Merlin Properties' first data center will be a 24MW facility in Barcelona, Spain.

In April the Iberian real estate company announced it was developing four data center sites in Spain and Portugal. The company was to develop the facilities on land it owned in Madrid, Bilbao, Barcelona, and Lisbon in partnership with green infrastructure startup Edged Energy.

This week Expansión detailed the first of the four data centers, to be built in the Catalonia region of Spain. The publication reports that Merlin will invest €100 million ($118m) in building a facility on a 26,000 square-meter (280,000 sq ft) plot in the Parc Logístic de la Zona Franca (Plzf) in Barcelona.

The 24MW facility will reportedly have 23,000 sqm (248,000 sq ft) of floor space distributed over four floors and twelve rooms. Construction is expected to begin in 2022 and the first 16MW phase of the project will come into operation twelve months later.

Merlin has owned the land since 2019, after buying it from the Consorci de la Zona Franca.

Part of an umbrella group called Endeavour, Edged Energy is a newcomer promising "net-zero digital infrastructure" for the Edge. The two companies say the four data centers will be powered by local renewable energy (primarily roof-mounted and ground PV installations), use no water, and promise to have a power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.15.

A version of this story appeared on DCD’s Spanish edition.