“The first messages I received last night from some of the developers of these data centers were extremely concerning,” Azcón said. He denounced the inclusion in the legislation of a specific regime for facilities such as the Tarragona gigafactory project, with fewer requirements. “The PSOE decides that it is yes in Catalonia and no in Aragon. They will have to explain it,” he said.
The regional government leader stressed that the Socialist Party had cited electricity bills and environmental impact to defend the decree, but that this major artificial intelligence infrastructure project has no impact on either of these two areas. “It is absolutely unfair to Aragon and to our regional economy, and once again it shows that the Socialist Party only defends its own interests,” he said.
"IT IS SIMPLY COSMETIC"
“The decree just announced by the government is simply cosmetic.” This was also how Aragon’s Minister of Economy, Competitiveness and Employment, Eva Valle, described the latest information from the Ministry for the Ecological Transition, which says that the final bill regulating data centers has been sent to the Council of State. The Aragonese government has not yet received the text.
Valle, who took part in the Growing Together: Collaboration, Innovation and Scale to Drive Local Development event, organized by AWS, reiterated the need “to halt approval of a decree that adds to the harmful conditions affecting the sector. This decree must be addressed calmly and sensibly because a great deal is at stake, and that debate must take place after the elections.”
Valle also noted that “although some changes have been introduced, the most restrictive conditions remain, and in practice we see that the royal decree focuses on trying to remove data center activity from the transmission grid because of insufficient investment and, above all, a political agenda.”
The minister also said that the ministry’s own press release shows that “the conditions are very difficult to meet, since it includes a much more lenient regime for all investments linked to data centers in Europe and gigafactories such as the one the government is promoting in Catalonia.”
