Catalonia is committing up to €481 million to build Spain’s first independent public cloud, an infrastructure for storing and processing citizens’ information under European, and specifically Catalan, jurisdiction. The Generalitat’s plan, announced Tuesday, marks a decisive move away from reliance on US-based tech giants, which currently dominate the storage of sensitive administrative data. The €481 million figure is the project’s maximum investment capacity; the basic cloud-management contract is reported at up to €400.48 million.
Presented by Presidency Minister Albert Dalmau, the project is designed to give Catalonia direct control over its digital assets. Dalmau said keeping citizens’ data on Catalan soil is a strategic priority, reflecting a broader push for digital sovereignty across the European Union. The new system will add a third, hybrid option to the Generalitat’s technology structure, while existing private and public cloud models remain in place. It is intended to handle critical workloads associated with roughly 40% of the Generalitat’s data; other workloads can continue using different models.
Information from the Center for European Policy Studies (CEPS), 92% of Western data is managed by US companies such as Amazon Web Services, while only 4% is stored in Europe. That imbalance has raised concerns about security and control, particularly as public applications, including La Meva Salut and systems used by police and tax agencies, handle vast amounts of personal information. Albert Tort, Secretary of Telecommunications and Digital Change, highlighted the geopolitical risks of leaving critical assets in private hands and the need for a strong solution under local governance.
The new infrastructure is part of the Generalitat’s broader Technological Autonomy Strategy, known as ESTRATEC. The strategy aims to strengthen control over digital assets, reduce dependence on external providers and improve the ability to recover of public services. The Generalitat describes ESTRATEC as a roadmap to give its administration “greater control, independence and decision-making capacity” over the technology and digital assets that support government operations. It calls for supplier diversification and geopolitical analysis in technology decisions, alongside stronger public governance of strategic digital systems. The stated aim is to keep public services running through international crises, market changes and cyberattacks.
The contract is set up for a single operator over an initial eight-year term, with no option to extend. T-Systems, Telefónica and NTT Data submitted bids. At the scoring stage, T-Systems Iberia, part of Deutsche Telekom, ranked first with 96.98 points, ahead of NTT Data’s Spanish subsidiary with 84.72 and Telefónica with 75.18. The ranking was not the final contract award: T-Systems was given 10 days to submit technical documentation, after which the administration would further check its solvency and documents.
Strict requirements stipulate that data operations remain within the European legal structure and that the data center be located in Catalonia, directly connected to the Generalitat’s public fiber-optic network. The arrangement is intended to prevent any external entity from disrupting or disconnecting the system. The Generalitat is not rejecting external cloud services outright. ESTRATEC instead frames supplier diversification and public control of critical workloads as parts of a broader, hybrid technology architecture.
The Catalan cloud will be open to users beyond government. The selected operator will be able to offer the same secure platform to other public administrations and private companies seeking to meet European security and sovereignty standards. The Generalitat expects this openness to attract new investment and strengthen the region’s digital environment.
The service is expected to become fully operational in the third quarter of 2027, after technical validation and contracting, followed by deployment. The project comes as European governments step up efforts to reduce critical dependencies on foreign technology amid growing US-China competition for control over digital infrastructure. France and Germany have also called for a unified EU policy on digital sovereignty, with a focus on AI and cloud computing, as well as semiconductors. Separately, Telefónica and Indra have reportedly been exploring a potential joint company for sovereign-cloud services based predominantly on European technology and infrastructure. That proposal remains at an exploratory stage.
Public safety also remains a concern for Spanish authorities. Recent road-fatality data, as reported in a recent analysis of Spain’s summer road accident spike, highlights the ongoing need for strong, locally managed information systems to support public services and emergency response.
Digital sovereignty has become a central issue for European administrations, and Catalonia’s initiative reflects a wider effort to reclaim control over critical infrastructure. The project aims to keep sensitive information protected and accessible under local oversight, as regional governments reconsider how they manage data.
