Diego Campelo Cores, Technical Lead & Antonio Carreiro Alonso, Technical Manager at ITG
Published in the June edition of the Gaia-X Magazine
Galicia, a region on the Atlantic coast of northwestern Spain, historically developed an industry closely tied to its local resources and needs in order to adapt to its isolation and distance. From that context emerged a diverse industrial ecosystem, deeply connected to the produce of the land and the sea, which today faces a challenge common to all of European industry: competing in an increasingly digitalised environment, where data sharing has become essential for productivity and innovation across the entire value chain.
Within this framework, ITG, together with DIHGIGAL and under an agreement with IGAPE, is driving the Industrial Data Space of Galicia with a clear aim: to build bridges towards secure, sovereign and efficient data sharing within the Galician business fabric. The initiative connects some of the region’s major economic engines: the renowned food sector, the historic shipbuilding industry, the international automotive sector and the growing ICT ecosystem.
Sharing data effectively requires that both companies and their teams understand the advantages and incentives of doing so. For this reason, the Industrial Data Space of Galicia is conceived not merely as a technological infrastructure, but as a context for cooperation capable of generating new opportunities for innovation and research. Through its marketplace, it facilitates the discovery of previously inaccessible resources and opens up new business opportunities, governed by a data sovereignty model that legally guarantees the obligations and restrictions of each exchange, so that every company retains control over its own information.
Alignment with the principles of Gaia-X reflects the need to build an ecosystem based on interoperability, trust and digital sovereignty, following European standards for data spaces. In doing so, the initiative becomes part of a continental movement that seeks to enable small and medium-sized industrial enterprises, too, to join emerging data ecosystems with confidence, lowering the technical and knowledge barriers that often hold back their adoption.
Conclusion
The expected impact is manifold: enabling Galician companies to put underused data to work while retaining control over its use, reducing adoption barriers and unlocking new opportunities for innovation through access to information that was previously out of reach. The next steps focus on onboarding participants across the four sectors, expanding real use cases and consolidating alignment with the Gaia-X Trust Framework. Galician industrial companies are invited to take part and help shape an ecosystem built on cooperation, trust and data sovereignty, strengthening the capacity of Galician industry to adapt and thrive in an increasingly digital landscape.
ITG was delighted to sponsor the Data Spaces Symposium 2026 in Madrid, where the many valuable contacts made are already helping to strengthen Galician industry’s capacity to adapt and thrive in an increasingly digital landscape.