Construction work is ongoing at a major new electric vehicle (EV) battery plant in northeast Spain, with the project between global automaker Stellantis and Chinese battery giant CATL set to create thousands of local jobs and deliver a major economic boost to the region.
Stellantis and CATL aim to have the new gigafactory in Zaragoza, located in the Aragon region, up and running by the end of 2026 and, with a joint investment of over 4 billion euros. The new plant aims to produce 1 million EV batteries annually by 2028.
The small town of Figueruelas, home to just 1,000 residents, is soon poised to welcome 2,000 Chinese experts who will help construct the nearby gigafactory, creating 4,000 direct jobs and numerous indirect opportunities.
Local businesses are already excitedly preparing for the influx of newcomers which is set to energize the area.
"We're run off our feet, we're delighted, working hard, because of course, the Chinese workers are coming and now countless companies see big opportunities. They want to build, they want to promote, they want to buy, so it's been a bit crazy with all the inquiries about the zone," said Esperanza Calvo Gonzalez, a real estate agent of Garlan Group in Zaragoza.
The town is no stranger to large-scale industrial projects. Since automaker General Motors established a factory next to Figueruelas in 1982, the town has helped build five generations of vehicles including the popular Opel Corsas and Peugeot 208 hatchback vehicles which have been seen on roads across Europe. The successful attraction of the massive investment from Stellantis and CATL can be attributed to several key advantages in Spain's Aragon region, according to Javier Martinez, director general of Economic Policy for the Aragon Autonomous Community.
"First of all because the Stellantis plant that already exists here is highly efficient at a European level. Another reason is that we have a lot of land. Aragon is 10 percent of Spain but has a small population, 89 percent of the energy we produce is renewable, and that was important to CATL. Then, of course, the good relations between China and Spain, and particularly between China and Aragon, are important, it's a very fluid relationship," said Martinez.
This gigafactory could mark just the beginning for Spain as it looks to position itself as a key location for global players to set up shop, with Chinese EV maker BYD soon deciding where to locate its next European mega production site.
Small Spanish town set for economic lift as Chinese EV battery giant builds new plant
A World Health Organization (WHO) medical epidemiologist on Sunday sought to ease public concerns over a hantavirus outbreak linked to a cruise ship, stressing that the virus is not airborne like COVID-19 and that the average person has no reason to worry.
Spain began evacuating passengers the same day from the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship MV Hondius, which had anchored earlier off the Port of Granadilla on the island of Tenerife.
The MV Hondius departed Argentina on April 1 with more than 140 passengers and crew from 23 countries on board. The ship has reported eight infections, including three deaths. Six of the cases have been laboratory-confirmed as Andes virus infections, caused by a rodent-borne hantavirus endemic to South America and the only known hantavirus strain capable of limited human-to-human transmission.
Boris Pavlin, a medical epidemiologist with the WHO, said the cruise ship affected by a hantavirus outbreak had been carefully managed by Spanish authorities and posed little risk to the general public. "This is not COVID. The average person does not need to be worried about hantavirus here in this setting. These folks are being managed very carefully, very deliberately, by the Spanish authorities; they're getting off the ship, they are getting into small boats, they are being spaced apart in the buses so there's no risk to one another. Even if one were to become symptomatic -- we know that none of them were symptomatic as they have been leaving the ship -- they're going straight to their aircraft and they're being taken to their respective national jurisdictions," he said.
Pavlin said the exact source of exposure remained under investigation, but the initial cases appeared to be linked to a pre-cruise land excursion in South America.
"From what we understand of the initial cases, there was -- as one does often on a cruise -- there was a land-side excursion before the cruise in which places were visited that are home to these specific rodents that are associated with the Andes hantavirus. These are not worldwide rodents; the long-tailed rice rat is very specific to the Andes Cordillera region of South America, and that's where people who are exposed to the rodents were. So it was in one of those places they were exposed. We don't know exactly because there are several possibilities, and I believe that the Argentinian authorities are actually even going to look at that and try to do some animal sampling to get to the very bottom of it. But that part's not unexpected at all," he said.
The official praised Spanish authorities' handling of the ship and described the response as a closely coordinated international effort.
"This has been an extremely cooperative, collegial international effort. The Spanish authorities are very diligent and deliberate about what's happening here. There's nothing that would surprise us. I think that somebody might become exposed; we want to obviously make sure that people who are coming off the ship are not newly exposed to one another as they get off and go to their respective places, and we're not seeing that," Pavlin said.
But while the immediate disembarkation process had gone smoothly, he emphasized that health officials were not letting their guard down.
"However, the contact tracing and follow-up of every person who has been in even the lightest contact with the patients will continue until a maximum incubation period. In any case, there are contingency plans should someone become ill, and we know that it doesn't just spread like wildfire, so even if they were to become ill, we don't expect a large outbreak after this," the official said.
Cruise ship hantavirus outbreak "not COVID," poses low public risk: WHO expert
