The La Sagrera macrowell, opened in 2004 to operate with the tunnel boring machines that were going to build the L9 and L10 lines of the Metro, could bequeath new equipment for Catalonia and the city if the joint initiative of Barcelona City Council and the Generalitat to study succeeds. the installation of a data processing center (CPD) with an approximate area of 10,600 square meters between two floors.
The idea of locating a computer facility of this type arises from the fact that, between the football field that will be built on the surface and the track tunnels there will be 13 meters of distance, with the possibility of building two floors in which They would install the computer servers on separate 5,300 m2 floors. It must be taken into account that this type of installation, whose demand has grown by 20% worldwide, has a large energy consumption and that the electrical substation that must power the La Sagrera station has been built in the area.
The agreement signed by the Generalitat and the City Council foresees an installation that would have a power of between 12 and 15 megawatts (MW). Both administrations consider that a concession could be opened to private initiative that would reserve around 20% of the capacity of the data processing center for the public sector. Although the exact needs will be established throughout the feasibility study, the Generalitar could use between 17% and 18%. The council would use between 2% and 3% of the installation for its data.
Jordi Valls, deputy mayor of Economy, Finance and Tourism, told La Vanguardia that the possible installation of a data center “is an opportunity.” “This means that we would have much closer data and that latency (the time between a request and a computer response) would also improve.” The councilor pointed out that “a data processing center in the city is competitive and generates more productivity.”
The area also has easy access to the heat and cold distribution network of the public-private entity Districlima. Data centers need cold, which is what causes a significant part of their energy expenditure. Valls considered that heat evacuation should also be studied so that it can "generate a circular economy with concepts such as energy reuse."
Another key facility nearby, in Sant Adrià del Besòs, is the 2Africa fiber optic cable operated by Barcelona Cable Landing Station (BCLS). Marc Realp, Secretary of Telecommunications and Digital Transformation of the Generalitat, pointed out that “if we want Catalonia to become a digital hub in southern Europe, we have to try to have the best digital infrastructures, and that also implies making an effort to generate and attract investment in data centers.”
