Spain Launches ALIA for Smarter Governance

Spain’s ALIA offers public AI infrastructure to support public services, strengthen digital infrastructure, and enhance AI in government initiatives.

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Spain has launched ALIA, a public, open‑source AI platform developed and funded by the government. Coordinated by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, ALIA is designed to serve public services, aid research, and empower AI in government initiatives, built from high‑quality Spanish and co‑official language data to reinforce domestic digital capabilities.

What Is ALIA?

ALIA is Spain’s national AI initiative intended to reduce reliance on foreign tech giants. It consists of foundational language models trained on a corpus of over 17 billion words—covering Spanish, Catalan, Galician, Basque, and more—developed under the 2024 AI strategy. Models like ALIA‑40B and Salamandra variants have been released publicly under open-source licenses.

Strengthening Digital Infrastructure

With powerful government backing and supercomputing support from Barcelona's MareNostrum 5 system, ALIA represents a major upgrade in Spain’s digital infrastructure. The project aligns with EU goals for transparency and technological sovereignty, and is overseen by the Spanish Agency for the Supervision of Artificial Intelligence (AESIA).

Pilot Use Cases in Public Services

ALIA is already being piloted within the Tax Agency through chatbots that assist citizens and in primary healthcare tools to detect heart failure—demonstrating practical applications for public services. These use cases highlight the drive toward improving administrative efficiency and citizen care.

Promoting AI in Government

By delivering locally trained language models and toolkits (like the ALIA Kit), Spain is accelerating ethical AI in government. The initiative fosters innovation across ministries, universities, companies, and civil society—encouraging applications tailored for Spanish and regional language speakers.

Strategic and Cultural Value

Experts emphasize ALIA’s value for technological sovereignty and linguistic inclusiveness. By training AI specifically in Spanish and co-official languages, Spain not only boosts performance in local contexts but also supports a culturally relevant digital ecosystem. This model aligns with broader EU ambitions of open, transparent, and inclusive AI infrastructure.

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