See how Big Tech is transforming Spain's landscape

Loading... 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. Heavy equipment excavates an area adjacent to an Amazon data center currently under construction in Cuarte, Spain, on Sept. 29. Local authorities have approved dozens of data center projects for U.S. Big Tech and other companies that will transform the character of ...