The bold project of a tunnel connecting Spain and Morocco—the Gibraltar tunnel running underneath the Mediterranean Sea—and thus connecting Africa and the Eurasian landmass, is now a possibility within reach of existing technology, a new Spanish government study has concluded.
The Herrenknecht company, a German world leader in tunnel-boring machines, conducted the study at the request of the Spanish Company for Studies on Fixed Communication across the Gibraltar Strait (Secesga), which is under the Spanish Ministry of Transport, reported the October 29 online Vozpopuli newspaper. The Spanish and Moroccan governments have reportedly committed to making a final decision in 2027 regarding the tender for a first exploratory tunnel.
But the research by the Herrenknecht firm confirming that the Spanish-Moroccan project can be developed within current technical and engineering parameters—as an outcome of technological improvements made during the first quarter of the Twenty-first Century—is important.
