An underwater fixed rail link connecting Europe to Africa could be ready for traffic within six years, if a proposed tunnel between Spain and Morocco is approved.
From Europe to the gateway to Africa and beyond
In a potential boost to Europe’s train network and Europe-Africa trade partnerships, plans are afoot to create the 27-kilometre (17-mile) tunnel by boring under the Strait of Gibraltar, linking Algeciras in the southern Spanish region of Cadiz to Tangier, Morocco. Tangier is known to some as the “gateway to Africa” and is the continent’s largest port.
Eventually the route could extend further, to provide a high-speed link using Spain’s existing lines and Morocco’s new 321-kilometre-an-hour (200mph) “Al Boraq” route, inaugurated in 2018.
In this way, passengers could travel from Madrid all the way to Casablanca by rail. It would take five and a half hours to complete the transcontinental journey by train, as opposed to just under 2 hours by plane.
Ready by the 2030 World Cup?
The project’s six-year timeline would mean the tunnel could be open by 2030’s World Cup football tournament. Morocco, Portugal and Spain have jointly signed the bid agreement to host it.
The tunnel is not a new idea, having been first mooted in the late seventies around the time talk of the UK-France Channel Tunnel was first being seriously considered.
The concept was brought back into contention in June 2023, when a feasibility study for the so-called “Europe-Africa Gibraltar Strait Fixed Link” was given the go-ahead last year by Spanish authorities. It was funded by the European Union to the tune of €2.3 million (£2 million).
“Maximum geostrategic importance”
With initial estimates putting the work at an unconfirmed cost of €6 billion (£5.1 billion), the development could prove far more expensive, due to problems already identified by geological surveys.
Research undertaken by the Moroccan National Company for Strait Studies (SNED) and the Spanish Society for Fixed Communication Studies across the Strait of Gibraltar (SECEGSA) shows that the strait reaches a maximum depth of 900 metres (2,950ft). By contrast, the English Channel is only 174 m (571 ft) at its deepest point.
The Azores-Gibraltar seismic faultline also simmers nearby.
But in a signal of determination to see the infrastructure come to fruition forty years after it was first suggested, the revival of the tunnel has been described by Spanish transport minister, Raquel Sanchez, as “a project of maximum geostrategic importance for our countries and for relations between Europe and Africa.”
