Most of Juzbado’s high-tech workforce lives here.Credit: Andrey X.

In Spain’s most technologically advanced town, there are no robots, no bright traffic lights, and no fibre-optic internet. Welcome to Juzbado, the tiny village in Salamanca, with a population of 189 that quietly powers much of Europe. Thanks to a nearby uranium fuel plant, more than 91% of its registered workforce is technically employed in the tech sector. So how did this near-forgotten rural village become a statistical outlier on Spain’s technological map?. 

The factory that defines the town 

In Juzbado, three kilometres outside, sits a heavily guarded compound called ENUSA’s uranium processing plant.  The only one of its kind in all of Spain. It opened in 1985 and produces nuclear reactors in Spain, France, Finland, Belgium, and other countries. 17% of Spain’s electricity flows from this uranium that is processed there. It is quite literally a part of Europe’s backbone. 

The factory employs 381 workers, which is double the number of residents in Juzbado. And yet 23 of those workers are linked to that town. So while the plant pushes Juzbado to the top of Spain’s tech rankings, the village remains an untouched, poetic, unchanged, and familiar place with more festivals than plutonium. 

A town untouched 

Since 2008, Juzdabo’s has hosted some of the greatest poets in the Spanish-speaking world, including Ida Vitale, Francisca Aguirre, and Antonio Garmoneda, who have come to this tiny village to read their work. Their verses are etched in the bronze and fixed stone walls of Jusdabo.

By the numbers, 91% of Juzbado’s workforce is within technology. Which is the highest percentage in Spain? But if you step inside the village, you will find no data centres, no coworking spaces, and no electric scooters passing by. Instead, there is the following: 

  • A single bar 
  • A town hall 
  • Dozen stone houses 
  • No high-speed internet

The Mayor, Fernando Rubio, states that universal broadband will be available by the end of this year; however, internet access remains patchy, slow, and limited for now. 

The ENUSA plant can power a continent, but it hasn’t stopped Juzbado from shrinking. Like much of rural Spain, this town is on the verge of depopulation. Despite the overwhelming presence in high-tech facilities, the young people continue to leave.

Several factors are impeding this situation, including employment, roads, and one of Europe’s strategic energy facilities, yet it also features empty houses and an ageing population. ENUSA contributes around €220,000 per year in taxes, which accounts for a third of the municipality’s revenue. But it is not necessarily enough to keep things active. 

Europe’s nuclear future runs through here.

Juzbado may not feel or look like a high-tech town, but it sits at the centre of one of Europe’s strategic industries. The ENUSA factory is one of four uranium fuel processing plants in the EU. While Spain is ramping up its plan to phase out its nuclear reactors by 2030, Juzbado is increasing exports, with 65% of its fuel now going abroad.

Juzbado can help countries like Finland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic reduce their dependence on Moscow. Although the town may seem forgotten, its output has not. It plays a crucial role in energy independence, even as its own reactors prepare to shut down. 

Juzbado is a town of curious truths; it can process uranium but lacks fibre-optic internet. It can fuel nuclear reactors across Europe, but it cannot keep its young generation from leaving. It has topped Spain’s list of tech-heavy municipalities, yet its most public investment is a poem carved in bronze. 

They offer a different logic rooted in verses vs capital, continuity over disruption, and beyond them are reactors in France and Finland that run fuel made right here. This is no tech hub, it is a town with a pulse, faint but steady. One that insists that survival is not just about GDP or job statistics. It’s regarding meaning, and perhaps that is the grandest idea of all.