Campaigners say Catalonia's government has approved a framework to make the region "the digital port of the Mediterranean," with 26 large data centers planned across the region. Projects above 20 megawatts of power can ask the Generalitat to be treated as strategic, which speeds their permits. The city of Lleida went the other way: in January 2025 its council refused data centers, saying they create too few qualified jobs and use too much energy and water, DCD reported.
The region's flagship so far is MERLIN Edged's 15-megawatt data center for CoreWeave in Barcelona's Zona Franca, opened in May 2025; Equinix also runs its BA1 data center in Barcelona. At Alcover, in the Alt Camp, Scranton Enterprises, the Grifols-linked holding that owns the closed Iberboard Mill paper plant, is lining up more than 20 megawatts of power to turn the site into a data center called Iberdata, and then plans to find a technology partner to build it.
On September 22, 2026, the campaign "No als megacentres de dades a Catalunya" protested at the opening of the AI Summit Barcelona. Led by SETEM, Ecologistes en Acció, the Intersindical Alternativa de Catalunya and the Xarxa d'Economia Solidària, it wants a moratorium on data centers above 5 megawatts until there are rules for transparency and public oversight. "No volem tornar a la política del totxo" (we do not want to return to the politics of the brick), the union said.
Projects not tied to an area
Sites whose records name no county. Everything else is on the pages listed above.
Catalonia1
| Project | Company | Status | Power | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Equinix Barcelona Hub (BA1) | Equinix | Not reported | Source off site ↗ |
Where this comes from
The reporting above was written from these. Open one and check it yourself.
Moratoriums and bans in effect
Places in Catalonia that have paused or banned new data centers.
| Place | Type | Started | Ends | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LleidaTown or city | Ban | Jan 2025 | No end date | Record off site ↗ |
Every project above is drawn from public records, filings and local reporting. Each row links to what it is based on. Statuses change, so check the source date before you rely on one. Found something wrong? Write to [email protected] and it gets fixed.