Spain Advances Seismic Studies for Ambitious Morocco-Gibraltar Tunnel Project

To carry out this research, SECEGSA will launch a tender for 487,872 euros to rent or acquire four ocean bottom seismometers (OBS) for the Capitan de Navío Manuel Catalán Morollón campaign. The development of these devices will be ensured by the Geophysics section of the Spanish Royal Army Observatory (ROA) for six months.

According to the studies carried out by SECEGSA and its Moroccan counterpart, SNED, the Morocco-Spain tunnel, 42 kilometers long, should connect Punta Paloma, in Tarifa, Spain, and Malabata, 11 kilometers west of Tangier. The project consists of the construction of two single-track tunnels with a diameter of 7.9 meters, and a service gallery with a diameter of 6 meters, connected to each other by transverse passages every 340 meters.

The realization of this mega-project should require an investment of 6 billion euros, according to the American magazine Newsweek. The tunnel connecting Morocco and Spain, and by extension, Africa and Europe, should allow the "transportation of 12.8 million passengers per year, as well as 13 million tons of goods" between the two countries and the two continents.