Another large data center campus lands in a city in Aragon. After closing a commitment of 15.7 billion euros from Amazon last spring, the community now obtains an additional 7.5 billion to continue building these key infrastructures of the digital society in Calatorao, in the province of Zaragoza. The difference is that now they no longer come from Google, Microsoft, or one of Amazon’s cloud competitors. The investor is Blackstone, the largest owner of rental housing in Spain.
The fund thus becomes the second largest investor in data centers in the country, surpassing the 6.6 billion that Microsoft allocated (also) to Aragon in June. Blackstone says the new infrastructure will create 1,400 jobs in the city, which now has a population of fewer than 3,000, and add tens of billions to the region’s GDP. In September, its property manager in Europe had already announced that it was targeting the “emerging” data center sector in Spain.
In its latest balance sheet, presented in July, the fund already controlled a portfolio of data centers valued at around 50 billion euros. Since then, it has not only announced the deployment of Aragón, but also paid an additional 15 billion to buy AirTrunk, an Australia-based developer that manages this type of digital infrastructure throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Steve Schwarzman, Blackstone’s chief executive, revealed that the fund had sold office buildings in the United States in recent years to undertake these operations.
The investment bank – known in Spain as a vulture fund for its controversial acquisitions and rent hikes – is among those moving more sharply away from traditional brick factories towards artificial intelligence factories. But not the only one. Dubai-based Damac Group announced this week its entry into the data center sector in Spain through its subsidiary Edgnex. The company will launch a 40 MW center with an investment of 400 million euros. Meanwhile, the leaders of the Chinese giant GDS Holdings, according to El Confidencial, met with Telefónica executives and members of the government to invest in data centers in our country in 2025, which would be the first investment outside the Asia for this business.
According to Linklaters, 40% of the investments of the 50 main global real estate funds are already devoted to the construction of catos centers. Calculations from Statista suggest that this company’s profits will grow at an annual rate of 8.5% through 2030.
Spain on the horizon
Spain is one of the emerging markets in this data center explosion. Two factors justify this, according to authorities and experts.
On the one hand, “it has a strategic geographical position, because it has submarine cables that reach our coasts and allow us to connect different continents”, they explain from SpainDC, the association of data centers. The traditional flow of data in Europe connects the continent to the United States via the so-called “FLAP” axis (Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam and Paris). The peninsula offers better opportunities for new connections with Africa and South America and a much less saturated market than its northern competitors.
Also much greater electrical availability. “The second strong point is that these data processing centers consume a lot of energy. There we have a huge competitive advantage in the possibility of producing abundant renewable energy,” completed the former Minister of Digital Transformation, José Luis Escriva, now Governor of the Bank of Spain, in an interview with elDiario .es.
While companies like Google or Amazon are forced to conclude agreements with nuclear energy suppliers for the electrification of their data centers in the United States, Spain is proposing that these infrastructures be labeled “100% renewable “. A relevant label given the debate on artificial intelligence and its sustainability which is developing both among legislators and in civil society.
Water use concessions, another critical aspect for the installation of data centers, also do not pose a problem for companies wishing to establish themselves in Spain. Although these companies and local and regional administrations refuse to reveal the water consumption planned for these infrastructures, employers assure that the figures have been exaggerated. “In the next generation data centers that are being developed, none of them have any water consumption,” they claim.
The season is open for Spanish companies
The situation is pushing companies in sectors not directly related to digital to rush for a piece of this pie. Especially in the case of those who have the capacity to provide some of the key pillars: adequate space to install them (technically, the closer they are to the businesses and people they will serve, the better), energy or experience in infrastructure management. for third parties.
This is what is happening in the case of Iberdrola. In September, the energy company launched a new subsidiary, CPD4Green, whose objective is to offer “turnkey” spaces to companies wishing to build them: the land, the electrical connection prepared for mass consumption, the contract renewable energy and installation to ensure supply 24/7. Iberdrola is looking for a financial partner who will be responsible for providing the money necessary for the construction and operation of the data centers.
The company chaired by Ignacio Galán has identified 11 possible locations for these facilities. Data centers are measured in megawatts (MW) of installed power: up to 10 MW is considered small; from there up to 50 MW, average; and beyond, great. Iberdrola says it wants to guarantee a capacity of 400 MW in the coming months and operate around 200 MW between the different data centers by 2030. According to its calculations, this infrastructure will represent 10% of global energy consumption. According to the International Energy Institute, in 2023 they have not reached 2%, although it estimates that they will reach 4% by 2026.
Still in the energy sector, Solaria has registered in this company, the renewable energy company that tries to respond to the decline in its income in the traditional sector with the diversification of the provision of services, access and energy to data centers. Solaria claims to already have 270 MW of guaranteed capacity to meet data center demand and has set a target of 1,000 MW.
Another major Spanish company looking to move into data center management is ACS, which has moved to the final stage of the auction process to acquire Nabiax, one of Spain’s leading data center companies. Nabiax was born in 2019 from the sale of 11 data centers belonging to Telefónica to the Asterion fund for 550 million euros. Two years later, the telecom operator put four other centers on the table in exchange for 20% of the company’s shares.
Late last year, Asterion and Telefónica put Nabiax up for sale, hoping to raise around 1 billion euros. ACS submitted one of the highest non-binding offers for the company, which gave it access to the final phase, during which it will receive more precise data on the operation which will allow it to submit an offer farm. Nabiax has 28 MW of installed power in Spain and hopes that its commercial operation will allow it to double it within a few years.
However, this move would not be the first undertaken by ACS in this sector. At the end of 2023, the group announced the construction of a 50 MW data center in Alcalá de Henares which it hopes to have operational by 2025. Like Blackstone, the construction company started years its transition to the digital infrastructure sector. Today it counts in its asset portfolio giants such as Turner, one of the largest American contractors specializing in data centers and gigafactories, or CIMIC, an Australian construction giant which also focuses on these installations and gains positions in the extraction of copper, aluminum, lithium, cobalt or nickel, key resources of the digital industry.
El Corte Inglés is another of the major Spanish companies that have moved in this direction. Last October, the company acquired 100% of the Spanish subsidiary of KIO Networks, a Mexican company that had been expanding in Spain in recent years. It has a data center in Murcia and is finalizing preparations to start another in Paterna (Valencia). Its power is much more modest (2.4 MW in total) but it will benefit from security level IV, the highest in the sector. The company assures that there are only 47 of these centers in the world, four of which are in Spain.
KIO’s investment in Paterna reached 50 million euros. Figures for the acquisition by El Corte Inglés were not revealed, although the company already held 50% of its shares. El Corte Inglés sources declined to give further details about the operation or whether there are plans to convert its real estate assets into data centers in the future, while explaining that KIO will continue to operate as an independent company .
