The four AWS centres in Aragon should contribute €522,777 annually to Zaragoza, Huesca, Villanueva de Gállego, and El Burgo de Ebro, but the company pays it via national quota to the Ministry of Finance since 2022.
The four operational data centres of Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Aragon should pay €522,777 per year in Economic Activities Tax (IAE) to the municipalities of Zaragoza, Huesca, Villanueva de Gállego, and El Burgo de Ebro. However, that money does not reach local coffers: the company settles it through the national quota to the Ministry of Finance since it opened its first infrastructure in the region in 2022. This is reported by ecosistemastartup.com.
The mechanism is based on the Regulatory Law on Local Finances, which allows large companies operating in several provinces to pay taxes centrally. The Tax Agency collects the tax and then distributes it among the municipalities based on criteria such as population, number of taxpayers, and volume of quotas, not according to the physical location of each centre.
The General Directorate of Taxes issued a binding consultation in February 2026 that classifies cloud services in group 845 of the IAE rates, with only a minimum municipal quota. According to the official documentation of AWS's first expansion, the breakdown of what each municipality should receive is as follows: €384,503 for Zaragoza, €90,817 for Huesca, €33,400 for Villanueva de Gállego, and €14,056 for El Burgo de Ebro.
The discontent has reached the Aragonese business ecosystem. On October 2, during the first Business Breakfast of CEOE Zaragoza, its president, Benito Tesier, described the situation as "certain disloyalty" and demanded that "the maximum benefit of what we do remains here." In the same vein, Pedro Machín, president of the Aragon Energy Cluster (CLENAR), expressed similar sentiments. The sector's business association, SpainDC, defended the company's regulatory compliance through its executive director, Begoña Villacís.
“Where is the supposed general interest?” asked political ecology researcher Enol Nieto.
The mayors of El Burgo de Ebro and Villanueva de Gállego, both from the PSOE, labelled the situation as "lamentable and shameful." Meanwhile, AWS paid this same week €194,000 corresponding to four years of unpaid IBI bills in El Burgo de Ebro, a payment that the company attributed to "an administrative error."
The IAE is not the only tax at stake. The IBI does revert to the municipalities and amounts to around €226,884 annually for all facilities. The ICIO is not charged because the campuses are processed as Projects of General Interest of Aragon (PIGA), which exempt them. Corporate Tax goes to the state treasury and VAT is distributed based on consumption.
Villanueva de Gállego estimates that several data centre projects will deprive it of around €100 million in ICIO. Microsoft is preparing an investment of €2.2 billion there. AWS's total investment until 2035 is estimated at €33.7 billion, with an estimated impact of €31.7 billion on Spanish GDP and €18.5 billion in Aragon, according to data from the Basilio Paraíso Foundation of the Zaragoza Chamber of Commerce.
The El Burgo de Ebro campus centre, which operates 24 hours, employs around 180 direct workers. The municipality, with just over 2,700 inhabitants, loses out on €14,056 annually, an amount equivalent to funding sanitation and urban maintenance. In Villanueva de Gállego, the loss is around €33,400 each year.
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