The Strait of Gibraltar crossing is a hypothetical

bridge A bridge is a structure built to Span (engineering), span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or railway) without blocking the path underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, whi ...

tunnel A tunnel is an underground or undersea passageway. It is dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, or laid under water, and is usually completely enclosed except for the two portals common at each end, though there may be access and ve ...

spanning the

Strait of Gibraltar The Strait of Gibraltar is a narrow strait that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and separates Europe from Africa. The two continents are separated by 7.7 nautical miles (14.2 kilometers, 8.9 miles) at its narrowest point. Fe ...

(about 14 km or 9 miles at its narrowest point) that would connect

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

and

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

. The governments of

Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...

and

Morocco Morocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It has coastlines on the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to Algeria–Morocc ...

appointed a joint committee to investigate the feasibility of linking the two continents in 1979, which resulted in the much broader Euromed Transport project. In January 2021, it was reported that the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

and

would discuss building the crossing between

Gibraltar Gibraltar ( , ) is a British Overseas Territories, British Overseas Territory and British overseas cities, city located at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, on the Bay of Gibraltar, near the exit of the Mediterranean Sea into the A ...

and

Tangiers Tangier ( ; , , ) is a city in northwestern Morocco, on the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The city is the capital of the Tanger-Tetouan-Al Hoceima region, as well as the Tangier-Assilah Prefecture of Morocco. Many c ...

. As of 2023, the completion of Morocco's first national high-speed rail line from Casablanca to Tangiers has led to renewed interest in a tunnel that would connect the line to Spain's own high-speed network, which uses the same gauge and electrification as the northern section of Morocco's Casablanca-Tangier high-speed line.

Bridge

Several engineers have designed bridges on various alignments and with differing structural configurations. A proposal by Professor T.Y. Lin for a crossing between Point Oliveros and Point Cires featured deep piers, a length of , towers, and a span, more than twice the length of the current longest bridge span. According to OPAC this bridge would have cost around US$15 Billion. A 2004 proposal by architect

Eugene Tsui Eugene Tssui ( born Eugene Tsui, September 14, 1954) is an American architect noted for his use of ecological principles and "biologic" design, a term coined by Tssui himself in the 2010 issue of World Architecture Review.Eugene Tsui, World Ar ...

was for a floating and submerged bridge connected at a three-mile-wide (4.8 km) floating island in the middle of the

Mediterranean Sea The Mediterranean Sea ( ) is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern Eur ...

Tunnel

Various tunnels have been proposed. Spain first proposed a modern tunnel under the Strait of Gibraltar in 1930. A major problem arose when the engineers hired by the Spanish government discovered that the material under the Strait was extremely hard rock, making tunnelling impossible with the available technology. One engineering solution was to fix, using cables, a prefabricated concrete tunnel to the floor of the Strait. This tunnel would handle automotive and train traffic. A 2008 geological study cast doubt on the tunnel's feasibility. In March 2009, a contract was issued for a joint system linking the Moroccan (SNED) with its Spanish counterpart, (SECEGSA). A three-year study for a

railway Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in railway track, tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel railway track, rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of ...

tunnel was announced in 2003. SNED and SECEGSA commissioned several seabed surveys. The Strait is up to deep on the shortest route, but only about 300 metres deep slightly further west, in a region known as the

Camarinal Sill The Camarinal Sill is the sill separating the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. This threshold is the shallowest seafloor pass between the Iberian Peninsula and Africa. It is located approximately 25 km west of the narrowest section of ...

; the European and African

tectonic plates Plate tectonics (, ) is the scientific theory that the Earth's lithosphere comprises a number of large tectonic plates, which have been slowly moving since 3–4 billion years ago. The model builds on the concept of , an idea developed durin ...

meet around this area. The shortest crossing is . The proposed route of is west of

Tarifa Tarifa () is a Spanish municipality in the province of Cádiz, Andalusia. Located at the southernmost end of the Iberian Peninsula, it is primarily known as one of the world's most popular destinations for windsports. Tarifa lies on the Costa d ...

and to the east of

Tangier Tangier ( ; , , ) is a city in northwestern Morocco, on the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The city is the capital city, capital of the Tanger-Tetouan-Al Hoceima region, as well as the Tangier-Assilah Prefecture of Moroc ...

