Malaga continues taking steps to become Spain’s Silicon Valley. The technology giant Google has chosen the city to host its cybersecurity centre of excellence, which will have a global scope and position Spain as one of the greatest European cybersecurity hubs. This is equivalent to the artificial intelligence project announced in Milan and the cloud computing centre of excellence in India.
The new centre, which it is hoped will be operational by 2023, will be located in the former military government building in Paseo de la Farola in the provincial capital of Malaga, which will be completely overhauled to adapt to its new needs and will cover a surface area of 2,500 square metres. The experts in cybersecurity will be housed in this building as will the equipment necessary for workshops, training, chats and the trainers to teach cybersecurity there.
Along with others, 40 engineers will work at the new centre that make up the VirusTotal team – the cybersecurity company from Malaga set up by Bernardo Quintero which was the seed and has become the driving force behind the installation of the Google centre. Since the US company acquired this business in 2012, which has the largest cybersecurity data base in the world, analysing more than 2 million files and URLs a day, its founder has become one of the leaders of Google’s cybersecurity division at a global level and one of the proponents of the new headquarters in Malaga.
The opening of this new centre of cybersecurity excellence in Spain, as stressed by the Vice-President of Google Iberia, Fuencisla Clemares, will strengthen growth and innovation and prepare Spanish society to tackle the key digitalisation challenge of cybersecurity.
The company has stressed that “the choice of Malaga to host this new Google hub has not come about by chance”, since it already “has great talent, a thriving ecosystem of start-ups, incubators and company accelerators that have been cultivating the technological fabric for a long time”. This is on top of the constant contribution from the University of Malaga, where the VirusTotal professionals currently work to boost this ecosystem, in addition to such installations as the Andalusia Technology Park, located in the city. Google also launched a start-up accelerator focused on cybersecurity in 2019.
This is enhanced by the quality of life, communications and the cultural offer of Malaga, the sixth largest city in Spain, which makes it an attractive alternative destination. Its airport, which recorded 20 million passengers in 2019, is the fourth largest in the country, the city is served by high-speed train connecting the rest of Spain and has such benchmark attractions as the Picasso Museum, the Carmen Thyssen Museum, the Pompidou Centre and the Collection of the Russian Museum, among others, It thus comes as no surprise that this is one of the most popular cities with expatriates, who have left their country of origin for work reasons. According to Expat City Ranking – the study published by the InterNations network and which contains opinions from thousands of expatriates, Malaga is the sixth-best city to live in for workers posted abroad. The top 10 is headed up by Valencia and also includes Alicante (2nd) and Madrid (9th).
Investments to the tune of 650 million euros
During the announcement of this project on 11 February, which counted on the presence of the Third Vice-President of the Government and Minister for Economic Affairs and Digital Transition, Nadia Calviño, other initiatives were also announced which include investments of 650 million euros in our country, framed within the mobilisation of private resources that the government hopes to secure under Digital Spain 2025 agenda.
These include the establishment of the first Google Cloud Region in Spain, in collaboration with Telefónica, and the first Google underwater cable to connect Spain with the United States and the United Kingdom – an infrastructure baptised as Grace Hopper - which will allow Spanish companies and public authorities to speed up their digital transformation model and rollout the potential of their low latency high-performance cloud services.