What Happens When $90 Billion of Data Centers Come to Town

When Paz Orge Acebillo’s family received a letter on behalf of Amazon Web Services proposing a “private amicable agreement” to buy the land her family had owned for nearly half a century, she thought it was a scam. The letter cited a government-backed data-center project labelled “of general interest.” It promised her father “superior” compensation and signed off with an urgent request: The family had four days to make their interest known.

“My mother called me, she was alarmed,” said Acebillo, whose family has long used their small patch of land in Aragón, northern Spain, to grow vegetables and to gather ...