Amazon announces investment of more than US$ 17,000 million in Spain

The American online sales company Amazon announced this Wednesday a new investment of 15.7 billion euros (more than US$ 17 billion) to expand its data centers in the Spanish region of Aragon.

“Amazon Web Services (AWS) today announced its plans to invest 15.7 billion euros” in that northeastern region, likely to create “17,500 jobs” indirect “full time in local companies”the company wrote in a statement.

The Spanish Government, which aspires to make the country a technological center, welcomed the announcement.

This investment “confirms Spain as a key digital hub in southern Europe with great advantages, such as our connectivity and local climatic and energy conditions”said the Minister for Digital Transformation, José Luis Escrivá, according to the company statement.

“This new commitment by Amazon Web Services to our country places Spain at the forefront of technological innovation and Artificial Intelligence in Europe”he added.

For the regional president, Jorge Azcón, it opens “the most brilliant page in Aragonese economic history” with which is “the largest economic investment in the history of a company” there.

The economy of this region of 1.3 million people, whose capital is Zaragoza, was until now very dependent on the food and automotive industries.

Amazon already has three centers in Aragon, a physical location that stores computing machines, related hardware equipment and data. “It is the physical facility that stores the digital data of any company”, according to the Amazon website.

The investment will allow these centers to expand “to meet the growing demand for cloud services“said the statement.

According to Suzana Curic, General Director of Amazon Web Services (AWS) for Spain and Portugal, the facilities in question will be powered 100% with renewable energy sources, in which Aragon is rich.

Sparsely populated, sunny and windy, this region is home to numerous solar and wind farms, energy sources that have been booming in Spain for several years.

The investment revealed on Wednesday is the third made by Amazon in just ten days in the EU, after the 1.2 billion euros announced in France on May 12 and the 7.8 billion euros announced in Germany on May 14.

These investments come amidst debate in the EU on the question of a “European sovereign cloud”, intended to allow the storage and processing of data online without going through the American technology giants.

Currently, almost 80% of the European public cloud services market is controlled by three American groups, Amazon, Google and Microsoft, while European alternatives struggle to gain a foothold.