A public company dependent on the Ministry of Public Works has been studying an underwater connection for 42 years that allows Spain and Morocco to join under the Strait of Gibraltar. And it doesn’t look like he’s going to stop doing it anytime soon. Founded on February 26, 1981, the Spanish Society of Studies for Fixed Communication through the Strait of Gibraltar (Secegsa) has been in charge of fulfilling the designs of the bilateral agreement signed in 1979 between Spain and Morocco, which sold the intention. to unite both countries physically. But in these four decades of work, not a single cubic meter of earth has been excavated for this tunnel to end up seeing natural light.
But the “new era” in diplomatic relations with the neighboring country has brought new things to the project. Last February, within the framework of the bilateral summit between both governments, the reactivation of the studies that will allow this Fixed Link to be carried out was endorsed.
A few weeks later, in April, the Minister of Transport, Raquel Sánchez, met electronically with her Infrastructure and Water counterpart, Nizar Baraka, to validate everything carried out by Secegsa and SNED since 2009 and announce “a new stage of relaunch.” project”. It was the first time that both countries had officially spoken on this issue in 14 years.
The Treasury contributes every year despite its limited activity
Secegsa, whose activity is non-profit, bases its existence on financing from State subsidies. Between 2016 and 2021, he received transfers worth 50,000 euros annually, something that has allowed him, together with previous income, to accumulate more than 2 million from the Spanish central administration.
The Government itself admitted in its note that the public company had been “several years without a relevant budget allocation”, something they began to put an end to in 2022, when it doubled the current investment to 100,000 euros. To these were added another 750,000 euros to update the primary draft of the tunnel under the Strait, a project now financed with European funds and included in the Recovery Plan.
By 2023, it hopes to complete the task after receiving another 1.5 million from the Treasury, as stated in the General State Budgets. The department of María Jesús Montero described this milestone in its accounts as “the definitive and necessary step to be in a position to begin the construction processes of the work of the Europe-Africa Fixed Link in the Strait of Gibraltar.”
Little hope that it will be executed
These low levels of spending are explained because a good part of its activity is carried out by other means of the administration, to which it has invoiced almost 900,000 euros in the last six years. It has also signed agreements with its Moroccan counterpart SNED (Société Nationale d’Études du Détroit de Gibraltar), a company created with the same objective as the Spanish one, and whose activity is also residual.
Despite these attempts to revive the project, almost no one believes that this tunnel will ever see the light of day. In fact, in its communications at that time, the Government admitted that neither Secegsa nor SNED are authorized to carry out any type of work, only to study the possibilities offered by the Mediterranean subsoil. “Any construction carried out in the future would imply a new bilateral agreement with Morocco, as provided for in current international agreements on this issue,” he said.
Over the next three years and with the support of the Recovery Plan, Secegsa must develop a general strategy and a work plan that allows analyzing whether it is viable to build a “reconnaissance gallery” that allows “identifying geomechanical characteristics” under the Strait of Gibraltar . . If this tunnel becomes a reality in the future, it would be used to locate telecommunications cables in it that will improve the existing network between both countries.
