Grounding the Cloud
I am an architect, graduated from the Madrid School of Architecture (ETSAM), with a Master's degree completed in 2025. My research focuses on revealing the often-invisible spatial, material, and infrastructural systems that sustain everyday life, particularly the physical territories behind digital infrastructure. In 2024, my Bachelor's Final Project, "From Cloud to Brick: Data Architecture in the Spanish Context," received an Outstanding grade, and I later presented related research at the UIA Congress in Barcelona. I am currently undertaking a research stay at Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago de Chile, funded by the Government of Navarre, working alongside Serena Dambrosio to further investigate the physical infrastructure supporting the internet. This trajectory has led me to propose Grounding the Cloud, a project that examines how digital infrastructure reshapes specific territories, starting with a case study in Aragón, Spain and explores how spatial practice can contribute to a more just relationship between these infrastructures and the communities that live alongside them.
Internet was originally sold to us with a democratic and emancipatory purpose. However, it didn't take long to realise that this promise had dissolved. The internet has become a dark place, one whose workings and foundations are difficult to grasp. This is the starting point of my project, Grounding the Cloud: what territories and materials sustain digital infrastructure, and what contribution can spatial practices make towards a more just and inclusive future.
Following initial steps centered on academic research, including the publication of a paper on digital infrastructure in Spain and its subsequent presentation at the UIA congress, I am now seeking to expand this work to reach a wider public. The goal is to bring together the work of researchers with local communities who experience the effects of these infrastructures firsthand.
The region of Aragón, Spain, is proposed as an initial case study. This territory has become a central hub for digital infrastructure, hosting projects by companies such as Amazon, which is building its main European campus there. Through workshops with students, mapping exercises, and workshops with communities such as "No es sequía es saqueo" ("It's not drought, it's plunder"), we would imagine what other infrastructures we could have. Against the predatory model (of data, resources, territories) we have the possibility of proposing a welcoming model, one that allows for coexistence between these spaces and the communities that inhabit around them.
We find ourselves at a moment when Europe must reflect on its digital sovereignty. This is an opportunity not to replicate the forms of territorial implantation inherited from large digital corporations. The project is initially rooted in Aragón, but LINA offers the opportunity to expand this work to other European territories that are also suffering the consequences of these infrastructures.