Strait of Gibraltar crossing

The governments of Spain and Morocco appointed a joint committee[1] to investigate the feasibility of linking the two continents in 1979, which resulted in the much broader Euromed Transport project.

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.

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 to Málaga via Algeciras.

[citation needed] 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.

The tunnel would have linked Cape Malabata near Tangier with Punta Paloma in the El Estrecho Natural Park 40 kilometres (25 mi) west of Gibraltar.

The presence of two deep Quaternary clay channels in the middle of the Strait makes construction complex,[9] causing doubts about the feasibility of the project and proposals for an exploratory tunnel.

[19] 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.

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 900 metres (3,000 ft) below sea level.

A tunnel deeper than Ryfylke is under construction, also in Norway; Rogfast will be 27 kilometres (17 mi) long and 392 metres (1,286 ft) deep, expected to be completed in 2028–29, costing €2.5 billion.