. The tunnel is likely to be about in all. It is proposed that a connection would have to be made to the Spanish high speed railway network, which has a line projected to be built from

Cádiz Cádiz ( , , ) is a city in Spain and the capital of the Province of Cádiz in the Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Andalusia. It is located in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula off the Atlantic Ocean separated fr ...

Málaga Málaga (; ) is a Municipalities in Spain, municipality of Spain, capital of the Province of Málaga, in the Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Andalusia. With a population of 591,637 in 2024, it is the second-most populo ...

via

Algeciras Algeciras () is a city and a municipalities in Spain, municipality of Spain belonging to the province of Cádiz, Andalusia. Located in the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula, near the Strait of Gibraltar, it is the largest city on the Bay of G ...

. A report on the feasibility of the tunnel was presented to the EU in 2009. A further project study is under development by a group of specialist consultants from

SYSTRA SYSTRA is a multinational engineering and consulting group in the mobility sector, whose fields of activity include rail and public transport. SYSTRA employs about 10,300 people worldwide, and is a limited company which shareholders include Fr ...

, Amberg and

COWI COWI A/S is an international consulting group, specializing in engineering, environmental science and economics, with headquarters located in Lyngby, Denmark. It has been involved in more than 50,000 projects in 175 countries and has approximat ...

Planning

The political origins of the project arise from the Common Hispanic-Moroccan Declaration of Fez, of 16 June 1979, and signed by the kings of Spain and Morocco. One consequence of the declaration was the creation in of SECEGSA, the Spanish government-funded corporation tasked with studying and promoting the crossing. In December 2003, Spain and Morocco agreed to explore the construction of an underwater

rail Rail or rails may refer to: Rail transport *Rail transport and related matters *Railway track or railway lines, the running surface of a railway Arts and media Film * ''Rails'' (film), a 1929 Italian film by Mario Camerini * ''Rail'' (1967 fil ...

to connect their rail systems. The tunnel would have linked

Cape Malabata __NOTOC__ Cape Malabata (, ''Ras Malabata'', or ''Rās al-Manār'', "Lighthouse Cape"; ; ) is a cape located about east of central Tangier, Morocco, facing the Strait of Gibraltar. The cape features a lighthouse and a medieval-style castle th ...

near

with Punta Paloma in the El Estrecho Natural Park west of

. In late 2006,

Lombardi Engineering Ltd Lombardi Engineering Ltd. is a Swiss civil engineering company based in Giubiasco, Bellinzona district. It was established in 1989. It is the successor to "Giovanni Lombardi Ph. D. Consulting Engineers" which was established in 1955 by Giovanni ...

, a

Swiss Swiss most commonly refers to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland * Swiss people Swiss may also refer to: Places * Swiss, Missouri * Swiss, North Carolina * Swiss, West Virginia * Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses * Swiss Café, an old café located ...

engineering and design company, was retained to draft a design for a railway tunnel. According to the company, the main differences between the construction of this tunnel and that of the

Channel Tunnel The Channel Tunnel (), sometimes referred to by the Portmanteau, portmanteau Chunnel, is a undersea railway tunnel, opened in 1994, that connects Folkestone (Kent, England) with Coquelles (Pas-de-Calais, France) beneath the English Channel at ...

, linking

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

and

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-west coast of continental Europe, consisting of the countries England, Scotland, and Wales. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the List of European ...

, are the depth of the sea and the geological conditions. The area under the Strait is less stable than that under the English Channel. An active major

geologic fault In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth's crust result from the action of plate tectonic ...

