For decades, we have become accustomed to thinking of large economic centres as cities. London is a financial centre, Paris concentrates companies and institutions, Frankfurt has become a European reference for data centres, and Silicon Valley has transformed a region into a world reference for technology.
But artificial intelligence and new digital infrastructure may be changing this logic. The next great digital capital may not be a city. It may be a network of cities, energy, data centres and connectivity distributed over a much wider territory.
This was another of the ideas that particularly caught my attention in the Atlantic Convergence 2026 discussions. Lisbon, Madrid and Barcelona can be seen not only as three separate markets, but as parts of a potential Iberian digital ecosystem. The idea deserves reflection because the artificial intelligence economy is changing some of the traditional criteria for locating technological infrastructure.
Not all computing needs to be in the same place. Certain operations require close proximity to users and extremely low response times. Others, particularly those that require huge processing volumes, can be located where there are better power, territory, and infrastructure conditions. The result may be a much more distributed architecture than we are used to.
This creates an interesting opportunity for the Iberian Peninsula. Lisbon has a privileged Atlantic position and growing international connectivity. Madrid benefits from its economic size, central location and capacity for business concentration. Barcelona adds an important technological, industrial and Mediterranean ecosystem. Among these cities, there is also a territory with renewable resources, industrial capacity and potential to receive new infrastructures.
Perhaps the wrong question is, therefore, which of these cities could become the next great European digital hub. The most interesting question is to understand if they can work together.
For Portugal, this also requires a change of perspective. Cooperating on an Iberian platform does not mean diminishing the importance of Lisbon. It can mean exactly the opposite. The larger the ecosystem to which we are connected, the greater our ability to attract specialised investment by taking advantage of what we are particularly competitive in.
But distributed digital capital is not born only from geographical proximity. It needs high-capacity fibre, energy interconnections, data centres, robust electricity grids, fast licensing, and the ability to move data and energy between different points.
We also need to avoid another mistake: confusing the Portuguese digital economy with Lisbon. If the data carrier infrastructure can become more distributed, other Portuguese regions will be able to find opportunities precisely through the availability of energy, territory and connectivity.
Perhaps artificial intelligence is doing something unexpected. After decades in which the knowledge economy favoured a huge concentration in large cities, part of the infrastructure needed for the next technological revolution may begin to be distributed throughout the territory.
The next European digital capital may, therefore, not have a single address. It can be a network. And Portugal has every reason to want to be part of it.