2008 looks set to be a significant year for the project to build a railway tunnel under the Gibraltar Strait to link Spain and Morocco. Since 2006 experts have been preparing geological and technical reports which are due to be presented some time this year.
The schedule has been delayed slightly due to the diplomatic crisis between the two countries caused by the King and Queen of Spain’s visit to Ceuta and Melilla last year. As a result the meeting due to take place between the Spanish Development Minister, Magdalena álvarez, and the Moroccan Minister of Transport, Karim Ghellab, in December was postponed. Now, however, the Moroccan ambassador to Spain, Omar Azziman, has returned to Madrid and relations seem to be back to normal.
Salvador de la Encina, a Socialist member of the Spanish Congress and spokesperson for Infrastructure, explained that the technical side was no longer a problem and what concerned the authorities now was the financial issue. The project is expected to cost at minimum 5,000 million euros (some estimate it will be double) and last year both Spain and Morocco applied for aid from the European Union. Financial help has also been sought from other sources such as the World Bank, the European Investment Bank and the Arab Monetary Fund.
The idea of building a tunnel between Spain and Morocco dates back almost 30 years. In 1980 two state companies were created to get the plan off the ground, the SECEG in Spain and the SNED in Morocco, but it wasn’t until 1996 that the first technical report was produced.
In September 2006 an agreement was reached with a consortium formed by four firms - Typsa of Spain, Ingema of Morocco, Geodata of Italy and Lombardi of Switzerland - for the drawing up of the geological and geotechnical reports due to be presented this year.
“Child’s play” was how engineer Giovanni Lombardi described the Eurotunnel linking Britain and France compared with this ambitious scheme. The Italian, now in his eighties, said that the tunnel was “on the verge of the impossible”, but is determined to go ahead with what would be his most difficult project yet. He is well aware that he is unlikely to see it finished; the tunnel is expected to take some 20 years to build.
At present the project envisages a 38.7 kilometre double railway tunnel, of which 27.7 kilometres would be under the sea, between Punta Malabata in Morocco (near Tangier) and Punta Palomas in Spain (near Tarifa).