The reality of data centers in Spain

Today we talk about Aragón, and I'll start by making clear that this piece isn't against Aragón. It's against the model. The region has been turned, in just a few years, into mainland Europe's prime destination for the big data centers of the American hyperscalers. AWS, Microsoft, Meta, Blackstone. Announced investments adding up to nearly 30 billion euros. That sounds great in the press release. Does it sound just as good when you break down the hidden costs —water, electricity, land, taxes— and look at the actual jobs these infrastructures create? That's the conversation still pending. My take is biased because I visited one of the projects and read the administrative files. Form your own: the figures given in headlines and the ones that appear in the administrative documentation don't match.

I've spent a year and a half reading the official announcements, the urban-planning files, the agreements with the Aragonese regional and municipal authorities, and the few critical analyses coming out in the specialized Spanish press —Civio, El Salto, eldiario.es Aragón. What I find is a pattern worth naming.

Who's building what, and where exactly

Amazon Web Services was the first. It announced in May 2021 that its European AWS region, called AWS Region (Europe – Spain), would be based in Aragón, with an initial investment estimated at 2.5 billion euros over ten years. The region began operating commercially in November 2022. In May 2024, AWS expanded the commitment, announcing an additional investment of 15.7 billion euros for the following decade, bringing the total close to 18 billion euros. The facilities are concentrated in Villanueva de Gállego, El Burgo de Ebro and Huesca.

Microsoft announced in February 2024 an investment of 2.1 billion dollars in data-center infrastructure in Spain, split between the Community of Madrid (Algete, Meco, San Sebastián de los Reyes) and Aragón. The investment is part of the rollout of Azure's southern European region.

Meta announced in February 2024 a data center in Talavera de la Reina (province of Toledo, not Aragón) with a projected investment close to 1 billion euros. The project has been the subject of local protests over the impact on the water supply, on which the company has published limited information.

Blackstone, through its subsidiary QTS, announced in May 2024 an investment of 7.5 billion dollars in data centers in Aragón, with its main site in Calatorao (Zaragoza). The deal is part of Blackstone's bet to become one of Europe's major owners of digital infrastructure.

Adding up the main announcements, the aggregate declared investment in data centers in Spain exceeds 30 billion euros over the next ten years. The figure includes facilities operating, under construction and in the urban-licensing phase. Like any aggregate figure of announcements, it should be taken with caution: the timelines are long, the commitments are revisable, and the gap between what's announced and what's built in infrastructures of this type is historically around 60-70% within the projected timelines.

Electricity consumption, in manageable figures

A modern hyperscale data center —of the kind being built in Aragón— consumes between 100 and 1,000 megawatts (MW) of electrical power continuously. The exact figure depends on the size and the type of load. A mid-sized center dimensioned for generative AI with clusters of Nvidia H100 GPUs can easily demand 300 to 500 MW sustained.

For that figure to be intelligible, it helps to compare it with known references. The average electricity consumption of the entire city of Madrid in off-peak hours is around 2,500 MW; at peak, 4,500 MW. That means four or five hyperscale data centers of the size announced by AWS or Blackstone are equivalent, in sustained 24-hour electricity consumption, to the electricity consumption of the whole Spanish capital.

Aragón is attracting several units in parallel. If the current announcements come true, around 2030 the data centers installed in Aragón will consume, sustainedly, a power equivalent to that of a city of several million inhabitants. That raises operational questions that aren't being discussed with the depth they deserve. Where does that electricity come from? Who pays for it? What impact does it have on the bills of Spanish households and small businesses?

The short answer to the first question is: from the same electricity mix that serves the rest of the Spanish economy, with a growing weight of renewables —Aragón has notable wind capacity— but also of conventional plants in the hours when renewables aren't producing. The answer to the second: it's paid by the Spanish electricity system, via grid-access tolls and via the wholesale market. The answer to the third: the rise in industrial demand tends to push the wholesale price up at moments of higher demand, which is reflected, via the calculation of the regulated tariff, in the household consumer's final bill.

This isn't a controversial opinion. It's how the Iberian electricity market (MIBEL) works. The International Energy Agency (IEA) documented it clearly in its report Electricity 2024: in countries that have attracted a large number of data centers —Ireland, the Netherlands, Singapore—, the effect on the retail electricity price has been upward. Spain hasn't yet reached the point where the effect is massive, but the trajectory is the same.

