What happened
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. has discussed with Solaria Energía y Medio Ambiente SA the idea of supplying power for a data center in Spain, said people with knowledge of the conversations, who requested anonymity because the information is private. Spokespeople for both companies declined to comment.
Where the power would come from
The project under review points to a Solaria facility in Puertollano, roughly 240 kilometers south of Madrid (about 150 miles), and would run on renewable energy. One person said this concept is less advanced than the European data centers Alibaba has already said it will build, and that Alibaba has also sounded out other potential electricity providers.
How this fits into Alibaba's Europe push
Last week, the company said it will open its first cloud hubs in Finland and the Netherlands within the next year, and that it will expand data center operations in Germany and France. That puts it more squarely up against Amazon and Microsoft on the continent. Alibaba has emerged as one of the most aggressive Chinese backers of digital infrastructure. In 2025, the company rolled out a three-year AI investment initiative totaling $53 billion, and later signaled plans to boost spending further.
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The Spain angle and what to watch next
Chinese investment in Spain has been climbing in areas from autos and batteries to renewables and logistics. Earlier this year, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez signed agreements aimed at drawing more Chinese capital for Spain during a visit to Beijing, and he remains among the European leaders pushing for closer engagement with China rather than more protectionist stances. At the same time, Spain is preparing new rules that would require domestic data centers to be operated by companies based in the European Union and to keep operational data within the bloc. The government aims to issue the rules by year end, and they would also require any additional power demand from data centers to be matched by newly built clean-energy capacity.
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