Metlabs brings asset tokenization to MERGE Madrid 2026
Pablo Gómez and Isaac González spoke in three sessions, including the presentation of Alqantara, the COX solar project with a Metlabs platform.
Metlabs took part in MERGE Madrid, the digital assets congress held at Palacio de Cibeles, on October 28 and 29, 2026. The company had its own stand throughout both congress days and spoke in three sessions: two panels with Pablo Gómez, CEO and founder, and a presentation by Isaac González, Head of Innovation, at Alastria’s use case session.
This edition of MERGE Madrid brought together regulators, banks, asset managers, crypto-asset service providers and startups from more than 40 countries, with more than 200 speakers across three stages. The programme opened on October 27 with an Institutional Summit at the Madrid Stock Exchange, and the main congress filled the following two days at Palacio de Cibeles.
What is really being tokenized in 2026
On Wednesday 28, Pablo Gómez joined Héctor Torres (TR Capital), Eric Sánchez (Reental) and Carlos Salinas (Estating Digital) on the MERGE Stage, in a panel moderated by Covadonga Fernández of Observatorio Blockchain. The session asked which assets are actually being tokenized this year, beyond the announcements, and opened with a question about why tokenization still needs explaining when other financial topics do not.
Gómez traced part of the answer to the financial world’s long-standing opacity and to a vocabulary that distances people more than it explains. He framed tokenization as infrastructure: what matters is still the financial instrument and its underlying asset, and the token is the technology layer that represents it.
On the demand Metlabs receives, he explained that the regulated institutions that come to the company already have the asset, the investor base and the distribution channel. What they look for is regulatory compliance, custody and integration with the systems they already run. In those projects, asset tokenization solves capital-raising processes, from issuance to distribution, and makes it possible to structure investments that used to be out of reach for many investors because of the ticket size or the cost of setting them up.
On Spain, he noted that the legal framework has existed since 2023, with the Securities Markets Law and the ERIR role, and that what is missing is a market and an investment culture. That is why much of Metlabs’ project work takes place in Latin America and the United States, where the need to raise capital is greater and where settling in stablecoins reduces cross-border friction when investors come in.
ISBE in Pitch, Alastria’s use case session
At midday on Thursday 29, Isaac González took part in ISBE in Pitch, the use case session Alastria Blockchain Ecosystem organised on the MADRID Stage. Several startups and technology companies presented what they are building on blockchain infrastructure, with speakers from Accuro Technology, Unknown Gravity, Globant and Adwatch, among others.
ISBE is Spain’s Blockchain Services Infrastructure, the public network promoted by Alastria and the Community of Madrid, interoperable with EBSI, the European blockchain infrastructure. Metlabs has been part of that ecosystem since joining Alastria. In his talk, González explained how a tokenized issuance is split across three layers: the real world, with the contract and prospectus for each issuance; the application, with investor verification, the payment account and custody; and the blockchain layer, where the tokens are recorded.
Alqantara: a tokenized issuance in Spain, end to end
That afternoon, on the same stage, Pablo Gómez joined Fahd Zniber (COX) and Ángel Quesada (Onyze) on the panel “How tokenization actually works in Spain: from the asset to the official registry”, moderated by Esther Molina of Wildcom. The panel presented Alqantara, the project of COX, a Spanish water and energy group listed on the Spanish stock exchanges.
Through Alqantara, investors will be able to invest in panels at COX’s solar parks and receive the return on the energy they produce, either paid into their account or, for COX customers, as a discount on their electricity bill. The project brings a physical asset, solar power generation, into an investment product whose return is tied to each park’s output.
The panel walked through the issuance end to end and the role of each party. COX acts as issuer. Onyze handles custody and the registry as ERIR, the securities registration entity introduced by Spain’s Law 6/2023 on Securities Markets and Investment Services. Metlabs develops the platform and the token issuance engine.
That split illustrates how an issuance works under the Spanish framework. The ERIR’s role in asset tokenization in Spain is the one the law requires to record and register securities represented through distributed ledger technology, and it separates that function from those of the issuer and the technology provider. The session showed that the asset, the registry and the technology can be coordinated in a single issuance with clearly defined responsibilities.
A stand at Palacio de Cibeles
Off stage, the Metlabs team met attendees at its stand throughout both congress days, beneath a wall that presented the company as the developer of the blockchain rails of the tokenized economy. At the counter, visitors could use a QR code to sign up for “Tokenization for executives”, the free online masterclass Isaac González gives on November 10: 60 minutes on spotting tokenization opportunities within a company.
The participation ties in with several of the company’s lines of work: energy tokenization, issuances under the Spanish framework and the collaboration model Metlabs has with Onyze on custody and wallets. It is also the second consecutive edition in which the company has taken part in MERGE, after its 2025 panel on funds and real-world assets.
