EL PAÍS

Hollywood turns its attention to English soccer

Alex Serrano — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 17:57:34 +0000

In November 2025, former American football player Tom Brady appeared in a Birmingham City promotional video looking at models of a 62,000-seat stadium. The $3.35 billion project includes 12 structures shaped like industrial chimneys. Brady has been a minority shareholder since August 2023.

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From OnlyFans mansions to extreme co-living: Inside the boom in community experimentation

Alex Serrano — Sat, 30 Aug 2025 04:00:00 +0000

Economic crises have always triggered new social models. However, what we’re seeing today goes beyond any temporary readjustment. From OnlyFans mansions to all-female villages, we’re witnessing the greatest wave of community experimentation since the 1960s, the decade that held the hippie dream up to the mirror of late capitalism and ultimately spawned L’Arche, Twin Oaks and the much-cited Arcosanti.

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Forget the lifestyle videos: Why teaching Excel is trending on TikTok

Alex Serrano — Tue, 02 Jul 2024 16:07:55 +0000

On the other side of the dance choreographies, the ostentation and the perfect smiles, there is another territory in the influencer ecosystem that attracts thousands of followers and a lot of money. In this online world there are no pristine beaches, no flashy recipes and no dazzling makeup tricks of the kind that plague the internet. Only the multiple possibilities and complexities of the humble spreadsheet. Teaching how to use Microsoft Excel and revealing all the secrets that allow us to get the most out of the program has become a most lucrative niche on social media at the moment.

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Spanish-language music shakes off complexes and makes its mark on the global stage

Alex Serrano — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 13:58:48 +0000

After decades of Anglo music reigning supreme, even in Spanish-speaking countries, Spanish has become the second-favorite language globally in terms of listening to music. According to a study by the Spanish Performers’ Association, sustained growth has led it to reach 62% of the music market in Spain. Luminate, the standard for measuring music sales, downloads and streams worldwide, estimates that, in the United States alone, Latin music consumption registered a growth of 19.4 billion on-demand audio streams between 2021 and 2023, an increase of 24.1% in that period. In terms of total number of audio streams, Latin music ranked second in growth, behind only country music, which grew by 20.4 billion streams.

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‘We were pioneers when country wasn’t cool’: Beyoncé, remixes and festivals mark the return of the North American sound

Alex Serrano — Wed, 03 Apr 2024 15:07:05 +0000

A brief metallic bikini, a bullfighter’s jacket and a glitzy black cowboy hat. That’s the aesthetic Beyoncé used to present in her latest single Texas Hold ‘Em. And no, she wasn’t bluffing: Queen B has embraced country music in a song that, with nearly 240 million plays on Spotify, has confirmed she is coming back with force.

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Music streaming giants eliminate songs with low play counts

Alex Serrano — Mon, 11 Mar 2024 13:41:36 +0000

Something curious is happening in the vast digital world of music: millions of songs on streaming platforms like Spotify remain unplayed. Recently, the Swedish company and others have begun reconsidering their strategies to deal with this excess. A recent example is the case of several Spanish indie bands that were removed from Spotify and other applications by their digital distributor, Altafonte, due to low play counts.

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‘I expected to be killed off by AIDS at an early age’: The very long story of The Magnetic Fields and their masterpiece

Alex Serrano — Sat, 18 Nov 2023 13:03:49 +0000

Stephin Merrit released the first single from The Magnetic Fields in 1991. And before the end of the decade, he was already admired as a composer and lyricist, by both music critics and a good number of his colleagues.

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