The growth of artificial intelligence, business digitization, and the rise of the hybrid cloud are redefining infrastructure needs in Spain. While large hyperscale projects attract much of the attention due to their energy consumption and processing power, retail operators continue to play a key role for companies that require local presence, technical support, connectivity, and guidance in outsourcing their critical systems.

To get an up-close look at how this model is evolving, the Data Centre World team recently visited the Adam Data Center facility in Cerdanyola del Vallès, in the Barcelona metropolitan area, where they spoke with David Ribalta, Adam Data Center’s Eastern Region Sales Director, about the current state of colocation, the impact of AI, and the sector’s challenges regarding efficiency, connectivity, and growth.

Adam Data Center began operations more than three decades ago in Barcelona as an internet service provider. Over time, as companies began to require a permanent online presence, operational continuity, and greater security guarantees, the company expanded into housing, colocation, and cloud services. Its current facility in Cerdanyola del Vallès, built just over a decade ago, has 4 MW of power capacity and is primarily geared toward the retail and enterprise markets.

Unlike hyperscale projects, which focus on providing large amounts of energy capacity and space for major cloud or technology platforms, the retail model is based on serving companies that need to host part of their critical infrastructure in a secure, redundant, and connected environment, but with a higher level of technical support.

“The key difference is the support we provide. Our projects begin by understanding what the client needs and how we can help them,” Ribalta explained during the visit.

 

A model focused on business customers

Adam Data Center’s business model is structured around three main areas: housing/colocation, connectivity, and cloud. As Ribalta explained, connectivity is typically linked to colocation or cloud services, since companies need their servers, storage systems, or virtualized environments to be connected to their users, offices, customers, or suppliers.

This combination enables the creation of hybrid environments in which the customer’s physical infrastructure can coexist with virtualized services and connections to public platforms such as AWS, Oracle, Google Cloud, or Alibaba. For many companies, this architecture allows them to maintain control over certain critical assets while gaining scalability during periods of high demand.

In sectors such as retail, manufacturing, healthcare, fintech, and professional services, this support is particularly important during technology upgrades, migrations from on-premises infrastructure, and hybrid deployments. According to Ribalta, moving a company’s critical infrastructure is no small decision: it involves business continuity, regulatory compliance, physical and logical security, connectivity, and planning to avoid disruptions.

In this regard, the role of the retail operator goes beyond providing space, power, and cooling. It also involves supporting the customer in complex technical decisions, from planning a migration to designing a hybrid environment or connecting with various cloud service providers.

 

AI is driving a new energy paradigm

One of the key topics discussed during the visit was the impact that artificial intelligence is having on the technical design of data centers. The workloads associated with model training and intensive GPU use are creating new demands in terms of power density, cooling, and power distribution.

Ribalta explained that some AI-related loads can require 20, 40, 100, or even 200 kW per cabinet—far exceeding the typical power requirements of many traditional business loads. “We’re talking about several systems concentrated into a single cabinet,” he summarized during the visit.

This trend is forcing the industry to rethink the relationship between physical space, available power, and cooling capacity. In a traditional data center, the balance between square footage and power is key to ensuring efficient utilization. However, high-density workloads can upset that balance: fewer racks can consume significantly more power and generate significantly more heat.

At the same time, the Spanish market continues to grow. According to market data shared by Adam Data Center during the visit, Madrid currently accounts for 71% of Spain’s installed capacity, with 222 MW, while Catalonia accounts for 15%, with 48 MW. Barcelona, however, continues to establish itself as one of southern Europe’s leading digital hubs, with new projects under construction and committed capacity.

 

Cooling and Efficiency: From Air to Liquid Cooling

Currently, Adam Data Center primarily uses direct expansion systems, a technology that Ribalta compared to a specialized industrial air conditioning system designed for data centers. As he explained, although this solution is less efficient than other alternatives, it has a particularly significant advantage in Spain: it does not use water for cooling.

“The problem with this country is that we’re facing a water shortage,” Ribalta said, explaining why the company continues to use this system at its current facilities.

The growth of artificial intelligence, however, is driving more advanced technologies, such as liquid cooling and direct-to-chip cooling, where the coolant acts directly on the processor. Adam Data Center is already planning to reserve capacity for these types of solutions in the new facility it is building next to its current site, with the aim of being able to accommodate higher-density projects.

This transition reflects one of the industry’s major challenges today: maintaining operational efficiency and design sustainability while new workloads significantly increase power and cooling requirements.

 

Redundancy, connectivity, and continuous operation

During the tour, the Data Centre World Madrid team also had the opportunity to learn about some of the facility’s operational architecture. The data halls feature enclosed cold aisles, where cold air is channeled toward the front of the servers and hot air is expelled from the back of the racks, thereby optimizing thermal efficiency.

Before opening new data centers, Adam Data Center conducts commissioning tests using thermal and electrical loads to verify how the facilities perform under extreme conditions. These tests are used to validate the power and cooling capacity beyond the theoretical design specifications.

To ensure uninterrupted power supply, the facility has 12 generators—two per room—and redundant fuel tanks. According to Ribalta, each generator holds approximately 1,000 liters of diesel, in addition to two additional tanks holding 7,500 and 16,000 liters. Furthermore, Adam Data Center has an agreement with a fuel supplier for deliveries within four hours, which would allow the facility to operate for nearly 60 hours without an external supply.

“We could be approaching 60 hours of off-grid operation,” Ribalta explained.

Connectivity is another of the center’s cornerstones. Adam Data Center features several Meet-Me Rooms—spaces where operators and customers can interconnect—and maintains a neutral stance toward telecommunications operators. The goal is to enable each customer to work with their usual providers and design appropriate redundancy schemes.

During the visit, Ribalta emphasized that redundancy does not depend solely on contracting multiple providers, but also on understanding the physical paths of the fiber-optic routes. “You can sign up with four providers and think you have redundancy, but if they all pass through the same point, an outage in that area could affect them all,” he explained.

This approach highlights the true complexity of digital infrastructure: availability depends not only on having multiple providers, but also on designing routes, access points, and connectivity schemes capable of mitigating physical and operational risks.

 

New projects and industry growth

Adam Data Center is currently expanding. The company is building a new data center adjacent to its current facilities, with an expected opening in the first quarter of 2027 and more than double the capacity of the current facility.

Ribalta also explained that the company is exploring new opportunities in the Barcelona metropolitan area to strengthen its disaster recovery plans, as well as potential operations in Madrid to acquire or develop new data centers. The goal is to continue growing in a market characterized by rising demand, the need for local infrastructure, and the energy demands resulting from new workloads.

A visit to Adam Data Center highlights one of the industry’s key challenges: how to continue meeting the needs of companies that require proximity, security, and technical support, while the market prepares for increasingly dense workloads, higher energy demands, and new hybrid infrastructure models.

These challenges—ranging from the evolution of colocation to the impact of artificial intelligence, cooling, connectivity, and energy availability—will be part of the discussion at Data Centre World 2026, which will take place on November 4 and 5 at IFEMA Madrid as part of Tech Show Madrid.