The Spanish government has commissioned a new feasibility study for what could become one of the most ambitious engineering feats in modern history: a 38.5-kilometer submarine tunnel connecting Spain and Morocco, Spanish media reports indicated.
The Ministry of Transport, led by Oscar Puente, has tasked the public engineering firm Ineco with conducting an in-depth technical and financial analysis. The study, budgeted at EUR 1.63 million—slightly less than the initially proposed EUR 2.4 million—will examine whether the long-envisioned project can actually get off the drawing board.
The cost reduction comes from the elimination of certain study phases, including the inspection of a reconnaissance gallery and a reduction in alternative route assessments. Despite this, the project will maintain a broad scope, assessing geological conditions, construction logistics, expected passenger and freight traffic, and various financial return scenarios for this multimillion-euro investment.
The feasibility study is part of Spain’s Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan and is backed by the European Union’s NextGenerationEU funds. The renewed push coincides with the strengthening of political ties between Spain and Morocco, including a number of high-level meetings and strategic dialogue that have occurred since 2022.
Authorities are currently weighing two options on Spain’s southern coast as potential entry points for the tunnel: Algeciras, a key rail and port hub, and Tarifa, the southernmost city in mainland Europe. On the Moroccan side, the tunnel would emerge near Tangier.
The current preferred route envisions two parallel rail tunnels stretching 38.5 kilometers, 27.7 km of which would be undersea, traversing a sea bottom featuring complex and seismically active geology.
German tunnel engineering giant Herrenknecht is assisting in evaluating the technical feasibility of the most challenging section: the Camarinal Sill. This zone will require deep-sea excavation using Tunnel Boring Machines (TBM), and the final technical assessment is expected by June 2025.
Feasibility studies began in the 1980s. However, the project has recently gained renewed political support. Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s 2022 visit to Rabat and several subsequent bilateral summits have underscored the tunnel’s strategic potential.
Spain’s former transportation minister, Raquel Sánchez, declared it a “strategic project” during her high-level meeting with Morocco in 2023.
Rephrase in a different way as if you were a native American speaker as a content creation expert and do not talk about yourself or your experience in the text and do not show yourself as an artificial intelligence who wrote and fill the bullet point in the topic and speak the heart of the topic itself and dont take date of blog in ther first and dont take text like box of newsliter subscribe on post from content and romove all linke insert in content and and remove all affiliate disclosure phrases on content like this “This post may contain Amazon or other affiliate links that allow us to earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Please see our Disclosure Policy for more info” and “#” put in its place bullet point, and romove name of the web site or his links we are take a content from our new creation
