The economic crisis started in Spain between 2008 and 2009. During the previous years there had been a growth of the Spanish economy above 3% per year, combined with a reduction of the unemployment rate to values close to 8%, the lowest unemployment rate in the last two decades. This situation was seen by analysts and politicians as a perfect situation for the Spanish economy, which did not foreshadow the existence of the crisis that would follow, beyond a minority that warned of a bubble in the real estate sector and a possible slowdown in the economy. This study reviews the ratios and sectors that have suffered most from the consequences of the crisis and describes the need for the implementation of technology as levers to improve the productivity of these sectors.

In the different developed societies, the different relationships between the so-called technological indicators and social development have been studied in the recent years. The aim of this work is to find a link between variables of the DESI (digital economy and society index) technology indicator and the GDP (gross domestic product) per capita for the current year. These relationships exist and are directly related to the use of certain services on the Internet by citizens and the integration of technology by companies.

The Industry 4.0 (I4.0) advent is re-shaping the way systems and processes operate by considering Cyber-Physical Systems combined with a plethora of emergent Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), e.g., Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Computing and Intelligent Robotics. However, the emergence of such disruptive technologies strongly establishes a demand for upskilling and requalification of active professionals and young undergraduate students. This means that the wide adoption of the I4.0 systems and related technologies is dependent on the efficient implementation of lifelong learning and training initiatives that address these challenges. Having this in mind, this paper describes the implementation of a series of short learning modules and hackathons that relies on a strong hands-on practical experimentation, regarding the upskilling in emergent ICT technologies, particularly focusing on IoT, mobile robotics and Multi-agent Systems. The preliminary efforts contributed to qualify undergraduate students and active professionals in disruptive ICT, with the attendees' feedback illustrating the importance of these kind of short and handson learning modules to address towards the continuous demands associated to the digital transformation.

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