"A decade after the country was written off as a basket case," said The Times, Spain is enjoying "a new age of prosperity".

It's been named by The Economist as the world's best-performing rich economy. Spain's GDP expanded by 3.5% in the last quarter of 2024, "outstripping official forecasts and far outperforming its eurozone peers", said Reuters.

By contrast, the UK economy grew by just 1.7% over the same period, with France recording 1%, Italy 0.6%, and Germany only managing 0.1%.

What is driving Spain's growth?
Key to Spain's economic resurgence has been "the government's strikingly different approach to migration", said The Guardian.
Unlike his fellow leaders in France, Germany, Italy and Britain, Spain's prime minister Pedro Sánchez has extolled the virtues of a liberal immigration policy, telling his country's parliament in October that the choice was "between being an open and prosperous country or a closed-off, poor country".

Spain's "strong export figures" and "robust consumption" have only been possible because of "the health of the country's labour market", boosted by migrants, said Euronews. Of the 468,000 jobs created last year, only 59,000 were taken by Spanish nationals, according to the country's National Statistics Institute Active Population Survey.

What about tourism?
At the same time, record tourism – 94 million people visited Spain in 2024 – has helped fuel GDP growth and "represents about 13% of the economy", said The Times.

Other factors behind Spain's boom include its "abundance of wind and solar renewables", which have "helped to keep energy relatively cheap while EU Covid recovery funds bolstered the economy", said The Guardian. The socialist-led government also "ran a deficit to fund initiatives, such as raising pensions and public sector hiring".

Will the Spanish boom last?
The country's "heavy reliance on tourism" has led to a "growing backlash against the industry by local people". There have been a series of protests by residents in urban and coastal tourist areas, who believe holiday flats have pushed up the price of housing.

And, although unemployment has fallen overall, youth unemployment is above 26% – the highest rate in the EU. "This is the most worrisome part of the Spanish economy," Jordi Gual, former chairman of CaixaBank, told The Times.

It's a question worthy of the famous doof-doofs of its theme tune: after 40 years of "disastrous weddings, pub brawls, love-rat scandals, serial killer neighbours and the absolute impossibility of ever having a quiet Christmas" – according to Sky News – does "EastEnders" still have a role to play in today's TV world?

The BBC's long-running soap first hit our screens on 19 February 1985 and its stars insist "EastEnders" has been more than simply "plot twists, emotions and cliffhangers", said the BBC. Ross Kemp, who played Albert Square hardman Grant Mitchell, told the broadcaster that the soap had done more to raise awareness of social issues than "probably any documentary".

Life as it really is?
True, it no longer pulls in the tens of millions of viewers who watched Dirty Den present his wife Angie with divorce papers in 1986, said Fiona Sturges in The Independent, but there'll always be room for the "comfort" it brings that, no matter how much of a mess your life is, someone on Albert Square has it worse.

The 1990s storyline around Mark Fowler learning to live with HIV was "public service broadcasting at its best", wrote Adrian Lobb in the Big Issue, praising the "high-quality drama" of "EastEnders" and all British soaps. They have also proved valuable training grounds for working-class actors to enter the industry, with the likes of Suranne Jones and Sarah Lancashire all cutting their creative teeth on different soaps. Their appeal is showing "everyday life in all its extraordinary, ordinary glory".

Changing with the times
Yet it is because soaps are based on working-class lives that they're in trouble, said Darran Anderson on UnHerd. Working-class life isn't taken seriously, so no one takes our soaps seriously, and this has led to them losing touch with reality and viewers. "EastEnders" is a "depiction of how the BBC nostalgically imagines the East End to be", with crime shown "as if the Krays are still walking the streets". In reality, markets and pubs have closed and communities are battling the cost-of-living crisis, drugs and failing public services.

But soap fans can rest assured that the bubble hasn't yet burst for their favourite shows, according to soap reporter Calli Kitson in Metro. Our soaps are "shows that have had no choice but to change with the times". They have already changed to survive, so "of course" they can do it again.

Six years after "global smash", "Parasite", made history at the Oscars, Bong Joon-ho is back with a "boisterous" sci-fi comedy, said Kevin Maher in The Times. From "space movie pastiches" to "corporate spoofs" and "religious caricatures", the South Korean director has squeezed a lot into "Mickey 17". "All this, and Mark Ruffalo as an intergalactic Donald Trump!"

Set in the 2050s, the action follows Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson), a "luckless patsy" who signs up to become an "expendable" (human clone) and perform dangerous tasks during a "long-haul space mission" to the planet Niflheim. Each time he dies, he has the "disquieting knowledge that he'll emerge reborn, hours later", fresh from a "human printing machine".

At the start of the film, Mickey is already in his 17th incarnation and, to complicate matters, the "accidental creation" of Mickey 18 before his death means the two clones must live side by side. The "ever-versatile" Pattinson pulls off both "expendables" with "remarkable aplomb", playing 17 as a "whimpering Steve Buscemi type" and 18 as a "surly, classic-era" Robert De Niro. "He is the movie's strongest draw."

Joon-ho's "stark yet oddly life-affirming anti-capitalist" film explores the question "at the heart of our current existence", said Clarisse Loughrey in The Independent. "What's the point of living in a world built to make us feel worthless?"

Alternative to prison isn't just better, it's cheaper
Alice Thomson in The Times
Prisons in England and Wales are "grim places", writes Alice Thomson, and "those who imagine they're full of iPads and parties" have "never been near one". We must "end short sentences" for non-violent crimes, "deport more foreign inmates", allow for earlier release of less dangerous prisoners and introduce more non-custodial sentences. "Penal populism" is "no way to run policy", and the public "needs to realise" that we've been "blinded by our desire for punishment", and "weak politicians" have "pandered to us".

The way we gossip about celebrities just took a much darker turn
Zing Tsjeng in The i Paper
The growth of "celeb spot" WhatsApp groups shows that "us normies love banal celebrity gossip", writes Zing Tsjeng. But "I don't think we should feed this insatiable demand for insider knowledge", or "at least we certainly shouldn't be taking pics". I'm "increasingly uneasy" that anyone can be "surreptitiously photographed" in "their daily life" and have that image "circulated" among thousands on WhatsApp. We can imagine" how "weird it might feel" to be photographed going about our daily business.

Nigel Farage, Jordan Peterson & co worship each other in alt-right heaven
John Crace in The Guardian
The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference was "alt-right heaven", writes John Crace, "where people come to have their ideas confirmed, not challenged". Career "charlatan" Jordan Peterson was supposed to be interviewing Nigel Farage but "it turned out to be Jordan interviewing Jordan". Then there was the historian Niall Ferguson "declaring he was sorry to have missed a good war". Now, "I think I need to lie down in a darkened room for a while."