Water consumption, the uncomfortable figures

Here's where the opacity becomes most notable. Modern data centers use water for cooling, especially those running large clusters of GPUs for AI. The techniques vary: evaporative cooling towers, water heat exchangers, direct liquid cooling.

The specific water-consumption figures the companies themselves publish vary enormously, and are almost always presented with opaque metrics. Google, in its sustainability reports, declares consumption for its European centers on the order of millions of liters a day per facility. Meta has been the subject in recent years of controversy over the consumption of its centers, especially in regions with structural water stress.

In the Spanish case, the public information available on the projected water consumption of the Aragonese centers is deliberately vague. The urban-planning files contain aggregate estimates; the contracts with the municipal supply services are confidential on commercial grounds; the regional authorities haven't published comparative analyses of the cumulative impact.

For Talavera de la Reina, the Meta case, there's more public information because the debate has been fiercer. The company has indicated the center will consume on the order of several hundred thousand cubic meters of water a year. The figure has been challenged by neighborhood groups —especially Coordinadora Talavera con su Tierra— who maintain the estimates are optimistic and that the region already suffers structural water stress. The controversy reached the High Court of Justice of Castilla-La Mancha in 2024.

The operational point isn't whether a specific figure is exact. It's that Spain is building water-intensive infrastructure in a country the State Meteorological Agency has characterized as undergoing increasing aridification in areas of the center and east of the peninsula. The compatibility between that infrastructure and Mediterranean irrigated agriculture, which is structural to the Spanish rural economy, isn't being discussed with the depth it deserves.

The fiscal and employment balance

Here comes the figure that's hardest to square with the official narrative.

A hyperscale data center generates direct operating employment of between 50 and 300 people, depending on the size. Most of that employment is concentrated in maintenance technicians, operations engineers, security personnel and administrative staff. The vast majority of the facility's economic value —the processing of data on behalf of global clients— requires no local human intervention.

The employment figures that appear in the companies' and the regional governments' press releases are usually far higher than that range. The reason is that they include employment during the construction phase (which is temporary, usually lasting two or three years per phase) and the estimated indirect employment among local suppliers (which is a multiplier ratio hard to verify). When you discount construction employment and indirect employment, the direct and permanent employment comes down to far more modest figures.

For AWS Aragón, the available data —compiled by Civio in its analyses of the file— point to direct and permanent employment on the order of a few hundred people, versus the figures of several thousand that appeared in some press releases. For Meta's center in Talavera, the permanent-employment estimates are around 100-150 people according to the administrative documentation, versus the figure of several thousand used in the initial presentation.

On top of this comes the fiscal balance. The big American tech companies have optimized tax structures that channel European profits toward Ireland, Luxembourg or the Netherlands. The economic activity generated in Spain is, in large part, billed in other jurisdictions. The direct tax revenue for the Spanish State from operating these centers, once you discount the local tax breaks granted —municipal tax exemptions, regional aid, property-tax rebates, allocated European funds—, comes down to modest figures relative to the declared investment.

The asymmetry the narrative hides

What's being built in Aragón, in Talavera and in other Spanish locations is infrastructure that serves global users and clients, not Spanish ones. The data processed on AWS Aragón's servers isn't mostly Spaniards'. The computing capacity sold by Microsoft Azure Spain serves European, American and Asian corporate clients. The economic value generated by the facility is billed in large part in other jurisdictions, under the hyperscalers' usual tax structures.

Spain contributes to this model: cheap industrial land, relatively abundant electricity at a competitive wholesale price, water, fast administrative permits, European funds channeled to digital infrastructure, skilled labor trained in public universities paid for with Spanish taxes.

The companies contribute: capital, proprietary technology, integration with their global services.

What Spain receives: modest direct employment, sectoral prestige, European funds (which don't come from the hyperscalers but from the EU budget), the promise of industrial digitalization that's slow to materialize.

What Spain pays: a progressive rise in the wholesale electricity price, pressure on water resources in sensitive areas, irreversible use of industrial land, local tax breaks that subtract from revenue.

