In February 2025, farmer Paz Orge Acebillo in Cuarte, Spain, received a letter from Amazon Web Services demanding she decide within four days whether to sell her family's half-century-old vegetable plot, or face compulsory purchase. Her mother thought it was a scam; the town hall knew nothing. “No matter who you ask, nobody knows anything,” Acebillo told Bloomberg, which detailed the human cost of the global AI computing race.
Why Aragon?
Aragon offers near-ideal conditions for tech giants: electricity costs 20–30% below the European average, nearly 90% of power came from renewables last year, land is cheap and sparse, and labor is among the cheapest in Western Europe. The key is PIGA (Proyecto de Interés General de Aragón), a 2015 law that fast-tracks data center permits, waives certain taxes, and gives developers the right to force land sales when negotiations fail. In 2025, AWS and Microsoft—while advising the EU on its Cloud and AI Development Act—cited Aragon's model as a blueprint for bloc-wide fast-tracking. Microsoft called current EU procedures “highly specific, slow and unpredictable”; AWS said Aragon shows “the right direction.” The act aims to more than triple EU data center capacity in five to seven years.
Amazon’s Big Bet
AWS is Aragon's largest investor, having opened three data centers in Zaragoza and Huesca in 2022, announcing expansion in 2025, then doubling total investment to €33.7 billion in March 2026. Including Microsoft and others, announced AI data center investment in Aragon exceeds €80 billion (about $94 billion), with roughly 25 facilities planned. The new AWS campus near Cuarte covers an area equivalent to 98 standard soccer fields. Deputy Regional Minister Mar Vaquero calls Aragon “the Virginia of Europe,” citing a multiplier where each data center job creates six peripheral jobs. Local power firm Levitec saw revenue soar from near zero to €300 million in five years, 40% from data centers. However, the Paraíso Foundation estimates the first three data centers created only 700–950 jobs, over three-quarters temporary construction work. Some economists say the “six-times multiplier” conflates construction and permanent employment, inflating real impact.
PIGA’s Power to Seize Land
AWS public policy director David Blázquez attended a community meeting in Cuarte, assuring about 50 residents that data centers are “environmentally friendly,” using water for cooling only in summer, and taking in cold air like an open window in winter. Weeks later, Aragon's government disclosed AWS had applied for more water, citing climate change and rising temperatures. “They think we’re illiterate,” Acebillo said. “They think people here are easy to fool.” She has sued the regional government, alleging skipped procedures and document forgery. Villamayor councilor Marysol Ruberte criticized PIGA tax waivers: “The construction tax we should have collected was simply waived.” Her town and neighboring Villanueva de Gállego have also sued. When media compared Aragon's investment bonanza to “winning the lottery,” Ruberte shot back: “What lottery? I got a stone in my shoe.”
Hidden Costs of the Compute Race
Water disputes expose deeper tensions. AI compute density far exceeds traditional IT loads, pushing data centers from air to liquid cooling: each server is more efficient, but AI requires more servers, increasing total water usage. Drought is already a chronic problem in Aragon's agricultural belt. Harvard lecturer and Villamayor advisor Marina Otero framed the core friction: “In the past, a data center's resource consumption was at least related to our own digital consumption. Now we are building ever-larger compute to train AI. This creates a new imbalance between humanity's digital footprint and the resource consumption of the technology itself.” Spain's central government has been ambivalent, delaying grid connections for some projects and, in March, announcing new permits will tie to sustainability and efficiency criteria. Deputy Minister Vaquero accused Madrid of “damaging the regional economy for political reasons.” Villamayor mayor José Luis Montero, gazing over his small office, asked: “Maybe what they need on 80 hectares today will fit in a room in a few years. Was all this trouble worth it?”