Spain has granted 12 GW of data center grid access. A draft decree and the 29 November vote set the terms

Spain’s north-east has become one of the largest open doors for data center capital in Europe. The question for the next seven weeks is who gets through it, and on what terms.

Three things landed within a fortnight. Aragón approved a Blackstone-backed campus of up to €13.5 billion on 30 September. Madrid said in early October that it plans to approve this month the decree that will decide which of Spain’s 12 GW of granted grid access gets built. And on 5 October, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called a general election for 29 November, putting a clock on the whole rulebook.

How Aragón became Europe’s fast lane

Aragón’s tool is a status, not a subsidy. A project declared a “Project of General Interest of Aragón” (PIGA) gets swift planning decisions, land expropriation powers and local tax breaks, and a one-stop investor service sends weekly progress updates, Reuters reported. PIGA can cut approval times from years to under 12 months. Aragón has fast-tracked more than a dozen large data center projects this way.

The anchor is Amazon Web Services. In March, AWS raised its planned investment in Spain to €33.7 billion, adding €18 billion to the €15.7 billion confirmed in 2024, with new facilities planned in Teruel, Huesca and Zaragoza, La Moncloa said. The government called it Amazon’s largest investment in the country. Reuters reported that it is AWS’s largest such investment outside the United States. Microsoft plans up to €10 billion in Aragón, and Merlin Properties has a €1.2 billion project on the fast track.

What changed in the last two weeks

The biggest single approval yet. On 30 September the Government of Aragón approved the PIGA for QTS’s Proyecto Rhodes campus in Calatorao, with investment of up to €13.471 billion, Aragón Digital reported. QTS said site works would start immediately. Aragón’s president, Jorge Azcón, said the campus could create 3,400 jobs when fully developed, including 1,200 direct construction jobs in phase one and up to 200 permanent jobs once operating.

A national rulebook with a date. On 4 October, Energías Renovables reported that the government plans to approve in October the royal decree that regulates data centers. MITECO opened the draft to public consultation on 27 August, with comments due by 4 September. The ministry’s own figures show why it wants a filter: Spain’s AI strategy needs about 2.5 GW of computing capacity by 2030, which means 3.5 to 4 GW of electricity demand, yet more than 12 GW of grid access and connection rights have been granted to data centers since 2021, MITECO said.

By our calculation, the access already granted is three to 3.4 times the demand the national AI strategy needs by 2030 (12 GW against 3.5-4 GW). That gap is the opportunity and the risk in one number. There is room for far more projects than the plan assumes, but not all of the paper capacity will survive a stricter test.

An election that puts the rulebook on a clock. On 5 October, Sánchez called a snap general election for 29 November after parliament rejected his government’s housing measures, Al Jazeera reported. The opposition has already said what it would do with the decree.

What the draft decree asks of a new data center

The draft would make grid access and connection permits conditional on three blocks at once: digital sovereignty, efficiency and renewable supply. It applies to facilities of 1 MW or more of access power, according to a client alert from Ashurst.

Sources: MITECO, 27 Aug 2026; Ashurst, 1 Sep 2026. The text is a draft and may change. MITECO says pending projects have three months only when awaiting a grid access tender.

The transitional clock is the part investors should model. If the decree took effect in late November, a project holding granted but unconnected access would have until about late May 2027 to prove it meets every block, or lose the permit (our calculation from the six-month rule as described by Ashurst). The industry says that is too tight.

In English: “We can negotiate, but it is not negotiable that Spain becomes the most restrictive country in Europe.” SpainDC, the national data center association, said three international companies had warned they would halt projects worth €9 billion if the draft goes ahead, ESdiario reported. It put those projects at 15% of the €66.9 billion of data center investment planned for Spain through 2030.

SpainDC’s two figures do not reconcile exactly: €9 billion is 13.5% of €66.9 billion (our calculation), not 15%. ESdiario does not explain the difference.

Who gains, and how much

Hyperscalers with land, power and permits already in hand. AWS’s €33.7 billion plan and Microsoft’s up-to-€10 billion plan sit on approved or advancing PIGAs. Centers already connected are exempt from the new access test. Every month a competitor spends proving compliance is a month of advantage for capacity that is already energised or close to it.

Blackstone and QTS. Proyecto Rhodes has regional approval and a start on site. Its exposure is the national test: renewable additionality and hourly matching at that scale will need a large, dedicated renewable portfolio. Aragón has the resource; contracting it inside 18 months of start-up is the job.

Renewable developers and storage. The 80% hourly-matching rule is, in effect, an order book. Each new data center megawatt must be matched by a new renewable megawatt, and an hour-by-hour test pushes buyers towards firming with storage.

