Morocco-Spain Tunnel Project Revived: $6.5 Billion Price Tag for Gibraltar Strait Link

According to estimates from experts consulted by the North American magazine Newsweek, the tunnel between Morocco and Spain should require an investment of 6 billion euros. The construction of this fixed link between the two countries was conceived by Kings Hassan II and Juan Carlos I in 1979. Two study companies were created a year later: the Spanish Company for Studies on Fixed Communications across the Strait of Gibraltar (SECEGSA) in Spain and the National Company for Strait Studies (SNED) in Morocco.

Since October 2009, studies on this tunnel to connect Spain and Morocco, and by extension Europe and Africa, have been suspended. It was not until February 2023 that the project was reactivated during the High-Level Meeting held in Rabat. The two countries agreed in April 2023, during the meeting of the Spanish-Moroccan Committee, to establish a work plan for the next three years and to carry out feasibility studies for a dedicated telecommunications tunnel.

During an official visit to Morocco in March, the Spanish Minister of Transport, Oscar Puente, announced after a meeting with his Moroccan counterpart Nizar Baraka, that "a date is being finalized to hold the 44th meeting of the Spanish-Moroccan Joint Committee on the project to continue the studies". The experts, gathered within the Intergovernmental Joint Committee, had decided in 1996 to opt for the construction of a tunnel rather than a bridge, recalls El Debate.

Thus, the project plans to build two underwater tunnels 28 kilometers long and a maximum depth of 475 meters, connecting Punta Paloma, west of Tarifa, to Malabata, north of Morocco. It would eventually allow the movement of 12.8 million passengers and 13 million tons of goods between the two countries and the two continents, according to SECEGSA’s projections.