“Barcelona is increasingly becoming a hot spot of subsea and data centre activity and is ideally located to serve our customers’ requirements for resilient connectivity to other data centres and cable landing stations across the Iberian Peninsula,” said Steve Roberts, VP of network investment at Exa Infrastructure.

Exa has upgraded 100km of metro network in Barcelona, connecting a number of new data centres as well as the Barcelona Cable Landing Station with links to InterXion, Equinix, Edged Energy and EdgeConnex.

“The exponential growth we are seeing across the Iberian Peninsula is driving greater economic growth and investment in and around Barcelona,” added Miguel Ángel Acero, chief technology officer and co-founder at AFR-IX.

“We are extremely proud of the investment Exa Infrastructure is making in this region and the growth that will continue in years to come.”

Spain’s digital ecosystem is expanding rapidly with hyperscale data centre developments, and growing interest from cloud service providers and the surge of data centres.

In addition, as Barcelona is fast becoming an interconnection point, it is attracting a number of tech and data-intensive companies, due to its location between Africa, the Middle East and Asia and Europe.

“Exa is preparing for even more growth and demand coming in and out of Barcelona and the Iberian Peninsula as a whole,” said Ciaran Delaney, chief operating officer at Exa Infrastructure.

“We are proud to be driving the connectivity diversification by expanding our footprint and taking strong routes to market for our customers and the industry.”

Exa’s footprint is comprised of 114,000km of fibre network across 34 countries. In 2022, the company announced a 600km network link between Barcelona, Zaragoza and Bilbao.

This is in addition to enhancements to metropolitan fibre in the Barcelona and Madrid areas, and approximately 1,000km of network over-pull upgrades that are currently underway.