The Government of Spain is investing 16 million euros to bring 5G to municipalities of less than 10,000 inhabitants in the province of Huesca, as announced this Wednesday the minister for Digital Transformation and Public Function at the closing of the XII Somos Litera Forum.
“The industrial revolution concentrated the population in large cities, depopulating the rural world. Today, the Green and Digital Transition serves to re-industrialize and re-attract companies and projects to the rural world, eliminating inequalities. The commitment of the Government of Spain in the last seven years to this double revolution explains much of the economic success of the country and that we have created half a million jobs linked to new technologies,” the minister stressed in his speech.
If today Spain is an attractive country for foreign investment thanks to clean and cheap energy and connectivity, thanks to its leadership in the deployment of fiber optics, the minister recalled that these attributes “do not fall from the sky”. They are the result, he stressed, “of a national investment of more than 3 billion euros in connectivity since 2020”.
In his speech at the forum, he highlighted the firm involvement of the Government of Spain with the Aragonese digitization. Specifically, it has detailed how the Executive has allocated 313 million euros for the renovation of telecommunications facilities or the granting of social connectivity bonds to vulnerable families; has distributed more than 11,000 digital devices for Aragonese students through the Educa en Digital program; and has digitized the Aragonese industrial fabric with more than 20,000 Digital Kit grants for SMEs and self-employed, grants valued at 85.8 million euros.
The Demographic Challenge measures work
Óscar López explained that the effort of his department with the closing of the digital divide is part of the Government’s Plan of 130 measures in the face of the Demographic Challenge. “A plan that works: Between 2018 and 2024, the small Spanish municipalities attracted more than 350,000 people, a positive migratory balance that broke the trend of the previous decade. Because Binéfar, Riaza or Verín have the same right as the cities to prosper. They have the same right as Madrid or Barcelona to 5G or Artificial Intelligence,” he said.
At this point, he referred to the programs financed by the Ministry that aim to extend the use of Artificial Intelligence and that have already reached beneficiaries in Aragón. Such is the case of the company IriusRisk, a startup created in Montesa and which in less than a decade has managed to position itself as a leader in cybersecurity and which the Ministry supported with an investment of 2.78 million euros for a project of design of cybersecure cloud architectures.