Spain Revives Ambitious Strait of Gibraltar Tunnel Project with Morocco

Spain has planned a line of credit of 750,000 euros in the 2023 budget to launch the work on this tunnel. The Spanish Society of Studies for Fixed Communications across the Strait of Gibraltar (Segecsa), in charge of carrying out the studies of this ambitious project, recently revealed that it had benefited in 2021 from European funds to undertake new studies on this infrastructure, in the midst of the crisis between Morocco and Spain.

The idea of uniting the two shores of the strait has been under study for more than a century, although its current design dates back to a joint declaration by Spain and Morocco dating from 1979. On the Moroccan side, it is the National Society for Studies of the Strait of Gibraltar (Sned) that has managed the studies of this project.

A year ago, the head of Secegsa went to Schwanau (Germany) to meet representatives of the German company Herrenknecht, world leader in the tunneling machine market, in order to start the work. According to the company, "very favorable prospects are opening up given the evolution of the technical capabilities of this type of drilling and excavation systems, and the most recent experiences of deep underwater tunnel construction."

The project would consist of building an underwater tunnel in the area of the junction between the Atlantic Ocean and the Alboran Sea (Mediterranean), like the one in the English Channel connecting France to the United Kingdom. "More progress is needed in standardization and rapprochement between Spain and Morocco" for a project of this magnitude to materialize, notes an expert.