“Aragon continues to progress toward becoming the Virginia of southern Europe. » On October 14, Jorge Azcon, president of the regional government of Aragon, did not hesitate to compare the autonomous community of northern Spain with the state of the United States where the most data centers are concentrated. He had just announced the plan of the American investment fund Blackstone to invest 7.5 billion euros, through its subsidiary QTS Data Centers, in the construction of a large digital data storage infrastructure in the municipality of Calatorao, near Zaragoza.
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Covering an area of 224 hectares, this center is expected to create 1,400 jobs during its first phase of development. “Aragon has the talent, an enviable geographical location to produce clean energy, natural resources, industrial land in large quantities and at a very competitive price, and can rely on unalterable social peace”Mr. Azcon boasted on October 14, estimating that the data center sector could lead to growth of 2% in gross domestic product each year for the next quarter of a century. Provided, however, that “multiply investment in the electricity distribution network”became “a funnel”he added.
“Either we invest six times more than we have done over the last fifteen years in electricity networks, or we will miss out on the data center revolution”insisted the director of the Spanish data center association Spain DC, Manuel Gimenez, Wednesday, November 27, during an entrepreneurial forum. And to evaluate the amount of investments necessary at 6.6 billion euros per year until 2030, then 5.3 billion until 2040. Calculations which testify to the fervor which has taken hold of the Spain around data storage centers.
In May, Amazon Web Services (AWS) made headlines by promising 15.7 billion euros of investment over the next ten years and the creation of 6,800 jobs in order to develop its three data centers in Aragon, sites to which would be added a new infrastructure of the same type in Zaragoza. The general manager of AWS for Spain and Portugal, Suzana Curic, described this data campus as “strategic, not only for Spain, but for southern Europe”.
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Three months earlier, in February, another American tech giant, Microsoft, revealed a plan to invest 6 billion euros to expand its three Madrid data centers and build three new ones in a sprawling data campus in Aragon. Other lesser-known companies also have their own projects, such as Box2Bit, from the Capital Energy group, which plans 3.4 billion euros of investment in Cariñena, announced in June and confirmed at the end of October. Over the last six months, Spain has attracted nearly 34 billion euros in promises of investment in data centers.
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