The equation isn't necessarily bad. A region with high structural unemployment and a declining industrial fabric can legitimately decide that attracting these centers is worth it even if the balance isn't perfect. What's honest to debate is whether the balance being accepted in Spain reflects an informed decision or a sale of prestige without adequate consideration. To date, that discussion has barely begun in the regional parliaments, in the Congress of Deputies, or in the general press.

The political question

This is personal opinion, but it rests on the public administrative documentation. Spain is accepting a model of relationship with the tech hyperscalers that recalls, in some important features, the model of relationship with the big oil companies of the 20th century or the maquila manufacturing model of 1990s Mexico. The host country contributes physical, low-value-added resources; the multinational company contributes capital and captures most of the value.

The difference from those precedents is that here the international lobby accelerates the political decision before the citizen debate materializes. The investment announcements are made with the presence of the Prime Minister or the regional president, with favorable media coverage, with aggregate figures that confuse total declared investment with net benefit for the country. When, years later, the real employment figures, real electricity consumption and real water consumption become known, the decision is practically irreversible: the facility is built, the contracts signed, the tax breaks granted.

What I would ask —and again not out of drama, but for democratic hygiene— is that these investments, given their size relative to the regional GDP, be subjected to a public cost-benefit analysis carried out by an independent body (AIReF would be the logical actor) before the licenses and tax breaks are granted. Today, that evaluation either doesn't exist or is done internally without publication. That opacity isn't fitting for an advanced democracy.

The concrete figure that closes it: according to the Spain Data Center Market Report 2025 published by Spain DC, the Spanish sector association, the installed data-center capacity in Spain will go from 215 MW at the end of 2023 to a projection above 1,700 MW for 2030, an eightfold growth in seven years. That figure —1,700 MW— is roughly equivalent to the average sustained electricity consumption of a city like Seville. Whether building that capacity is strategically wise or not is one thing. What shouldn't be admissible is that it's built without the public having had the chance to weigh in, with full information, on what it pays and what it receives.

Definitions

Hyperscale data center: a facility with computing capacity equivalent to tens of thousands of servers and sustained electricity consumption above 50 MW. It's the data-center format the big cloud providers use to serve their global business.

Evaporative cooling: a cooling technique that uses water evaporation to dissipate the heat generated by the servers. It's energy-efficient but consumes water significantly.

Electricity mix: the composition of sources —renewables, nuclear, gas, coal— that produces the electricity consumed in a country at a given moment. The Spanish mix has a growing weight of renewables but still depends on gas at moments of low wind and solar output.

Tax optimization: the legal structure by which a multinational company shifts the profits obtained in one jurisdiction toward another with lower taxation. It's legal when it complies with current regulations; problematic when it reduces the revenue of the jurisdictions where the economic value is actually generated.

References

Spain DC, Spain Data Center Market Report 2025 (Spanish data-center association, 2025). Sector figures on installed capacity and projections.

International Energy Agency, Electricity 2024: Analysis and Forecast to 2026 (IEA, January 2024). Chapter on the impact of data centers on global and European electricity consumption.

Red Eléctrica de España, Report on the Spanish Electricity System 2024 (REE, 2025). Official data on national demand and electricity mix, the basis for comparison with data-center consumption.

Civio, coverage of AWS Region Aragón and data centers in Spain (civio.es, 2022-2025). Critical analysis of the public administrative documentation.

eldiario.es Aragón, coverage of the urban-planning files of data centers in Aragón (2023-2025). Local reporting on the administrative processes.

Kate Crawford, Atlas of AI (Yale University Press, 2021). A material framework on the physical costs of AI infrastructure.

Agencia Estatal de Meteorología (AEMET), Bulletin tracking climate change in Spain (annual reports). Official documentation on the aridification trend in areas of the country.

Going deeper

Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson, Power and Progress (PublicAffairs, 2023). An economic framework on how big technologies concentrate profits and why the direction isn't neutral.

Vaclav Smil, How the World Really Works (Viking, 2022). A material framework on why physical infrastructure conditions the apparently dematerialized digital economy.

Cory Doctorow, The Internet Con (Verso, 2023). An analysis of how the power of tech platforms is built and its regulatory consequences.

Coordinadora Talavera con su Tierra and Aragonese neighborhood groups. Critical documentation from the citizens directly affected by the projects.

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