Aragon's rugged plains stretch out under a clear blue sky, the buildings visible as "a few tiny cubes sprawled like a throw of dice" across the terrain — as George Orwell wrote in Homage to Catalonia, of his time here during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. Today, excavators eat the earth, carving huge chunks of the landscape in the race to build the behemoths of the AI boom.

This drought-stricken region of northeast Spain has become the focus of American companies searching for locations to place their energy- and water-intensive data centers. In Aragon, Amazon Web Services promises to spend almost $40 billion to build multiple vast complexes — one alone as large as 600 American football fields. Microsoft and the asset management firm Blackstone are among those following suit, signing agreements to build data centers that will transform this region and the livelihoods of its inhabitants.

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A significantly empty region due to mass economic emigration in the mid 20th century that never really reversed, with seriously abundant opportunity for solar power generation.

Isnt mass consumption of water as the only way a data centre can cool itself also a bit of a falsehood, closed loop systems exist and are increasingly more common.

Click bait imo. Information designed to get you to engage by making you angry.

Always ask yourself why someone wrote this article, unfortunately in late-stage capitalism there is always a fucking angle.

Edit: downvotes but no comments to the contrary = 'This doesnt fit the worldview im being fed'.

Data centres are a distraction, capitalists are the puppet masters hiding behind the curtain. Stop looking at their hands.

Yes, the Spain that's currently flooded in the east and sees wildfire in the south, exactly this Spain experiences severe droughts in the northwest, where the government allows U.S. companies to build data centers.

Spain's a pretty big place. Weather and climate varies.