The Spanisg government reactivates the project to link Spain and Morocco by means of a tunnel through the Strait of Gibraltar.
The Spanisg government reactivates the project to link Spain and Morocco by means of a tunnel through the Strait of Gibraltar.
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After years in a drawer, the government has reactivated the old project to link Spain and Morocco by means of an underwater railway tunnel through the Strait of Gibraltar, a connection that both countries have been studying for more than four decades.
On the Spanish side, at least on paper, there has been a ‘relaunch’ of the project, according to the state company that is promoting it, which is going to receive a new allocation in the 2023 Budget to take ‘the definitive step’ towards the start of the works, according to the Executive in the public accounts that it has just presented.
The company in charge of carrying out the feasibility studies for this ambitious project on the Spanish side is the Sociedad Española de Estudios para la Comunicación Fija a través del Estrecho de Gibraltar (Segecsa), which is attached to Transportes. This public company has recently revealed that in 2021 it was included among the recipients of European funds from the Spanish Recovery Plan to undertake new studies on this infrastructure, despite the tense relations between Spain and Morocco at the time.
Now, after Pedro Sánchez’s recent and controversial change of position on Western Sahara, and in a context of progressive normalisation of relations with the Alaouite regime (at the cost of snubbing the Sahrawi population and Algeria, a key supplier of gas, in the midst of the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine), the draft budget for 2023 that has just been presented by the Executive contemplates a capital transfer of 750,000 euros for Secegsa, to be charged to the Spanish government. 750,000 for Secegsa from the budget of the Ministry of Transport, to which it is attached, and which has not responded to questions on this matter.
A modest sum, which is included in the actions destined for the Trans-European Transport Network, but which, according to the government’s project, “will represent the definitive and necessary step to be in a position to begin the construction processes of the work”. The funds will be used to update a preliminary project that was drawn up three decades ago, incorporating the technical advances accumulated in recent years.
The idea of linking the two sides of the Strait of Gibraltar has been on the table for more than a century, although in its current conception it dates back to a joint declaration by Spain and Morocco in 1979. On the Moroccan side, the work that Secegsa has been carrying out in Spain for more than 40 years has been entrusted to the Société Nationale d’Études du Détroit de Gibraltar (Sned).
In the 2022 budget, a further appropriation of this amount was already made in the 2022 budget to update the preliminary project for the so-called Europe-Africa fixed link in the Strait of Gibraltar. This transfer was made available after the approval in April 2021 of the Recovery Plan.
Secegsa’s latest accounts, recently published, correspond to the financial year closed in December 2021 and were formulated in March 2022, when Sánchez’s volte-face on the Sahara came to light. In them, Secegsa points out that “the most relevant event” of the 2021 financial year was the inclusion in the Spanish Recovery Plan of the update of the preliminary connection project drawn up in 2007, “with the consequent financing through European funds from the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism (RRM)”. There are 2.3 million committed, subject to “strict deadlines” that Secegsa does not detail.
The update of this preliminary project is justified by the fact that “the technical and technological advances registered in the last 15 years in the field of construction, management, operation and maintenance of underground and underwater works represent a spectacular leap”.
To this is added a modification of the previously planned route, “with the decision to integrate the Fixed Link Tunnel in the Strait with the rail transport infrastructure of the Campo de Gibraltar and its key elements, such as the Port of Algeciras”. This involves moving the North terminal to the San Roque-Los Barrios area (Cádiz) “to integrate it with the corresponding rail corridor of the European Transport Network”, which “means extending the tunnel several kilometres from the currently planned unconnected location” in Tarifa, between the natural parks of the Strait and Los Alcornocales.
German tunnel boring machine
Following Brussels’ approval of the Spanish Recovery Plan, Secegsa signed a technical assistance contract in August 2021 with the public engineering company Ineco for around 800,000 euros, according to the state contracting portal, from which two reports on the current state of the project have been drawn up.
A year ago, the head of Secegsa travelled to Scwhanau (Germany) to meet with representatives of the German company Herrenknecht, a world leader in the tunnel boring machine market, to update the basic design of the technology that could be used to excavate the exploration gallery in order to begin work. According to the state-owned company, “very favourable prospects are opening up in view of the advances in the technical capabilities of this type of drilling and excavation systems, and the most recent experiences in the construction of deep tunnels in the marine subsoil”.
Secegsa’s accounts formulated in March this year state that 2021 saw the “relaunch” of the intercontinental connection project, despite “a series of incidents” that occurred in April of that year, when Spain gave shelter in a hospital in Logroño to Brahim Ghali, leader of the Polisario Front, provoking a serious crisis with the Moroccan regime. These incidents, which Secegsa does not detail, generated “a situation of deadlock in Spain’s diplomatic relations with Morocco” which, it assures, “has not affected the development of the joint work of Secegsa and Sned nor the continuity of relations with normality and without alterations”.
The Euro-African connection is closely followed by the EU, due to the geostrategic nature of the Strait of Gibraltar. Brussels is interested in promoting a future Euro-African rail network, but it is not ‘a strategic priority for the Union’, recalls Haizam Amirah Fernández, senior researcher on the Mediterranean and the Arab World at the Elcano Royal Institute.
The project would involve building a tunnel through the seabed at the junction between the Atlantic Ocean and the Alboran Sea (Mediterranean), in the style of the Eurotunnel that connects France and the United Kingdom across the English Channel. Now, it seems that Spain is willing to reactivate it, while the government is trying to revive (with the support of Germany) the Midcat gas pipeline project, rejected by France, in a context of energy emergency in Europe.
The Elcano expert is sceptical about this Euro-African connection: “I don’t know if this is the most favourable context”, he says over the phone. “There have been different moments over the last few decades when it seemed that it was going to be relaunched”, something that “usually responds to a desire to show a willingness to cooperate and create strategic projects”. The reality is that today, despite the years that have passed, these two companies are still active, “producing studies and reports, with some meetings”, but “the fact is that there is no definitive project”.
Amirah recalls the “high” cost of such an infrastructure and the inherent technical difficulties. However, “it seems that this might not be the biggest obstacle”, as “it might be possible to get funding from large international organisations”. The biggest problem “is to match the political will and create the conditions in public opinion to embark on a project of this scale, with the ramifications that it has”, by two states “with a relationship of ups and downs and systems of government that have significant differences”.
In a recent parliamentary response on this issue, the government did not clarify its intentions regarding the project, although it did relate it to the new phase of relations with Morocco. It stresses that on 29 June ‘the working group on the delimitation of maritime areas on the Atlantic coast of Spain and Morocco, which was set up in 2003 and had been inactive for years, was ‘reactivated’ in compliance with the Joint Declaration agreed in Rabat on 7 April by the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, and the King of Morocco, Mohammed VI.
In point 6 of the declaration, which marked the new stage between the two countries, both parties committed themselves to ‘achieving concrete progress’ with respect to the maritime areas on the Atlantic coast, which in principle seems to be left out of the tunnel project, recalls the Elcano expert. The document also referred to the “full normalisation of the movement of people and goods” and the re-establishment of maritime passenger connections between the two countries.
In June, Moroccan media reported that a future Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline could be channelled through the Euro-African tunnel. A gigantic project that would involve transporting gas through several countries in conflict. The UK’s alleged interest in such a connection through Gibraltar has also been aired.
I don’t think is ever going to happen. It’s too expensive and too complicated and probably a big headache for Spain and the EU having a tunnel connecting to Morocco, not the most reliable country.
It would be great if this worked but this isn’t like the Channel Tunnel. This would be a tunnel connecting two different continental plates. Tiny bit of relative movement and boom, tunnel is useless.