![\"ED](\"https:\/\/nextcloud.com\/c\/uploads\/2026\/11\/ed-madrid-2026-welcome.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nAndreas Rode, Chief Commercial Officer at Nextcloud, opened the day by giving an overview of what digital sovereignty really means and how it differs from the sovereignty-washing offerings from US providers. He mentioned three aspects to have in mind: data residence, operational autonomy, and legal jurisdiction. You are only truly sovereign when you have full control over your data in all three areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mission (im)possible? A roadmap for Spain<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The first guest speaker was Nil Homedes Busquet, Director of the Technical Office at the Decidim Association. Decidim is one of Spain\u2019s open source pioneers. It started in Barcelona, and cities and governments around the world now use it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Homedes asked what digital sovereignty actually means for Spain and what it could do for democracy and citizens. His answer: democratic control over technology. Software increasingly makes decisions that affect people\u2019s lives, so citizens should be able to check how it works.<\/p>\n\n\n If code is law, why don\u2019t we demand the same transparency for software as we do for laws?<\/p>\n<\/div> Free software is a necessary condition for this, but not enough on its own, as long as around 80% of Europe\u2019s digital infrastructure is imported. Spain already has building blocks such as the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, the public AI project ALIA and open source projects like Decidim and Penpot. Homedes called for concrete next steps: join the EU\u2019s Digital Commons consortium (EDIC), map critical dependencies, and set up a state agency for free software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Daniel Gonz\u00e1lez Carbonero, Deputy Director of the Education Department at EJIE, brought a project that already runs. EJIE is the IT company of the Basque Government. For the region\u2019s Department of Education, it built IRADI, an open source platform for digital teaching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n IRADI uses Nextcloud as its collaboration core, together with Collabora Online, Moodle and PeerTube, and stores all data in the Basque Government\u2019s own data centers. After a pilot in four schools, it now serves 32 more. Next comes one Nextcloud instance per vocational school, plus AI running on local language models such as the Basque model Latxa.<\/p>\n\n\n We went from being mere consumers to building our own capabilities.<\/p>\n<\/div> The Madrid region has its own example. Adolfo Sanz De Diego presented EducaMadrid, an education platform that runs on its own servers and open source software. Today it serves around 500,000 users, handles 400 million emails a year and uses Nextcloud and Collabora for file sharing and document editing. The goal is clear: to make EducaMadrid a European reference for digital sovereignty, and a model for Spain and the EU.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Telef\u00f3nica\u2019s keynote made clear that sovereignty is a topic for big companies too. Silvia V\u00e1zquez Corrochano, Sovereign Solutions Project Manager, and Jordi Costa Mur, Head of Hyperscalers Product Line, explained how organizations can use AI and the cloud and still keep control of their data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Telef\u00f3nica, it starts with four questions. What needs protection? Who can access the data? How may it be used? Which laws and dependencies apply? The answers decide where each workload should run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the afternoon, two breakout tracks showed how the switch works in practice. Partners explained how organizations can leave Microsoft, Jira and Confluence without losing data or disrupting how their teams work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On stage were Spanish IT provider Danysoft, migration specialist audriga, Microsoft integration specialist Sendent, IONOS Cloud Spain, Collabora Productivity, XWiki and OpenProject.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Manuel G. Pascual, technology journalist at El Pa\u00eds, moderated the closing panel with Nil Homedes Busquet (Decidim), Carlos L\u00f3pez Belenguer (Amnesty International Spain) and Vicente Exp\u00f3sito Quintero, Global Head of Intelligent Workplace at Telef\u00f3nica. An open source association, an NGO and a telecom company: three very different organizations. Their answers were surprisingly close.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What makes an organization stop talking about sovereignty and actually switch? Right now it\u2019s geopolitics, the panelists said, and above all pressure from the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That pressure hits an NGO as much as a multinational company. Switching still has a price. A migration costs money, and productivity can drop at first. Many organizations also have small budgets and too few technical staff. So they stay with their provider even though they know about the lock-in, because the short-term pain looks bigger than the long-term risk. The panelists argued for the long view anyway: organizations that switch win back control and independence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The way an organization migrates decides a lot. Users need to come along, and someone has to manage their expectations from day one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The panel\u2019s recommendation: start with a small pilot and add complexity step by step.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Spain doesn\u2019t start from zero. The Basque Country and the Madrid region run open source platforms in their schools. Amnesty International Spain has relied on independent IT for over a decade. Decidim started in Barcelona and is now used around the world. What has changed is the momentum. Telef\u00f3nica talks openly about data control, and the pressure from Washington speeds things up. Most organizations we met in Madrid no longer ask whether to switch, but how fast they can do it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Digital sovereignty in Spain is no longer a niche topic. At our first Nextcloud Enterprise Day in Madrid, more than 160 people from public administration, education, NGOs and companies, including Telef\u00f3nica, discussed how to depend less on US Big Tech. Speakers from Decidim, EJIE, EducaMadrid and Amnesty International Spain shared what already works and what still holds organizations back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":448466,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"publish_to_discourse":"","publish_post_category":"22","wpdc_auto_publish_overridden":"","wpdc_topic_tags":"","wpdc_pin_topic":"","wpdc_pin_until":"","discourse_post_id":"738490","discourse_permalink":"https:\/\/help.nextcloud.com\/t\/from-pioneers-to-a-movement-digital-sovereignty-in-spain-at-nextcloud-enterprise-day-madrid-2026\/251704","wpdc_publishing_response":"success","wpdc_publishing_error":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17,22,14,243],"tags":[219,328,520],"class_list":["post-448382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-events","category-release","category-uncategorized-2","tag-enterprise-day","tag-event","tag-madrid"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\r\n\t\t\t\t\t
Nil Homedes Busquet<\/h6><\/cite>Director of the Technical Office at the Decidim Association<\/span><\/div> <\/blockquote>\r\n\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\r\n\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n\r\n\t\t\t
![\"Nil](\"https:\/\/nextcloud.com\/c\/uploads\/2026\/11\/fotonilnil-homedes-busquet-profile-pic.jpg\")
\t\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n\r\n\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n<\/section>\r\n\n\n\nThe Basque Country and the Madrid region show how sovereignty works in schools<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\r\n\t\t\t\t\t
Daniel Gonz\u00e1lez Carbonero<\/h6><\/cite>Deputy Director of the Education Department at EJIE<\/span><\/div> <\/blockquote>\r\n\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\r\n\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n\r\n\t\t\t
![\"Daniel](\"https:\/\/nextcloud.com\/c\/uploads\/2026\/11\/daniel-gonzalez-carbonero-profile-pic.jpg\")
\t\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n\r\n\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n<\/section>\r\n\n\n\n![\"ED](\"https:\/\/nextcloud.com\/c\/uploads\/2026\/11\/ed-madrid-adolfo-sanz-de-diego-1.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nTelef\u00f3nica: AI and cloud without giving up control<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"ED](\"https:\/\/nextcloud.com\/c\/uploads\/2026\/11\/ed-madrid-2026-telefonica-keynote-1.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nPractical sessions: the ecosystem behind the switch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Panel: what triggers a real migration, and what holds it back<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"ED](\"https:\/\/nextcloud.com\/c\/uploads\/2026\/11\/ed-madrid-2026-panel-1.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nSpain is picking up speed<\/h2>\n\n\n\n