This text belongs to ‘Penínsulas’, the newsletter that Enric Juliana sends every Tuesday to the readers of ‘La Vanguardia’. If you want to receive it, sign up here.
The insecurity in the Red Sea, as a consequence of the escalation of war in the Middle East, is favoring Morocco, we explained last Sunday in La Vanguardia. I think it is worth continuing to explore this topic. The fundamental point is the following: the diversion of international maritime traffic along the Cape of Good Hope route is revaluing the Strait of Gibraltar. The map that accompanies these lines will help us understand it better. It is a map that we published in the Peninsulas bulletin of June 6, 2023, in which the Mediterranean appears to us vertically, altering the traditional horizontal perception of the Roman Mare Nostrum.
Since our gaze is accustomed to moving from left to right following the movement of the reading, the distances between the north and south shores seem shorter to us, accentuating the sensation of contemplating a large inland lake, which is still true. . It is a top-down view of the Mediterranean from the Middle East:
Above, the Strait of Gibraltar, below, the Suez Canal. Well, the circumnavigation of Africa is benefiting the ports of the maritime region closest to Gibraltar. Since the old route of the Portuguese sailors is longer and more expensive, container ships need good logistical bases to transfer their goods to other ships, which will take them to their destination points: the ports of northern Europe or the most distant Mediterranean ports. . Look at the map. The center of gravity momentarily shifts from the eastern and central Mediterranean to the western Mediterranean. For how long? We do not know. The war situation in the Middle East continues to escalate and the Houthi militias continue to attack ships, despite the bombing by Anglo-American naval forces. Last Friday, a British oil tanker was seriously damaged in the Gulf of Aden after being hit by a missile. Just yesterday, the Houthis said they attacked a US military ship. The Good Hope route is established as an alternative.
The container transshipment terminal at the port of Las Palmas has increased its activity in recent months. Chinese and Indian ships deposit their merchandise in the port of Las Palmas to be later sent to the port of Valencia for subsequent distribution throughout the Mediterranean. For the same reasons, the Moroccan port of Casablanca is gaining traffic.
The most benefited port, however, is Tangier Med, on the Moroccan side of the Strait of Gibraltar, according to sources in the sector. We are talking about one of the great bets of the Kingdom of Morocco for the 21st century. A modern deep-draft port inaugurated in 2007 with the aim of competing with the Spanish port of Algeciras. A powerful center of economic activity, with a gigantic industrial zone of five hundred square kilometers in which more than a thousand multinational companies have already settled. The port can move nine million Teus per year (Teu: container measurement unit), one million vehicles and 700,000 trucks. It connects with 86 ports in the world, most of them in Europe and Asia. Lower wages than in a European port and lower environmental costs being outside the EU. Cheaper rates. Last year, before the Red Sea crisis began, Tangier Med became the first Mediterranean port in container traffic, surpassing Algeciras, Valencia and Barcelona. That trend is becoming more pronounced now.
Sector sources point out that commercial traffic is also increasing in the ports of Algeciras, Valencia and Barcelona, ??not even modestly, to the detriment of the Italian and Greek ports. Look at the map again. Trieste, which a few years ago was a port highly coveted by China given its proximity to central Europe at the end of the Adriatic Sea, may now lose steam. The precious Greek port of Piraeus, connected to the eastern European railway axis and managed by Chinese companies, may now lose strategic value. For how long? We do not know. The naval skirmishes in the Red Sea are part of the simmering regional war in the Middle East, which the United States and Iran are trying to avoid, but may not or may not be able to avoid.
Italian ports are today in a bad position: their exports and imports are becoming more expensive, without obtaining any strategic advantage from the new situation. There are nerves in Italy and its Defense Minister, Guido Crosetto, has just criticized the Spanish Government’s refusal to join the military operation that the European Union intends to launch in the Red Sea. “Pedro Sánchez subordinates international security to his internal pacts,” declared Crosetto.
