Spain and Portugal explore a joint bid to host one of the European Union's AI gigafactories

Portugal's Deputy Minister for State Reform, Gonçalo Matias, and the Minister for Digital Transformation and Civil Service, Óscar López, after the signing of the memorandum of understanding (Pool Moncloa/Borja Puig de la Bellacasa)

The governments of Spain and Portugal have agreed to explore an Iberian bid to host one of the first European Artificial Intelligence gigafactories. Spain is already working on a bid that includes Mora la Nova (Tarragona) and San Fernando de Henares (Madrid) as potential sites. If a collaboration with Portugal materialises, the two countries would coordinate their projects.

At the 36th Spanish-Portuguese Summit held this Friday in La Rábida (Huelva), the Minister for Digital Transformation and Civil Service, Óscar López, signed a memorandum of understanding with the Deputy Minister for State Reform of Portugal, Gonçalo Matias. In the text, both parties commit to exploring the possibility of submitting a joint bid.

AI gigafactories are a flagship project promoted by the European Commission to provide the continent with a strategic infrastructure that strengthens its technological autonomy and positions Spain and the European Union (EU) at the forefront of developing sovereign, sustainable, and high-performance AI capabilities.

With this bid, Spain seeks to position itself as one of the nerve centres of the European AI ecosystem, combining public-private investment, industrial capacity, technological talent and a firm commitment to digital sovereignty.

The gigafactories are large-scale facilities dedicated to the development and training of next-generation AI models containing trillions of parameters. They follow the made by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, at the Paris Summit on Artificial Intelligence in January 2025, when she announced the creation of the InvestAI initiative, a programme that hopes to mobilise up to €200 billion for AI.

Combating disinformation and protecting minors

The memorandum of understanding with Portugal identifies other areas in which both countries commit to strengthening their collaboration. They will deepen cooperation to protect individuals from harmful content in the digital sphere, especially disinformation and hate speech, taking into account the digital transformation of the media landscape and the principles of transparency and pluralism that underpin the European regulation on Freedom of the Media.

They will also strengthen collaboration on the comprehensive protection of children and adolescents in the digital environment, promoting the safe, responsible, and balanced use of online services, ensuring respect for their fundamental rights-particularly their dignity, privacy, and holistic development-and promoting prevention, awareness, and monitoring measures against exposure to illicit and harmful content within the framework of the European Digital Services Regulation. They will also, according to the MoU, deepen the exchange of best practices in AI within the public administration, including governance, risk management, transparency, and human oversight, and will reinforce cooperation in cybersecurity, including mutual support, ecosystem development, information sharing, and best practices in incident management.

Collaboration between the two countries in these areas may take the form of exchange of information, technical knowledge, and best practices; the joint creation of controlled testing environments for AI; study visits; training and capacity-building programmes; and joint R&D projects, among other initiatives.

Non official translation