"Your data is brilliant," pronounced Martina King, CEO of Featurespace, to the audience at 2016 FT Banking Summit, held this year at London’s Intercontinental Park Lane. Marco Bressan, Chief Data Scientist at BBVA and responsible for helping the bank become a data-driven business, talked about the volume of data at the bank’s disposal.

So… vacation time is over and my preseason starts this very day. Gone is the 2016 season. A season that I will never forget, having won at Roland Garros and after making it for second year in a row to the WTA Finals. I’m so proud of these achievements, but they are all part of the past now, and, starting today, I’m be looking to 2017.

BBVA is one of the 10 members of the consortium for financial innovation R3, which have worked together to develop a proof-of-concept (PoC) for a shared KYC (Know Your Customer) system using distributed ledger technology.

After a successful beginning as commercial and issuing bank, Banco de Bilbao faced the 1860s seeking to solidify its position as the leading financial institution in the city. It was a decade of turmoil in Spain, riddled by social and economic events that would put the bank’s strength and credibility to the test.

Every day at BBVA, more than 136,000 professionals do their best to meet the needs of 67 million customers. Most people only know about the experts in finance, law, personnel and facility management, and technology, but there are many other employees who quietly make important contributions. For instance: Rodolfo Vargas, a waiter at BBVA Bancomer—Mexico, who on many occasions has an impact on customers’ opinion of the bank.

Since 1984, the non-profit organization TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) has disseminated knowledge in an accessible and attractive way for spectators through chats around the planet. TedxMadrid is part of this movement with the sponsorship of Blue BBVA.

The Royal Spanish Society of Physics (RSEF) and the BBVA Foundation have once again partnered to recognize the most prominent scientific achievements in Spain. Offering a total cash prize of 50,000 euros, the Spanish Physics Awards are given in recognition of top-level research; motivate younger scientists; and foster the relationship between physics and education and business. These awards strengthen the commitment of the BBVA Foundation with science and represent a channel through which to support researchers that are able to create new materials and fight diseases.

As any visitor to my house will be able to tell, I love maps. Our living room is full of them. A Soviet map of Portsmouth (complete with Cyrillic labels) gazes across the room at old maps of South America and Italy. A large Mercator world map occupies an entire wall while Charles Minard's celebrated map of Napoleon's ill-fated Moscow campaign hangs in the hallway.

After its blockbuster success, the Prado Museum has finally closed the exhibition “Bosch. The 5th Centenary Exhibition”, which was exclusively sponsored by the BBVA Foundation. Almost 600,000 people came to see this series of important works by the Renaissance painter, which makes this the most visited exhibition in the gallery’s long tradition.

Garbiñe Muguruza has reached the WTA Finals in Singapore, the last tournament of the year, which pits the year’s eight best tennis players against each other. Now that she’s recovered from a twisted ankle she suffered in Linz, she will face off against Karolina Pliskova, Svetlana Kuznetsova, and the reigning champion, Agnieskza Radwanska. The WTA Finals mark the end of a great year for Garbiñe, who won her first Grand Slam after beating Serena Williams in Paris.