The year 2019 marks the history of technology in Aragon. It is the year in which Amazon Web Services decided to bet on the Aragonese community with the announcement of its new region in Europe and the first in Spain with an investment of 2.5 billion euros.
A figure that contemplated the start-up of three data centers in Villanueva de Gállego and El Burgo de Ebro, both in Zaragoza, as well as in Huesca, specifically, in the vicinity of the Huesca Logistics Platform. They are availability zones in order to offer their cloud services to companies and public administrations.
From that moment, the company began to work on everything necessary to make this new region a reality, the seventh in Europe and the largest on the European continent, with the forecast to start operating at the end of 2022.
And, right now, two years of activity have just passed, although the three centers are still not at full capacity and the figure of 300 jobs on average in the technological facilities has not been reached, new steps are being taken.l
And what are you going to do now after these two years of activity? For now, Amazon Web Services has to complete all your previous projectbut in parallel it is already working, since 2024 – the year in which the investment was presented – on the project to expand its region in Spain, which entails a investment of 15.7 billion euros over a ten-year horizon. According to the project, job creation will exceed 17,500 jobs in Spain, of which 6,800 jobs will be located in Aragon.
Next year, Amazon Web Services will carry out, after approving the Declaration of General Interest of this plan, the purchase of the land – about 400 hectares-, in addition to definitively processing the PIGA. In the second half of 2025, construction will also begin of the data halls and administrative buildings, apart from undertaking the investment necessary for the urbanization.
It is a phase that will last until 2029adding an initial investment of 3 billion euros in these four years. During this period, the interior roads and parking lots will be undertaken.
It will also be the turn of all energy infrastructures (with 44,684,956.50 euros for power lines and other electrical installations such as measurement centers with 5,626,872.00 euros for the entire expansion project) to respond. to the demand of 10,800 GWh, water (43,158,098.36 euros and with a final deadline of the second quarter of 2027) or fiber (2,450,230.61 euros), and it is expected that the data centers, at least in their majority, will be interconnected in 18 months. It is a step toward achieving the goal of having all eight different sites connected by a common fiber optic network as a single AWS Region.
The latest installation, due to its complexity and the fact that it could also house artificial intelligence solutions, is that of Zaragoza, whose works could begin in 2026 and be completed in 2028. However, The works are expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2029.
Afterwards, it will start the third phasewhich will be followed by the successive ones, although here the deadlines will depend on the market demand and until the entire investment is completed, also including the different facilities. The actions in this period, of 2029 to 2033cover the construction of the rest of the buildings to complete all the buildings and infrastructure in each of the availability zones.
With this AWS expansion, the impact on the GDP Spain’s total will reach 21.6 billion euros until 2033, of which around 12.9 billion euros will be for Aragon.
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