with a slight advance of 0.02%, up to 19,985 points, after having lost 0.87% yesterday and saying goodbye to the historic closing high of 20,300 points that it reached just at the beginning of this August.
The major oil companies are sitting on a mountain of money like never before in their history. According to the latest data published by Bloomberg, the five largest international energy firms generated nearly 70 billion dollars in cash flow in the second quarter of 2026, the highest figure ever recorded.
Student apartments are becoming a very attractive asset for investors, as reflected in the price increase in the market. Only Barcelona is containing the prices of rooms for university students compared to last year, according to a study by the consultancy specialized in these rentals Live4Life, with an average of 600 euros both at the start of the 2025-2026 academic year and in the current 2026-2027 year.
At the European Central Bank (ECB), they do not talk about a bubble around AI, but they are already hinting at the term and beginning to imagine such a scenario. A group of economists from the institution has just published an article measuring the eurozone’s exposure to the “AI boom” and describing the different transmission channels to the European economy in case of a market crash. They estimate that only households in the eurozone have invested, often unknowingly, more than 440 billion euros in the uncertain business battle around this technology, but the total figure for all European investors is much higher.
The recent earnings season in the European engine sector confirms the trend. These are times of suffering, due to internal issues from wrong decisions, halted investments, and the need to cut back, as well as Chinese competition that already accounts for around 10% of the market. With declining results, doubts have long been reflected in the stock market with sharp drops. In the year’s balance sheet, only Ferrari survives, overcoming even the controversy surrounding the launch of its first electric vehicle, the Luce.
The financial health of Spanish consumers suffers some setbacks when summer arrives. Consumer loans taken out in the months prior to the holiday period have grown strongly this year and have reached their highest level in two decades, only comparable to the times of the real estate bubble. The trend is an indication that a larger part of consumption is sustained by debt, despite the rise in interest rates.
In the last decade, Catalonia has become one of the main laboratories for housing regulation in Spain. The puzzle of the housing emergency has left behind a trail of measures promoted by the administrations to protect the most vulnerable households, expand the stock of social housing, or contain rents amid the unstoppable rise in prices, while new rules have been introduced to define who is a major holder or to limit the use of seasonal contracts. The latest of these laws promoted by the Generalitat, against the “speculative purchase” of properties, did not pass the examination of the Consell de Garanties Estatutàries this summer. The Catalan government has committed to modifying the regulation, which has been strongly criticized by employers’ associations and real estate sector entities, as they consider it will worsen the supply crisis. While property owners warn that overregulation has generated even more legal uncertainty, the movement for the right to decent housing alerts to the loopholes in these regulations.
The announcement of the extension of the operation of the Almaraz nuclear power plant for three more years, until 2030, has already resonated among the Catalan municipalities that are hoping for a similar decision for their reactors. The mayors of Ascó and Vandellòs, Miquel Àngel Ribes and Assumpció Castellví, respectively, have welcomed this “good news” and expressed confidence that this extension will pave the way to also extend the schedule of the Catalan nuclear power plants.
Sumar has rejected the decision of the Ministry for the Ecological Transition to authorize the extension of the life of the Almaraz nuclear power plant until 2030 and considers that the measure constitutes a breach of the agreements for the formation of government between the PSOE and the political formation.