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ZARAGOZA, Spain — Aragon's rugged plains stretch out under a clear blue sky, the buildings visible as "a few tiny cubes sprawled like a throw of dice" across the terrain — as George Orwell wrote in Homage to Catalonia, of his time here during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. Today, excavators eat the earth, carving huge chunks of the landscape in the race to build the behemoths of the AI boom.
This drought-stricken region of northeast Spain has become the focus of American companies searching for locations to place their energy- and water-intensive data centers. In Aragon, Amazon Web Services promises to spend almost $40 billion to build multiple vast complexes — one alone as large as 600 American football fields. Microsoft and the asset management firm Blackstone are among those following suit, signing agreements to build data centers that will transform this region and the livelihoods of its inhabitants.
Even as other countries enact regulations to curb the expansion of data centers (and Spain's national government weighs new restrictions), Aragon's regional government is welcoming the companies with open arms. Touting themselves as the "Virginia of southern Europe" after the U.S. state with the largest concentration of data centers, they are taking the bet that hosting data centers will bring jobs and prepare the region for the economic shifts they believe AI will bring.
"This is a new economy that is evolving, and it's very difficult to foresee how many activities are going to be coming around it," said Eva Valle, the economic counsellor for the regional government. "But they are coming."
It's being built beside the village on land close to a protected wetland.
The companies were drawn to the region with promises of large tax breaks and fast-tracked planning permissions that give these data centers a special status usually reserved for the general interest of the local population. This order gives them the power to expropriate land, strips local mayors of veto powers, and restricts the time the public has to object to 23 working days. (For the recent Amazon Web Services development, the regional government opened the window to oppose the project over the Christmas period. Opponents of the project believe they did this to try to push it through at a time when people would be paying less attention, though the government denies this.)
The rapid approval process for these large and hyperscale facilities has left many in Aragon feeling excluded from decisions that will profoundly impact their region and lives.
"It's going to be like living beside a prison"
The first time Silvia Baselga and her family learned of the data center soon to tower over their home was when they noticed the survey markers poking out of the ground on the other side of their garden wall. "When we saw this, we went to the city hall and said, 'OK, we want information. This is really close to our house.'" But the local council told them they had no information. Only when the planning documents were later made public did they learn that the outer perimeter of the data center is to be built within 300 feet of their home in the hilltop village of Botorrita. The plans showed that the complex will be larger than the village itself.
Baselga's parents retired here for the tranquility of a life spent in a tight-knit village community. Their home looks out over fields and gently rolling hills. To try to block the noise the data center will emit, Baselga believes the company will build a 20-foot-high wall, as happened in a nearby village. "We're going to open the window and see nothing," she said. Friends regularly visit at night to gaze at the stars in this rural setting. Baselga said the center's 24-hour security lights will block out the night sky. "It's going to be like living beside a prison."
Centers like these are set to be built across Aragon — 27 in total, according to official documents — some by Spanish and other firms, but most by American companies, taking up about 7 square miles of land. At least one is built partly on ground originally classified as protected for natural ecosystems. The companies promise employment. Amazon Web Services told NPR it will create 6,200 permanent jobs once these centers are built. But many residents fear they will also deliver an environmental crisis.
Economic development "at the cost of the environment"
The data centers will consume many times the current electricity needs of the region and require large amounts of water to cool their servers in one of Spain's driest regions, one that's been repeatedly blighted by drought.
Julio Enfedaque drives across the parched land his family has farmed for generations. This year it barely rained for four months, and the government cut the amount of water available for irrigation by two-thirds. "Even if they say the data centers won't take the water that we need for agriculture, I am sure it's going to become very complicated to farm like my ancestors used to." Enfedaque has advised his nephews to find different careers and leave the land.
Amazon Web Services says its data centers will draw water only after temperatures hit 86 degrees Fahrenheit and that they are investing millions of dollars to help fix leaking water pipes and working with farmers to use AI technology to make their water use more efficient. "We're trying to not only use as less [sic] water as possible, but also to help those communities where we operate have the best infrastructure," David Blázquez, Amazon's head of public policy for Spain and Portugal, told NPR.
But the company remains opaque about how much water each center will use. Blázquez said it's "a company policy not to publish water usage per site." Regional figures show Amazon's three existing data centers, which are much smaller than what is planned, used 68 million liters — 48% more than the company had originally told regional officials they would need.
Endangering valuable habitat for rare and migratory birds
Perhaps an even bigger problem is the energy these centers need to run. Unlike many data centers in the U.S., which are powered by natural gas, companies in Aragon say they will rely mainly on renewable sources (though they also have diesel generators on site). Blázquez says Amazon Web Services has secured "a hundred renewable projects in Spain," including 17 in Aragon.
While that energy is carbon-free, ecologists and biologists warn that additional wind projects could have their own devastating consequences for the environment.
The region is full of hunting grounds for vultures and other birds of prey and an important stop for migrating birds.
"The vultures look for the thermal air currents to lift them. But they run straight into the windmills — for them it's like flying through knives," explained José Antonio Pinzolas, an ornithologist.
Aragon's own environmental agency has warned that wind farms in this area pose a high risk of collision to the endangered red kite and other protected raptors, and has documented an increase in bird and bat deaths in recent years as the renewable sector expands.
"I've collected ospreys, golden eagles, kestrels by the dozen, black vultures," said Juan Ballesteros, a nature protection officer for the local government.
Ballesteros used to love his job for its access to wildlife. Now, he said, he spends his days placing the corpses of birds killed by turbine blades into body bags. Ballesteros met NPR as he arrived to collect the body of a young Eurasian black vulture that lay dead on the ground, its wings splayed in the dirt at the foot of a wind turbine.
Blázquez told NPR, of the damage to this important habitat that the expansion of wind and solar farms causes, that Amazon Web Services "definitely shares those concerns." He said they work with renewable energy companies that comply with environmental legislation. But Pinzolas said the growing number of bird deaths shows the current protections in place are not working.
Environmental groups say the overall impact of wind turbines on birds isn't being properly assessed.
Several groups have crowdfunded together to mount a legal action to try to stop Amazon Web Services' expansion in Aragon. The court case challenges the Aragon government's fast-tracked approvals of the plans. "We have concerns about water consumption, about energy consumption, the impact on some other industries and on the environment," said Luis García,, an activist with Ecologistas En Accion, one of the organizations involved in the case. He said the economic benefits of data centers are not great enough to justify the "huge damage they do to the environment."
Locals fight to preserve nature for future generations
One recent weekend in the region's capital, Zaragoza, an avenue filled with demonstrators protesting against a new data center to be built at the edge of a forest by the city. Residents fear the heat and noise of the complex will destroy a tranquil space that is a haven during the hot summer months.
"This is a worthy fight as all the worlds invades us, to save this pine forests, to save the environment, against this voracious capitalism that thinks only of economic interests and not of people," said Marian Rams, a local resident with white hair dyed in hues of pink, green and blue. "They want to swap nature for data centers."
Nearby, a little girl no older than 5 chanted along with the demonstrators. Her mother, Ana Domezian, walked alongside her with her second child, a baby, nestled in a carrier against her chest. "If we don't fight now for what we have," she asked, "what are we going to leave to them in the future?"
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