The Español Urgente Foundation (Fundéu BBVA) has won one of the Madrid 2016 Full Inclusion Awards for its contribution to a unique project: the first online dictionary of terms defined in simple text, aimed at people with intellectual disabilities or reading difficulties.

The end of the colonial conflicts and their consequences opened the door to a new century with various sectors of Spain’s privileged classes showing renewed interest in the creation of new banks. Madrid, Barcelona and Bilbao continued to be the country’s main banking hubs, although the development of the financial industry’s business varied in each region.

The BBVA Microfinance Foundation has signed an agreement to take part in the World Bank’s Universal Financial Access 2020 (UFA) initiative. The goal is to facilitate financial inclusion for two billion people worldwide.

Gravitational waves have been the most-talked-about scientific discovery of the year that is about to conclude. David Reitze, the physician that broke the news to the world, describes it as an achievement that can be compared to measuring the distance from our Sun to the nearest star with a margin of error under a human hair’s breadth.

Hi everyone. This time I’m writing from sunny California, in the U.S. This is the second year in a row that I have come here for the second part of the preseason.

Encouraging concert goers to turn on their smartphones during performances, filling London pubs with the music of Handel’s arias and sharing the stage with a rock band, are just some of the ways that some large symphony orchestras are exploring to attract younger audiences to concert halls.

He travels incognito in a big wooden box that reveals neither the contents nor the destination. Completely immobilized and protected from any impact, Charles II arrives in Puebla by land and by air. The International Museum of the Baroque in Puebla anxiously awaits the arrival of this King’s portrait – part of the BBVA Collection. It hangs in one of the rooms of the exhibition “The Art of Nations: The Baroque as Global Art”. There nothing disturbs the monarch who probably never dreamt he would one day visit Mexico.

Europe’s technology sector is frequently criticised for lacking ambition, but growth in so-called “deep-tech” start-ups in less glamorous segments of the industry has raised hopes for the region’s digital hubs.

Industrial applications and technical platforms that underpin consumer- focused services are attracting record levels of activity and investment, according to Atomico, the venture capital fund that specialises in the sector.

The banking business is reinventing itself. The impact of fintech companies, technological maturity, and customers who are used to digital experiences, all mark a transformation that the financial industry is facing in the certain knowledge that innovation and collaboration with new players will play an important role in the future. But what are the most difficult barriers to overcome in this process? For BBVA Research, Santander, Banorte and Tecnocom, all present in the panel on The digitization of commercial banking at the Latibex Forum, the response is clear: the challenges are regulation and the change in corporate culture.

Civil wars, banks that went almost as fast as they came, the brand-new issuing monopoly of the Bank of Spain, unrest in Spanish overseas territories… the later years of the 19th century sure did look challenging for institutions such as Banco de Bilbao. Although the bank had earned a solid footing in its home city, Spain’s situation at that time made it hard to tell how it would fare in the short and medium term.