Merlin Properties will go ahead with three projects in Spain and Portugal, after having started the construction of the Data Center project in the city of Álava, its first in the Iberian Peninsula: the data center will have around 23,150 square meters, which can be expanded up to more than 100,000 square meters in the future, as previously reported.
The Spanish real estate company will therefore proceed with two projects in Spain, specifically in Madrid and Barcelona, and a project in Lisbon, specifically in Vila Franca de Xira. In an interview with Vida Imobiliária (the Portuguese brand of Grupo Iberinmo), João Cristina, General Manager of Merlin Properties, revealed that the investment value that Merlin will make in these three projects in Madrid, Barcelona and Lisbon implies, in a first phase, «a total investment of around 600 million euros and a total power of 70 MW. The three locations that will be developed in this first phase are Bilbao-Arasur (34 MW), Madrid-Getafe (20 MW) and Barcelona-PLZF (16 MW)».
The General Director of Merlin Properties, also stressed the fact that Portugal is a favorable country for the installation of large data center infrastructure poles, «the Iberian Peninsula has a privileged location for the installation of Data Centers, due to the arrival of submarine cables optical fiber from the United States of America, Africa and South America. Both Portugal and Spain will be two of the European countries where latency will be lower. For this reason, several hyperscalars have already announced the opening of availability zones on the Peninsula».
The VFX-Lisbon project «is designed to be a hyperscale with a capacity of up to 100 MW», João Cristina also revealed, reinforcing that in addition to this project, Merlin also aims to build other data centers in Portugal.
