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One of the main identified causes of energy poverty (EP) is the low energy efficiency of housing. In this line, since 2018, public administrations and NGOs collaborating with the Naturgy Foundation's Energy Renovation Solidarity Fund have implemented several shallow renovation interventions in 3660 Spanish vulnerable households. However, the effects of these measures on domestic energy affordability were not evaluated before because of a lack of a proper method. This paper presents a methodology to objectively assess the impact of these interventions on EP. In particular, this work proposes calculating a hidden EP indicator using data from a primary survey and applies it to a local case study (54 vulnerable households in Catalonia—10% of dwellings renovated by the Fund in the region) by processing their characteristics and energy bills before and after the implementation of the interventions. Considering the whole sample of households analysed, the hidden EP indicator drops by 10% in absolute terms (11.2% in relative terms) after the retrofit, and the average EP gap goes from 423 €/year to 313 €/year, thus marking a significant positive effect of the analysed interventions on the EP situation of this population. Eventually, extrapolating the results to the vulnerable population in Spain, this paper points out a series of recommendations that could be useful for decision-makers and organisations when designing and implementing shallow renovation interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new trend of politically polarized media in Spain has led the authors of this paper to rethink the relationship between media and citizens within selective exposure, perception and retention theory and its influence on electoral behavior. The selection of political information contents by citizens during electoral campaigns forms a diet that influences their votes. Therefore, this research article attempts to clarify the relationship between the consumption of political information from mass media and the voters' electoral behavior amid the new media reality of the country. For this, and per the post-electoral surveys of the Center for Sociological Research (CIS, for its acronym in Spanish), it studies the effects of citizens' media exposure during the 2015 and 2016 general elections on voting. In these years, there was a crisis in the party system in Spain after several decades of bipartisanship and institutional stability. The results allow concluding that the political discussion in the country builds on two lines of confrontation: ideological (left-right) and territorial, which politically polarizes those citizens from territories with their own identity (mainly Catalonia). Media positively influence the political narrative since voters consume political information from related media as a symbol of electoral reaffirmation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Capital needs a favourable scenario for its reproduction and the lack of institutional guarantees can become a substantial limitation. Although its mobility is an intrinsic characteristic of the current phase of globalization, this is the reason that the Catalan secessionist attempt, which reached its peak with the referendum of 1 October 2017, promoted the transfer of a big number of companies in this Community to other Spanish regions, mainly to the Community of Madrid. This paper is structured in three sections and aims to analyze the historical and political circumstances in which this process occurred, as well as its consequences (loss of millions of euros in bank deposits, transfer of management centers, cancellation of international events, reduction in the number of tourists, etc.). Likewise, it examines, from opinions of experts, the effects that this process will continue to have in this and other Spanish Autonomous Communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to measure the effect that knowing the Catalan language has on individuals' comparative advantage to perform certain jobs in Catalonia (Spain), where Catalan and Spanish coexist. Design/methodology/approach – Using census data for 1991 and 1996, and for individuals born in Spain, the paper first estimates a Probit model for individuals' level of Catalan proficiency in order to correct for the possible endogeneity of Catalan knowledge, as it may be jointly determined with occupational selection or be a reflection of unobserved human capital or innate ability. Then, it estimates a bivariate Probit model for the probability of choosing a given occupation conditional on a given Catalan proficiency level. Findings – The paper finds that advanced proficiency in Catalan reinforces selection into being employed, being an entrepreneur, and into white-collar occupations and communication-intensive jobs. Being able to read and speak Catalan increases selection into white collar occupations by between 11 and 16 percentage points, while writing Catalan increases by 4 to 7 percentage points the probability of engaging in services, and government and educational activities. Practical implications – Because census data are cross-sectional panel effects on language selection cannot be analyzed. Nevertheless, the paper's results suggest that investing in learning the local language, at the firm and the government level, improves job matching and assimilation of workers to multilingual economies. The authors suggest a cost-benefit analysis to assess the effectiveness of language policies for further research. Originality/value – The results contribute to the scarce literature on the economic value of a language, i.e. on how much language knowledge as a form of human capital reinforces individuals' comparative advantage to perform certain tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In certain regions of Spain, it was customary among the Catholic population to request a dispensation from banns. A study of this practice since the seventeenth century in Catalonia sheds new light on marriages in the region. This short paper focuses on the archives of the diocese of Girona, with a study of the content, characteristics and continuity of this data source and an assessment of its representativeness. It also examines the motives behind the requests made by most of the population for a dispensation from banns before marriage. Thanks to their serial nature, to the abundant information contained in the supporting documents associated with each request for dispensation, and the opportunities they provide to work at the diocesan level, i.e. over a relatively wide area comprising alarge number of parishes, dispensations from banns provide an exceptional data source for historical demography and social history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]