The ambitious plan to connect Spain and Morocco through an undersea rail tunnel has taken a step forward with the signing of a telecommunications contract with Vodafone. The British company will provide voice communication and data transmission services to support the project’s planning phase.
According to Spanish daily AS, the contract carries an annual budget of €24,461 for two years — around €29,589 including taxes — covering the cost of equipment and services. Vodafone was the sole bidder for the tender.
Under the agreement, Vodafone will deliver a symmetrical 1 Gbps connection with automatic support, provide public IP addresses for secure VPN communications, and ensure 24/7 monitoring. The company is also responsible for preventive and corrective maintenance, full emergency tracking, and ensuring system capacity can be expanded by up to 50%.
The Spain-Morocco tunnel project, first envisioned in 1980, had stalled for decades until it was revived in April 2023. Funding from EU recovery and resilience funds has since boosted the budget of Spain’s SECEGSA — the public firm responsible for feasibility studies — from less than €100,000 in 2022 to over €4.7 million in 2024.
Planned as a rail-only corridor with no access for cars, the tunnel would stretch 60 kilometers, including 28 kilometers beneath the Strait of Gibraltar, making it one of the world’s longest tunnels and surpassing the Channel Tunnel between France and the UK.
