The Roca brothers of El Celler de Can Roca fame have created the dishes that will be served to prime ministers, heads of state, government officials, and the United Nations’ Secretary-General at the opening lunch of the next Climate Summit. The summit gets underway next Monday, December 2, in Madrid. The meal, sponsored by BBVA with a menu prepared by the Roca brothers, is based on local Spanish products and a cuisine that is amenable to small-scale farmers. "Cuisine is a transformative tool that can raise awareness and advocate for sustainability," Joan Roca stated.

BBVA’s cultural transformation should lie squarely in the promotion of a more diverse, more flexible, more equitable structure that supports a balance between personal and professional life. These are some of the thoughts bank employees were able to share with members of the executive management team, including CEO Onur Genç.

We live in a “tyranny of positivity” say U.S. psychologist Susan David: “Society demands that the ill remain optimistic, that women don’t show outrage, and that men don’t cry,” she says. According to her research, most people judge themselves for feeling “negative” emotions like anger, disappointment or sadness. But “repressing or denying these emotions makes them stronger and lead us to deadlock,” she maintains.

250 students were expected to register for Yale University Professor Laurie Santos’ class “Psychology and the Good Life”. Instead it became a mass phenomenon with 1,200 registered students. She later offered her class “The Science of Well-Being” online, and it went viral around the world. Why? Because human beings have spent thousands of years searching for happiness, to no avail.

Why do we fall in love? The neurobiologist and anthropologist, Helen Fisher, began studying love scientifically using brain scans in her research on 49 men and women. Some of the group were madly in love, while others had been rejected. Shortly thereafter, individuals who continued to be in love after three decades of marriage were included in the sample of research subjects.

"What would we do without data?” journalist Susana Roza asked at the opening session of Oracle Day, an annual event that took place in Madrid this year. More than 1,200 participants came together to talk about the future of technology. A question, if turned on its head, has an easy answer: "What can we do with data?" The possibilities are endless, as the more than 30 participating organizations — of which BBVA Microfinance Foundation (BBVAMF) was one — were able to confirm.