The price was also high compared to what is being paid in other countries for the deployment of 5G technology, which is key to their competitiveness. For example, in the UK operators have paid €325m for 20 MHz blocks of the 700 MHz band vs. an initial starting price of €400m here, despite the UK telecoms market’s turnover being twice that of Spain’s.”
Major European industry players, co-led by Iberdrola and Telefónica, has launched a programme to train five million people in the European Union by 2030. The aim is to boost education and the search for structural solutions to combat unemployment on the continent, Europa Press reported. The initiative, called ‘Re-skilling 4 Employment’ (R4E), has been promoted by the main European business lobby, the European Round Table for Industry (ERT). It is headed up by firms such as Iberdrola, Telefónica, AstraZeneca, Nestlé, SAP, Sonae and Volvo Group.
Fernando González Urbaneja | The second (Nadia Calviño) and third (Yolanda Díaz) vice-presidents of the Spanish government have a hard time putting up with each other; they hide it, but sometimes they betray each other. A gesture, a comment, a confidence… and the dissimulation vanishes. It happened yesterday in Parliament, over the “reversal of the labour reform” but it is well known to the usual interlocutors of the two vice-presidents….
CriteriaCaixa, which with 24.8% of the capital is the main shareholder of Naturgy, the third Spanish energy company, not only will not go to the offer of the Australian IFM, already completely out of price, but has also reaffirmed its willingness to reach the limit of 30% prior to the forced launch of a takeover bid (OPA).
Nick Ottens (Atlantic Sentinel) | Catalonia’s leading pro-independence parties have reached an agreement to install Pere Aragonès as regional president. Aragonés has been acting president since September, when Quim Torra of the center-right Together for Catalonia (Junts) was forced to step down. Aragonès’ Republican Left won the election in February. The agreement comes after three months of negotiations during which the Republicans raised the possibility of forming a minority government…
T.C. | Data on Spanish exports during the first quarter of this year, released yesterday by the “Exporters’ Club”, shows an upturn of 4.9% to 72.307 billion euros. This is 7.9 points higher than the rate for the same period in 2020, which was -3%. So Spanish exports of goods are already at the same level as in 2019. In fact, in March the increase in exports from Spain (29.9%)…
Fernando González Urbaneja | The spring promised to be a prosperous one for the socialists after the relative triumph in the Catalan elections, which held out the possibility of a tripartite government (on the left); the ousting of the Partido Popular in some autonomous communities in collusion with Ciudadanos, which, by the way, distanced itself from the PP; the vaccination campaign that would put an end to the pandemic; and…
Fernando Rodríguez | 96.3% of the outstanding volume of Spanish fixed income with rating – 1.76 trillion euros – was Investment Grade, BBB or higher – at the end of 2020. This is only three tenths of a percentage point lower than in March of the same year, according to a study included in the CNMV Bulletin for the first quarter of this year, published recently. The supervisor’s study concludes…
Fernando González Urbaneja | If it is not easy to give birth to a party, burying it with dignity can be just as complicated… or more so. Ciudadanos was an exciting political project born in Barcelona as a reaction to (unconfessed pro-independence) nationalism and the connivance of the constitutionalist parties, PSC and PP. Ciudadanos was the other, cleaner way (without history). It was accepted in Catalonia and exported the model…
T.C. | Of the 67 projects submitted in the first call for proposals for the Spanish sandbox – the testing ground for financial innovation – 18, one in four, have received the green light. Spain wants to promote the digital transformation of the financial system with a testing environment, allowing trials to be carried out without the rigid regulatory restrictions. But with strict supervision by the Bank of Spain, the…