The iconic San Mamés stadium is testing a digital solution to monitor the condition of Athletic Club’s pitch, jointly deployed by the club and the engineering and technology group Sener. This unique system, a pilot project tailored to the specific needs of San Mamés, is capable of accurately recording and displaying changes in parameters such as humidity, salinity, temperature, lighting, ventilation, and turf quality in each part of the pitch, while also assessing how these factors impact the care of natural turf. The aim is to precisely analyse the pitch’s condition and needs, improve turf maintenance, and optimise energy and water use, thereby achieving a more sustainable management model.

The solution makes it possible to monitor conditions such as humidity, salinity and temperature, and to understand how these parameters are affected by factors like solar radiation, rainfall, and ambient temperature. The system’s algorithm takes all of these elements into account, providing information in near real time to support decision-making by facility managers, while considering the unique context of each area (for example, exposure to sunlight or cumulative rainfall). As a result, it will be possible to save energy and water, improve natural turf maintenance, and reduce the carbon footprint.

This is a flexible solution, designed to adapt to different circumstances, such as the changing light conditions during the day at San Mamés due to the design of its roof. The solution features a digital dashboard that integrates all the information in a single interface, drawing on multiple internal sources (such as sensors deployed on the pitch) and external sources (such as weather stations and AEMET forecasts). In addition, it includes monitoring of the Athletic Club’s Lezama training complex.

Sener’s experience in sports facilities

This project extends Sener’s portfolio in the sports facilities market, where it offers solutions such as Hypogea®, its patented retractable pitch system. With this innovative solution, the natural turf of stadiums can be removed and protected quickly, safely, and automatically, using a set of mechanisms that reposition and move the trays dividing the playing surface. It also features advanced turf maintenance systems (including irrigation, ventilation, heating, drainage, and more). The Hypogea solution has been successfully deployed at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium.

Óscar Malo, Director of Infrastructure at Athletic Club, notes that “The system being tested in our stadium could provide us with a tool to help improve the quality of our pitch while optimising the resources used to maintain it. This is consistent with the Club’s sustainability strategy, which focuses on reducing energy and water consumption.”

“Sports stadiums are undergoing an exciting technological development, with notable advances such as the case of San Mamés,” says Juan Francisco Paz, Director of Architecture at Sener. “This unique solution will allow the club to progress towards its environmental goals while also improving the care of its playing surfaces, setting a technological benchmark in the field of sports infrastructure.”

On 30 May 2025, Spanish start-up PERSEI Space and Sener signed a technology licensing agreement for the use of electrodynamic space tethers applied to the deorbiting of space debris. These tethers are long conductive ribbons which, once deployed in orbit, generate a braking force that passively reduces orbital altitude, ultimately leading to the removal of space debris upon atmospheric re-entry.

Under the terms of the agreement, PERSEI Space is authorised to use, modify, manufacture, and sell space debris deorbiting equipment based on the results achieved by Sener within the E.T.PACK-F project, which has been funded with €2.5 million by the European Innovation Council (EIC). The agreement encompasses seven technologies within the deorbiting system, including systems engineering, structure, deployment mechanism, onboard software, attitude determination and control system, and avionics.

This agreement, along with another signed in February 2025 with the three universities involved in the E.T.PACK-F project (Carlos III University of Madrid, University of Padua, and Dresden University of Technology), also grants PERSEI Space ownership of the two deorbiting units developed within E.T.PACK-F. The first is the qualification model, which has undergone rigorous testing during the project. The second is the flight model, which will be demonstrated in orbit by PERSEI Space in spring 2026, thanks to a launch opportunity funded by the Flight Tickets Initiative of the European Commission and the European Space Agency. This demonstration will represent the first in-orbit experiment of an autonomous deorbiting system based on a bare electrodynamic tether equipped with a hollow cathode—i.e., featuring the architecture necessary to deliver high performance and enable the development of effective space debris deorbiting products.

The licensing agreement marks a key milestone in PERSEI Space’s roadmap, as it consolidates and accelerates the company’s ability to prepare deorbiting system products based on electrodynamic tethers. The aerospace industry requires lightweight and efficient deorbiting systems, as without them, objects orbiting above approximately 500 km do not naturally deorbit within five years, as required by regulations in the United States and outlined in the Zero Debris Charter promoted by the European Space Agency.

E.T.PACK-F (2022–2025) is an EIC Transition project funded by the European Innovation Council (EIC). Coordinated by Carlos III University of Madrid, it also includes the participation of Sener (from its Aerospace and Defence division), the University of Padua, Dresden University of Technology, Rocket Factory Augsburg, and PERSEI Space. The project’s aim is to prepare a flight-ready deorbiting system based on a space tether. E.T.PACK-F is the natural continuation of E.T.PACK (2019–2022), a FET OPEN project also funded by the EIC with €3 million. As part of its Pathfinder programme, the EIC is also funding a third project on space tethers: E.T.COMPACT. Also coordinated by UC3M and involving PERSEI Space, E.T.COMPACT is focused on exploring the limits of miniaturisation in space tether technology and investigating new concepts such as the bare-photovoltaic tether.

PERSEI Space is a spin-off from Carlos III University of Madrid, founded in 2023 by its CEO and the principal investigators from the three European universities involved in the E.T.PACK and E.T.PACK-F projects. The company is dedicated to the development, manufacturing, and commercialisation of solutions for space debris mitigation, based on innovative products using electrodynamic space tethers. It is currently being incubated by the ESA-BIC programme of the European Space Agency and the Madri+d Foundation.

Quark, a company specialising in engineering and data centre design, part of the Sener Group and a leading firm in Southern Europe, has been selected to lead the technical design of Campus Data Navarra, a new data centre to be built in the Gazólaz industrial estate, in the Cendea de Cizur, just seven kilometres from Pamplona.

The project, promoted by Grupo VDR and driven by Colliers, involves an estimated investment of €3.3 billion and a projected installed capacity of 300 MW. Its development is expected to create up to 2,600 direct and indirect jobs during the construction and operational phases, scheduled between 2027 and 2029.

Campus Data Navarra aims to become a key node in the European digital ecosystem, specialising in large-scale data processing and storage. It will serve as a strategic infrastructure to support sectors such as artificial intelligence, telecommunications, and cloud computing.

One of the key factors in choosing Navarre as the site was its strong commitment to renewable energy: the autonomous community produces 142% more energy than it consumes. This surplus, essential to ensure sustainable operation, aligns with the goals of the European Green Deal and the European Commission’s strategy to triple the continent’s data centre capacity by 2035.

Its location, along the Bilbao-Zaragoza-Barcelona axis, further enhances the campus’s international connectivity thanks to its proximity to future submarine cable corridors in both the Mediterranean and the Cantabrian seas. Ricardo Abad, CEO of Quark, stated: “Campus Data Navarra will be a flagship infrastructure that will not only accelerate digital transformation, but also have a decisive impact on the region’s socio-economic development. At Quark, we are proud to lead the technical design of such a transformative and ambitious project.”