Record Number of Travelers Expected as Morocco-Spain Ferry Routes Reopen for Summer

"It’s going to be a wonderful summer," says Benito García, a Spanish teacher who has lived in Tangier for three decades, as he gets off a ferry that arrived in Tarifa on Thursday. Since the resumption of passenger maritime traffic on April 12 for passengers without vehicles and on April 18 for passengers with vehicles, a significant number of travelers are boarding the ferries connecting the ports of Tarifa and Tangier city and those of Algeciras and Tanger Med.

For two years that the maritime borders have been closed, hundreds of thousands of Moroccans residing in Europe have not been able to visit their loved ones in Morocco. The images of ships filled with passengers in recent days, in the middle of Ramadan, suggest good prospects for the Marhaba Operation this summer, reports Nius. "With the ferry trips, we can board with our vehicles and bring a lot of things to our families in Morocco," explains Abdelkhalek Najmi, an academic from Tangier living in Granada for seven years.

To read: Spain and Morocco Prepare for Massive Summer Transit Operation After 2-Year Hiatus

But the resumption of maritime links leaves a bitter taste for travelers, in the sense that the individual tickets of the shipping companies are more expensive. For the Tarifa-Tangier line, a passenger without a vehicle must pay 43.5 euros for a ticket with FRS. As for the Algeciras-Tanger Med link, passengers without vehicles will have to pay 37.5 euros with FRS. "Even if the ticket price increased by 20 or 30%, Moroccans are ready to pay to travel by boat," confides a source from FRS.

To travel on ferries to Morocco, you just need to present a negative PCR test or a vaccination pass. Next week, Spanish and Moroccan delegations will meet in Rabat to prepare the Marhaba Operation 2022. According to data from the Spanish Ministry of the Interior, more than 3.3 million people and more than 760,000 vehicles participated in this operation in 2019.