Girona: The Opportunity No One Is Seeing

The investments announced in Flix and Móra la Nova have opened up a new technological map for Catalonia. The question is whether the province that features least in this debate could ultimately play one of its most important roles.

For years, industrial policy was measured by its ability to attract factories. Then came technology parks, logistics centres and corporate headquarters. Today, the landscape is changing once again. The race is no longer simply about manufacturing more or producing at a lower cost. It is about deciding where the next generation of knowledge will be developed and, above all, where that knowledge will be turned into useful solutions.

The announcements made this summer concerning Flix and Móra la Nova are a clear example of this transformation. The planned investment to convert the former Ercros plant into a major data centre, together with Ribera d’Ebre’s bid to host one of Europe’s future gigafactories, has placed Terres de l’Ebre at the centre of a conversation that, until recently, seemed reserved for Silicon Valley or the world’s leading technology capitals.

Beyond their immediate economic impact, both projects reflect something much deeper: Catalonia has decided to take part in the new geography of computing.

The Province Missing from the Debate

It is striking that, as this conversation gains momentum, Girona is barely mentioned. This is not because it lacks compelling arguments. Rather, the province may simply not yet have learned how to present them as part of a shared strategy.

Girona brings together a combination of factors that, considered individually, may not appear extraordinary: a university with established research groups in robotics and computer vision, a diversified economy, a powerful agri-food sector, a competitive export industry, leading hospitals, an international airport, ports, a direct connection with France and one of the Mediterranean’s most recognised tourist destinations.

What makes Girona distinctive is not any one of these elements. It is the fact that they all coexist within a compact territory, less than an hour apart.

Perhaps that is precisely the problem. Girona has never needed to build a grand narrative about itself. For decades, Barcelona has served as Catalonia’s international showcase, leaving much of the rest of the region outside the spotlight. Yet major economic transformations often overturn established hierarchies.

History offers plenty of examples. Detroit was not the most important city in the United States before the rise of the automotive industry. Eindhoven barely featured on Europe’s economic maps before Philips helped create an innovation ecosystem that remains a global benchmark today. Even Silicon Valley emerged far from the country’s leading financial and political centres.

The advantage does not always belong to the best-known place. It often belongs to the territory that identifies its own distinctive role first.

Technology Needs Real Problems to Solve

This idea is particularly relevant because the debate surrounding artificial intelligence has become overly simplified. Much is said about models, chips and data centres, but far less about the places where this technological capacity will ultimately solve practical problems. That is precisely where the map begins to change.

Experience shows that infrastructure alone rarely transforms a region. Ports created prosperity when industries emerged that could export through them. Airports became economic engines when they began attracting business activity rather than merely transporting passengers.

The same applies to the new digital infrastructure. A large computing centre may be essential, but it represents the beginning of the value chain, not the end. The real impact will come when businesses, hospitals, universities and public authorities find new ways to put that capacity to work.

From this perspective, Girona no longer looks like a peripheral territory. Instead, it becomes a particularly compelling setting. Not because it should compete with Barcelona to attract the headquarters of major technology companies, but because it already possesses something far more difficult to create from scratch: an environment where real problems coexist and can be transformed into exportable solutions.

A Real-World Laboratory

A journey across the province is enough to demonstrate this potential. Few territories contain such a wide range of different environments and economic activities.

Tourism pressure on the Costa Brava creates challenges involving mobility, water consumption, energy management and coastal conservation. Inland areas support an increasingly technology-driven agricultural sector that is also becoming more exposed to changing climate conditions. Wildfires demand more effective prevention, forecasting and response systems. Industry needs to improve productivity and efficiency without losing competitiveness. Hospitals generate growing volumes of clinical information, the management of which will become one of the major healthcare challenges of the next decade.

Each of these sectors faces a different problem, yet they all belong to the same territory.

This concentration of scenarios turns Girona into something resembling a real-world laboratory. Not a laboratory understood merely as a building filled with researchers, but as a place where solutions can be designed, tested and improved before being taken to other markets.

The distinction matters. Many regions aspire to attract technology companies. Far fewer can offer them a complete environment in which to experiment, validate ideas and grow.

Girona could test new data-driven tourism management models, intelligent systems for reducing water consumption, wildfire prevention tools, artificial intelligence applications for healthcare, industrial automation and technology for agriculture. If these solutions succeed in such a diverse territory, they could also work in many other parts of Europe and across the Mediterranean.

Beyond Data Centres

Perhaps, then, the most interesting question is not where the next data centres will be built. The truly strategic question is where the companies that learn to make use of this new infrastructure will emerge.

The answer will depend less on the number of servers installed than on the ability to connect universities, businesses, public authorities and the productive economy around shared challenges. Infrastructure can provide computing power, but people, organisations and projects are what turn that capacity into economic activity.

Girona’s geographical position adds another factor that often goes unnoticed. The province lies at one end of the corridor connecting Barcelona with southern France, one of the areas with the highest concentrations of scientific and industrial activity in the western Mediterranean.

For decades, this location was understood almost exclusively in logistical terms. Today, it is beginning to take on a different meaning. Innovation no longer depends solely on physical proximity. It also depends on the ability to participate in knowledge networks that cross borders naturally. In this context, Girona is far less isolated than administrative maps might suggest.

The Challenge of Building a Shared Strategy

None of this guarantees success. Opportunities do not materialise simply through the accumulation of assets. They require a strategy capable of giving those assets a common purpose.

That is probably Girona’s main challenge. The province has a university, research expertise, industry, tourism, healthcare services and a privileged geographical position. Yet these elements still operate, to a large extent, as separate pieces. The task is to build a shared project that allows them to be seen not as isolated strengths, but as parts of a single ecosystem.

This means establishing priorities, encouraging cooperation between institutions, supporting the creation of technology companies linked to the region’s existing sectors and making the province an attractive place for talent. The aim should not be to do everything, but to focus on the areas where Girona can offer something that other territories would struggle to replicate.

In a few years, we may look back on the investments in Flix and Móra la Nova as the moment Catalonia decided to commit to a new industrial policy. If that happens, the question will no longer be which territories hosted the first infrastructure. It will be which ones succeeded in building an economy around it.

And Girona still has time.

Not to become a copy of Barcelona.

Nor to compete with Terres de l’Ebre.

But to occupy a space that, paradoxically, remains empty: that of a territory capable of turning technology into solutions, knowledge into industry and economic diversity into a competitive advantage that is difficult to replicate.

At a time when almost every region is trying to look like every other, that may be the best possible strategy.