Digital Realty has opened its first data center in Barcelona. The facility, called BCN1, has a planned total capacity of 14 MW, and is designed to host multiple network providers, with a focus on interconnection and low-latency traffic exchange
According to a company press release, the BCN1 site is located in the Sant Adrià de Besòs innovation area on the city’s eastern edge, close to major international connectivity routes. BCN1 is intended to support data flows between the Americas, Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
The facility’s infrastructure supports enterprise workloads including AI deployment and data localisation, and BCN1 is part of the company’s broader expansion plans across Southern Europe, to support growing demand for cloud, AI and connectivity services.
Fabrice Coquio, Senior Vice President, Managing Director, Europe Med, Digital Realty, said, “Barcelona is emerging as a world-class digital gateway to the Mediterranean. Digital Realty’s Barcelona Campus puts us right at the heart of that transformation, built to the highest sustainability standards. Together with our campuses in Madrid and Lisbon, we are proud to offer our customers a highly interconnected and environmentally responsible regional platform on the Iberian Peninsula”
BCN1 has been designed for energy efficiency and emissions reduction with renewable energy sourcing and backup generators using HVO100 biofuel. It also strengthens links with Digital Realty’s existing Marseille operations, with subsea cables landing in Barcelona connected into Marseille through regional fibre infrastructure. Additional cross-border fibre routes to Marseille and Frankfurt are intended to increase redundancy and routing options.
Digital Realty’s Iberian footprint already includes four data centers in Madrid, and a recently announced site in Lisbon, Portugal, with BCN1 as the latest addition. Together, the three cities form what the company describes as a more tightly interconnected platform across the Iberian Peninsula.
Barcelona is becoming a more significant node for digital infrastructure investment, driven by new subsea cable systems and rising demand for data center capacity. Cable systems including 2Africa and Medusa are landing in the city, while other major systems such as Marea, Grace Hopper and EllaLink connect elsewhere in the region.