The owners of the upcoming Barracuda subsea cable have announced a landing partner in Italy.

Sparkle and Valencia Digital Port Connect have announced an agreement to land the Barracuda submarine cable at Sparkle’s Genoa Landing Platform in Lagaccio.

Barracuda will link Genoa in Italy to Valencia in Spain. The 1,070km (664.8 miles) system will feature 12 fibre pairs, each with a capacity of 32 Tbps. The system is expected to go live in 2028.

The Barracuda project was originally planned in 2022 to connect Alicante and Marseille as a sub-system of the Medusa cable, but was re-announced in April 2025 with a new route. Teset Capital has announced a €100 million ($113.6m) investment in the project.

“This agreement represents an important step in our strategy to position Genoa as a key gateway to Europe,” said Enrico Bagnasco, CEO of Sparkle. “The landing of Barracuda will strengthen and expand the city’s digital ecosystem, while the additional capacity on the system allows us to further expand our resilient, high-performance Mediterranean network and better serve international connectivity demand.”

The Spanish portion of the cable is set to land outside Valencia in Sagunto at the upcoming Valencia Digital Port Connect (VDPC) landing station.

Enrique Martín, CEO at Valencia Digital Port Connect, added: “This agreement with Sparkle marks a key milestone in the Barracuda project and confirms that we are advancing in line with our strategic roadmap. Securing Genoa as our landing point and welcoming Sparkle as a long-term customer reinforces Barracuda and Valencia Cable Landing Station as strategic assets for international partners confirming the credibility of our ambition to have the system fully operational by 2028.”

Sparkle will also acquire infrastructure assets on the Barracuda submarine cable system between Valencia and Genoa and colocation in Valencia Cable Landing Station.

Barracuda is one of three cables linking Italy and Spain, the others being Medloop and 2Africa, and both landing in Genoa.

In total, Genoa is the landing point for six current and upcoming cables. The Blue portion of Google’s Blue-Raman, the new Unitirreno system from Unidata, and the upcoming EMC West-1 all land or will land in the city. Nearby Savona is the landing point for the Italy-Monaco system (deployed in 1995 by Sparkle and Monaco Telecom) and Reliance Jio’s upcoming India Europe Xpress system.

Valencia is currently home to three subsea cables; Balalink, ORVAl, and Penbal-4. Sagunto is currently the landing point for the Romulo cable. Installed in 2011 and owned by grid operator Red Electrica, the combined power/fiber cable runs 237km (147 miles) to the island of Mallorca.