Blackstone is expanding its data center footprint into Spain with a large-scale campus in Aragon, to be operated by QTS.

“Aragon continues to advance towards becoming the Virginia of Southern Europe,” Jorge Azcón, president of the Government of Aragon, announced over the weekend. “Blackstone will land in our community to build and operate a data center campus in Calatorao.”

Blackstone is set to invest €7.5 billion ($8.2bn) in the development - reportedly known as Project Rodes - located on a 224-hectare site in the Zaragoza town of Calatorao. Around half the site will initially be developed, with another €7.5 billion to be invested at a later date to develop the second half.

According to the Aragón newspaper, the data center will have electrical capacity of 300MW when fully operational. The company is set to operate the site through its QTS unit.

“We are delighted with this announcement and to be able to work with the Government of Aragon and the rest of the parties involved in this project,” Blackstone said.

Blackstone acquired QTS in 2021 for $10 billion, and last July committed to spend another $8 billion on data centers due to a “once in a generation” AI boom.

As well as a major presence across the US, QTS currently operates one European campus in Groningen, the Netherlands. Earlier this year, Blackstone and QTS announced plans to develop a 1.1GW data center campus in Northumberland, UK.

Reports QTS and Blackstone were potentially exploring data center expansion into Spain surfaced back in 2022.

Aragon is a landlocked region in northeastern Spain – to the west of Barcelona – comprising the provinces of Huesca, Zaragoza, and Teruel.

Microsoft has an existing and growing data center presence in Aragon, also around Zaragoza. Amazon also has a Spanish cloud region comprised of three data center sites around Zaragoza.

A version of this story appeared on our Spanish edition.