Perhaps we are reaching a moment of fragmentation of globalization, as pointed out by specialists such as Jordi Torrent, head of strategy at the port of Barcelona. Perhaps the Suez route will not regain full security for a long time. Perhaps half of the traffic that passed through Suez opted for the Cape of Good Hope for a long period of time. Stock investors are pointing in that direction. The shares of the world’s large shipping companies have risen and maritime transport rates have increased five times more than the increase in costs, as reported last Friday by journalist Piergiorgio Sandri in La Vanguardia. In a tight scramble, shipowners gain. It seems that Bab el Mandeb is not only a nest of pirates and a source of trouble. It has also become a gold mine.
Morocco’s great commitment to Tangier Med, 20 kilometers from Ceuta, is strategic. It was thought of a long time ago and began to be executed in the first years of this century. Now comes a second chapter: the construction of a new commercial port in Nador, 50 kilometers from Melilla, which could come into operation in 2025. Two Moroccan economic development centers next to the two Spanish squares. The absorption strategy seems quite clear. On the other side of the Strait of Gibraltar, the port of Algeciras does not have a powerful interland: Campo de Gibraltar is one of the areas in Spain with the highest unemployment rate. Algeciras does not even have a good rail connection. The old train line built in the mid-19th century by the English to connect the port of Algeciras with the plateau, the 175-kilometer Algeciras-Bobadilla line, still lacks power lines today.
The Red Sea crisis forces the reorganization of one of the largest maritime routes in the world, alters the logistical nodes of the Mediterranean and highlights the effective Moroccan strategy to dominate commercial traffic in the Strait of Gibraltar and create a new relationship of forces with Spain. . The map that we publish today allows us to understand it better.
In Algeciras they believe that the Government is forgetting about them, for the benefit of the port of València, the “port of Madrid” that Isabel Díaz Ayuso now claims. It can look like this. But the issue may be somewhat more complex. The problem perhaps lies in Spain’s strategic laziness in the face of rail freight transport, a modality that continues to be a minority in a country that turned to trucks and diesel during the developmentalism of the 1960s. Trains were for passengers and highways were for tourists and trucks. The transport of goods by rail is one of the pending issues of the mobility system in Spain. In recent years, rail freight transport has recorded a very low modal share, between 4% and 6% (measured in tonnes/km), only ahead of Greece and Ireland and significantly lower than the EU average. EU, located at 17%.
Under this premise, the high-speed railway route was developed, designed for passenger trains, with exclusively radial criteria. The consolidation of the radial map ahead of everything. Aznar’s utopia consisted of connecting Madrid with all the provincial capitals. Madrid-Atocha and Madrid-Chamartín, terminal stations throughout Spain. Strengthen the great metropolis of Madrid and feed the aspirational tension of the people of the provinces. In the nineties, the provincial capital without AVE provision could be considered very unfortunate. The passengers, on the AVE. The goods, in the trucks.
When at the beginning of the century, under European diktat, railway corridors for goods began to be lazily designed, President José María Aznar ordered in 2002 that the Mediterranean corridor be left off the map of Spanish priorities. He did not want a strong economic connection between Catalonia and the Valencian Community, for reasons that are not difficult to imagine. He then proposed a central corridor that would connect Algeciras with Madrid, Zaragoza and the French border through the pharaonic construction of a tunnel in the Aragonese Pyrenees, which the French never accepted. The port of Valencia would be linked to Madrid and Zaragoza, avoiding Barcelona.
Ten years were lost. That project ended up failing due to the French refusal to drill the Pyrenees again and in 2011, in the midst of the economic crisis, the Valencian business community took the lead in demanding the Mediterranean corridor. There were the Valencian Association of Businessmen, the employers’ organizations and Juan Roig, owner of Mercadona, the most influential businessman in the community. The PSOE got the message and the PP was forced to change its policy. That’s what happened. The Mediterranean corridor became a priority work without the connection with Algeciras with the Mediterranean axis or with a central axis that has not yet advanced and that would connect with France through Barcelona, ??once the Pyrenean option was rejected. Thirteen years after the strategic rectification, Barcelona is the only Spanish port connected to the rest of Europe by international gauge, the connection with the port of Valencia is advancing and Algeciras is paying for ten years of doubts and delays.
The Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, will go to Algeciras next Thursday.