I think you're correct about this too. I just got a VPS with a hosting provider with servers in Madrid (in the Interxion data center, using M247 as their transit provider) and pings to AirVPN "eridanus" are ~0.4ms. Similar to my Phoenix vs Los Angeles comment above, it's impossible to travel from Madrid to Barcelona in 0.4ms even at the speed of light. The actual ping time between a server in Barcelona and a server in Madrid should be around 7-9ms, which is what I see when I ping a server that's actually in Barcelona. You can see a comparison here: https://dnstools.ws/es/ping/lg.bcn.psychz.net,eridanus.airservers.org/ (these are ping times from a server in Madrid)
Furthermore, ping times from Italy to AirVPN "Eridanus" are higher than ping times to Psychz's looking glass in Barcelona, which is also a sign that the server is in Madrid (since Madrid is further from Italy than Barcelona).