Summary
- Valfortec is pursuing a €300m data centre campus in Elche, near Alicante-Elche Miguel Hernández Airport.
- The project is expected to reach around 60MW of capacity if it secures the required approvals.
- The scheme reflects the growing role of energy-sector companies in Spanish data centre development.
Valfortec is progressing plans for a €300m data centre campus in Elche, Alicante, with the project expected to reach around 60MW of capacity if it secures the required approvals.
The Valencian renewable energy company is leading the development near Alicante-Elche Miguel Hernández Airport. The site is being presented as a scalable campus, with land, transport links, and electrical infrastructure forming part of the location case.
Alicante is not yet a core Spanish data centre hub, but the proposal places the province inside a widening map of regional digital infrastructure development. Spain’s market is no longer centred only on Madrid and Barcelona, as developers test whether power access, land availability, and permitting timelines can support capacity in secondary locations.
Energy developers move into the pipeline
Valfortec’s background in renewable energy is central to the development. The company has worked for more than two decades in photovoltaic development, construction, commissioning, and management. That experience gives it a different entry point from a conventional colocation operator, particularly as power has become one of the main constraints on data centre growth.
Spain’s data centre market is attracting more businesses from the energy sector because the ability to secure electricity supply is now a commercial advantage. Cloud and AI demand may set the direction of the market, but power access determines whether a site can move from a development pitch to a financed asset. A renewable developer can bring land, grid, permitting, and energy-procurement knowledge, although it may still need operating partners, specialist engineers, and customers to complete the model.
The Elche location gives the project a different profile from capacity being built in Spain’s established clusters. Alicante does not have the same depth of interconnection or hyperscale presence as Madrid, but it may offer a clearer path to land assembly and regional support. That can suit workloads that need secure, resilient, and scalable infrastructure without being directly tied to the country’s densest connectivity hubs.
A 60MW data centre campus would still represent a major local electricity load. The project will need to show how power is secured, how grid infrastructure is reinforced or connected, what cooling design is proposed, how backup power is handled, and whether water exposure is limited. In a Mediterranean region where water and energy questions are politically sensitive, those details will shape the planning debate.
Regional capacity has to earn its place
The Spanish data centre market is expanding in several directions at once. Madrid remains the most mature hub, Aragón is pulling in large-scale cloud and AI activity, and Catalonia continues to attract industrial and technology-led schemes. Alicante, Valencia, and other regional markets are testing whether Spain can support a broader network of digital infrastructure rather than concentrating almost all capacity in a few hotspots.
A broader network has advantages. It can spread construction demand, create regional employment, and reduce pressure on a single grid area. It can also support sovereignty, latency, and hybrid cloud requirements for organisations that want infrastructure closer to local operations. The difficulty is that data centre economics still reward density: fibre routes, carrier ecosystems, skilled labour, and customer clusters tend to accumulate in established markets.
Valfortec’s project will therefore need to prove two things at once. First, that the campus can be permitted, powered, cooled, and built without becoming trapped by grid or water constraints. Second, that customers see sufficient value in Alicante as a location to commit at the required scale.
If the company can bring its renewable development experience into data centre delivery, the project would reinforce a broader change in European digital infrastructure. Power specialists are no longer just suppliers to the sector. In markets where electricity is the gating item, they are becoming developers of the capacity itself.
