Is Spain becoming the new technological “hub” of Europe? A few weeks ago we told Xataka that Cisco was going to establish its first chip design center in the European Union in Barcelona. Now, it has been the turn of Hitachi, who also has his eye on Spain. The software manufacturer has announced that its subsidiary, GlobalLogic, will make a strong investment in our country with the opening of several digital engineering centers in various cities.
These will also be the company’s first operations centers in southern Europe and the deployment could generate between 2,500 and 3,000 jobs.
The project. After a meeting between the President of the Government, Pedro Sanchez, and Nitesh Banga, the company’s CEO, an agreement has been signed whereby the subsidiary of the Japanese giant will start up this year an ambitious project for the construction of software in Valencia and Malaga, which will later be expanded to other cities such as Madrid and Tarragona.
So that? GlobalLogic, which was acquired by Hitachi in March 2021 and is based in Silicon Valley, specializes in advanced chip-to-cloud software products. It is mainly dedicated to providing service and products to brands in industries such as semiconductors, communications, finance, automotive, health and manufacturing. This means that a job bank will be opened for thousands of qualified professionals such as software engineers, designers and data analysts.
Valencia, cradle of companies. Hitachi and Spain have a common past. When Russia invaded the Ukraine, the company decided to send its workers from that country to Valencia, where it launched its first software development center. Also in 2020 it acquired the Valencian company VLC Photonics, specialized in the development of photonic microchips. But the company is not the only one that has set its sights on the coastal city: others such as Volkswagen, HP, Amazon, Toshiba-Mitshubishi, Siemens have established centers there.
Spain is a great attraction. The arrival of Hitachi at our borders is great news for the Government, which has been carrying out campaigns to attract foreign investment for several years. At Xataka we have explained how this led them to create a special visa for teleworkers in the announced Startups Law, which allows them to settle in the country in a more agile and simple way.
In fact, it is already one of the European countries preferred by large technology companies to invest in in recent years and those to come. It is not only the geographical location, the weather conditions and the tax system, but also the time zone, which allows serving almost everyone, and young talent.
The tendency. The agreement between Hitachi and the Government is part of a growing trend of companies to set up their centers in the country. A few days ago, the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Commerce met with the firm Inobat Auto to negotiate the installation of a battery plant for electrified cars in Valladolid. This would mean an investment of 3,000 million euros in the capital of Castilla y León.
In February, Google announced that it was going to build a “cybersecurity center of excellence” in Malaga. The company said that it would invest 530 million euros in Spain and that its Malaga headquarters would receive part of that money to develop protections for computer systems. This would join Vodafone, which also announced an R+D+i center in Malaga with an investment of 225 million euros. On the other hand, Amazon has recently chosen Madrid as its headquarters in southern Europe, citing the “general quality of Spanish engineers” as its main attraction.
