US colocation firm Digital Realty has announced new investments in Spain to fund the construction of two new data centers in Madrid and Barcelona.

The company will invest €300 million ($350m) in the Spanish capital, while the city of Barcelona will receive €230m ($268m) – though the latter is likely a reannouncement of a previously planned data center.

Digital Realty currently operates four data centers in Madrid, which handle approximately 65 percent of the Iberian Peninsula’s Internet traffic, hosting platforms such as Netflix, Disney, IBM, and numerous cloud providers.

MAD5 will be the company’s fifth data center in Madrid, with a capacity of between 20-24MW, and will be located in the MaDBit technology district within the Julián Camarillo industrial estate. DCD visited MAD4 last year.

Plans for MAD5 were first mentioned in the company’s Q4 2024 earnings results after it acquired three acres of land for €25m ($26m).

In Barcelona, the company is developing a new facility located in the town of Sant Adrià del Besòs. It will reportedly be Digital Realty’s first data center in Catalonia and will have an initial capacity of 14MW. It is expected to be commissioned in early 2026.

Digital Realty, via its subsidiary company Interxion, announced plans for a 15MW data center in Barcelona in 2022, but the planned BCN1 facility has yet to launch, and this may be a reannouncement of the same data center.

“The backbone structure of a country is now in the data centers and telecommunications networks,” said Robert Assink, CEO of Digital Realty in Spain.

Assink added that the new data centers will follow the “highest sustainability standards” and their energy use will be offset with renewable energy thanks to an agreement signed with Acciona.