, the Azores–Gibraltar Transform Fault, bisects the Strait, and severe earthquakes have occurred in the area. The presence of two deep

Quaternary The Quaternary ( ) is the current and most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), as well as the current and most recent of the twelve periods of the ...

clay channels in the middle of the Strait makes construction complex, causing doubts about the feasibility of the project and proposals for an exploratory tunnel. No official figures about the cost of the project had been announced by 2007, but previous estimates exceeded €5 billion. In February 2023, after a high-level bilateral meeting between Spain and Morocco, the Moroccan and Spanish governments resolved to relaunch the project for an undersea railway tunnel under the Strait of Gibraltar. The project is planned to start construction in 2030. In June 2023, the Spanish government announced a €2.3 million funding package for a joint Spanish-Moroccan design and planning committee for the tunnel. The tunnel would connect the southern end of Spain's national high-speed train network with the northern end of the recently constructed

Al Boraq Al Boraq () is a high-speed rail service between Casablanca and Tangier in Morocco. The first of its kind on the African continent, it opened on 15 November 2018 after a decade of planning and construction by ONCF, Morocco's national railway c ...

high-speed line from Casablanca to Tangiers—the first high-speed rail line in Africa.

Technical aspects

The proposed rail tunnel's length is , deep, and its construction would take 15 years. An earlier plan was to link the two continents via the narrowest part of the strait, but this idea was dismissed as the tunnel would be below sea level. For comparison, the currently deepest undersea tunnel, the Norwegian Ryfylke Tunnel, is below sea level. A tunnel deeper than Ryfylke is under construction, also in Norway;

Rogfast Rogaland Fixed Link or simply the Rogfast, is a project to construct a sub-sea road tunnel in Rogaland County, Norway, running between the municipalities of Randaberg (near the city of Stavanger) and Bokn, with a spur connecting to the island m ...

will be long and deep, expected to be completed in 2028–29, costing €2.5 billion. The construction of terminals, similar to the

Eurotunnel Folkestone Terminal The Eurotunnel Folkestone Terminal is a railway terminal built for the transport of road-going vehicles on specially constructed trains through the Channel Tunnel. The station is located in Cheriton, a northern suburb of the town of Folkestone ...

and

Eurotunnel Calais Terminal The Eurotunnel Calais Terminal is a railway terminal built for the transport of road-going vehicles on specially constructed trains through the Channel Tunnel. The station is located in the commune of Coquelles in the Pas-de-Calais department ...

at either end of the

, might be required for transshipment of road vehicles.

Ferry

Car ferries have long operated across the Strait of Gibraltar. they operate on these routes:Ferries from Spain to Morocco 2023
/ref> *

–

Ceuta Ceuta (, , ; ) is an Autonomous communities of Spain#Autonomous cities, autonomous city of Spain on the North African coast. Bordered by Morocco, it lies along the boundary between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. Ceuta is one of th ...

The ferry traffic has an established base of customers, useful to calculate the number of users for a fixed link.

References

External links

SNEDSECEGSADocumentario - Il Ponte sullo stretto di Gibilterra Parte 1

Documentario - Il Ponte sullo stretto di Gibilterra Parte 2

Documentario - Il Ponte sullo stretto di Gibilterra Parte 3
{{DEFAULTSORT:Strait Of Gibraltar Crossing Strait of Gibraltar Proposed bridges in Europe Transport in Spain Transport in Morocco International tunnels Railway tunnels in Spain Proposed transcontinental crossings

Gibraltar Tunnel The Strait of Gibraltar crossing is a hypothetical bridge or tunnel spanning the Strait of Gibraltar (about 14 km or 9 miles at its narrowest point) that would connect Europe and Africa. The governments of Spain and Morocco appointed a joi ...

Proposed undersea tunnels in Africa Buildings and structures in Tanger-Tetouan-Al Hoceima Proposed railway tunnels in Africa Proposed railway tunnels in Europe Proposed bridges in Africa Morocco–Spain border Morocco–Spain relations Proposed rail infrastructure in Spain Proposed rail infrastructure in Morocco