Efficiency and cooling vendors. In our view, interim caps of PUE 1.15 and WUE 0.1 would be demanding for new builds. They favour liquid and closed-loop cooling and high-efficiency power trains. DC Market Insights estimates the Spain Data Center Market at USD 6,379.05 million in 2025, rising to USD 14,652.80 million by 2035.

Towns, and the doubters. The gains are less clear locally. On 8 October, PSOE deputy Jesús Morales told the Cortes de Aragón that data centers would triple the region’s energy consumption and create 2,000 to 3,000 permanent jobs, about 0.5% of Aragón’s employment, citing the Fundación Basilio Paraíso, the party said. In 2025, elDiario.es reported that five projects then in the PIGA process would use nearly 16,000 GWh a year, against about 10,000 GWh consumed by the whole of Aragón the previous year. Ecologistas en Acción has filed what is believed to be Spain’s first lawsuit against a major data center development, challenging the Amazon fast track, Reuters reported.

Sources: Reuters via Khaleej Times, 6 Oct 2026; La Moncloa, 2 Mar 2026; Aragón Digital, 30 Sep 2026. The AWS figure covers Spain, not only Aragón, so the rows should not be added to the regional total.

The grid is the real gate

Money is not the scarce input. Grid capacity is. In September 2025, the government’s proposed transmission plan foresaw more than €13.5 billion of investment. It noted that more than 43 GW of access rights had been granted to demand projects nationally since 2020, while the plan expected to serve 27.7 GW on the transmission grid and 5.3 GW on distribution grids, Energías Renovables reported. In Aragón, the plan proposed raising capacity by more than 250% above the region’s 2024 peak of 1.6 GW, with data centers taking the bulk of the access. Red Eléctrica listed 71 grid nodes where demand exceeds capacity, 10 of them in Aragón, elDiario.es reported in 2025.

That is why the decree matters more than any single campus. In our view, it works as a sorting machine for a queue that is several times larger than the grid the country plans to build. Projects that cannot show EU residency, hourly renewables and class-A efficiency would free up capacity for those that can.

The wider pattern: Southern and Northern Europe compete for the same capital

Spain is not the only market racing to turn grid and land into data center investment. In the same week, three other markets set out their offers.

Sources: Reuters; The Next Web, citing the Italian Datacenter Association; DCD; NSW Government. Figures use different scopes and currencies and are not comparable line by line.

The pattern is the same everywhere. Requests run far ahead of what the grid can deliver, as Italy’s 60-100+ GW of requests against 1.9 GW of advanced projects shows. Governments are answering with faster permits for projects that pay their own way. New South Wales asks for no net cost to consumers. Spain’s draft asks for new renewables, hour by hour. The markets that win will be those that make the condition clear and the clock short.

In English: “We don’t want digital bubbles, but digital oceans.”

For market sizing, see our Spain Data Center Market report, the wider Iberia Data Center Market report and the Spain AI Data Center Market report. For capacity and rules, see our Spain data center capacity page and the Data Center Power & Policy Tracker.

What to watch next

• October-November 2026: Council of Ministers decision on the data center royal decree, after the Council of State’s report. The government said it planned to approve it in October; Ashurst expects October-November.
• 29 November 2026: Spain’s snap general election.
• About six months after the decree takes effect: deadline for projects with granted but unconnected access to prove compliance (three months for pending applications).
• August 2027: EU data center efficiency rating classes expected to apply; class A for PUE and WUE required under the draft.
• 2028: first power expected at Applied Digital’s Finnish site, a benchmark for the Nordic alternative.

Frequently asked questions

How much data center investment is going to Aragón?

Aragón expects more than €60 billion of data center and digital infrastructure investment over the next decade, Reuters reported. The largest named plans are AWS (€33.7 billion for Spain), QTS/Blackstone (up to €13.471 billion at Calatorao) and Microsoft (up to €10 billion).

How much grid access has Spain granted to data centers?

More than 12 GW of grid access and connection rights since 2021, according to MITECO. Spain’s AI strategy needs 3.5 to 4 GW of electricity demand by 2030, so granted access is about three to 3.4 times the planned need (our calculation).

What does Spain’s draft data center decree require?

For facilities of 1 MW or more: an EU-established operator with EU data residency; class-A PUE and WUE, with interim caps of 1.15 and 0.1; and at least 80% renewable supply, matched hour by hour, from new capacity added in the 18 months before start-up.

When will Spain approve the data center decree?

The government said in early October it planned to approve it that month; Ashurst expects October-November 2026. Spain holds a snap general election on 29 November, and the People’s Party has said many projects would be “re-evaluated” if the decree passes.