The Balearic-Strait-Canaries Axis and Spanish Maritime Strategy
The MOC
By
Gonzalo Vazquez
January 11, 2024
On November 30th, 2023 the Spanish Navy (“Armada Española”) received the S-81 Isaac Peral, the first of four diesel-electric attack submarines of the S-80 Plus class, built by Spanish shipbuilder Navantia. The S-80 program is expected to revive the Navy’s diminished submarine fleet by 2028 and significantly enhance Spain’s maritime surveillance and area denial capabilities. The S-80-class submarines come at a time when the Spanish Navy is under-resourced to meet the strategic requirements and threats imposed by its current maritime environment.
Strategically important is accesses to the Strait of Gibraltar, stretching all the way to the Canary Islands in the Atlantic coast of West Africa and the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean. These three regions gave rise to a strategic concept upon which both the Spanish maritime strategy and national security strategy were developed during the late 1970s and 1980s, commonly known as the Balearic-Strait-Canary Axis (“Axis”). Through it, the Spanish Navy was tasked with ensuring a permanent watch over the coast of Africa and Soviet naval activity, and with the protection of Spanish sea lines of communication (“SLOCs”) in the region.
Although mostly abandoned since the mid-1990s, the concept has gradually returned to Spanish military journals and publications like the Navy’s “Revista General de Marina” or the U.S. Naval War College’s Center for Naval Thought quarterly publication, raising questions over the viability of adapting and restoring it as one of the pillars of Spanish maritime strategy. Yet, although Spanish submarine capabilities are expected to increase, Spain is not in a position to reinvigorate its 1970s and 1980s-era strategy.
The Balearic-Strait-Canary Axis and the Evolution of Spain’s Strategic Landscape
The Spanish Navy’s 1978 General Plan (“PLAGENAR”) gave birth to the concept of the Axis. It established that the center of gravity of Spain’s strategy ought to be the Strait of Gibraltar area and its prolonged accessed reaching to the two archipelagos. The document provided a geostrategic analysis to address both the global challenge posed by the USSR and local threats in northern Africa, which included Morocco’s expansionist ambitions and – in case of conflict – the protection of transatlantic convoys (as Spain would later do during Operation Desert Storm).
In October 1979 at a civil-military conference held in the Canary Islands, Spanish Minister of Defense Agustín Rodriguez defended the need for “bolstering our position in the geostrategic Balearic-Strait-Canary zone, with enough capacity to prevent any aggression against our sovereignty,” an idea he would reiterate on several other occasions in the Spanish Senate. The concept can also be found in unclassified reports by the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, which described it back in 1984 as “the hinge around which the Spanish defense effort swings, facing threats that may come from three areas: the western Mediterranean, the southern mid-Atlantic and North Africa.”
The logic of the Axis concept addressed both Spanish national security interests of the time and NATO’s collective security interests. The former was mainly focused in the region of North Africa and the protection of commercial shipping. The latter included the Spanish Navy’s contribution to NATO in the Western Mediterranean and Atlantic regions, plus the strategic position of the Canary Islands and the Strait in case of a Fourth Battle of the Atlantic against the USSR.
Figure 1. The Balearic-Strait-Canary Axis. Image from Revista Ejércitos.
The departure from the Axis concept became evident with Spain’s National Defense Directive 1/92, which did not make any reference to the Axis, justifying that “the conception of our security is not circumscribed to a concrete and immediate territorial space, given that our national interests also require protection beyond the limits of that space.” In other words, Spanish strategic focus shifted from its predominantly maritime orientation towards a land-centric one in which the Axis concept was no longer needed. The decline of the concept’s preeminence in Spanish geostrategic calculus also coincided with the shift experienced by most European nations in the late 1990s and early 2000s, which led to a sharp decline of European naval power.
At that time, the Spanish Navy had a strong and balanced fleet that included the R-11Principe de Asturias light carrier (decommissioned in 2013), four amphibious ships, 11 guided missile frigates of the Canarias (five) and Santa María (six) classes (based on the Knox and Oliver Hazard Perry classes, respectively), eight submarines of the S-60 and S-70 classes (four + four), and a strong fleet of P-3As maritime patrol aircraft. Most of them have already been decommissioned, and together with scarce defense spending and subsequent failure to provide a replacement for some of those assets, the fleet of submarines has been left at just two units, and the maritime patrol aircraft fleet without P-3A Orion aircraft.
This decline in naval capabilities has been matched by the growing strategic instability around the Strait. Regional instability is mostly due to the emergence of massive flows of irregular immigrants reaching the Canary Islands from the coast of Africa since the mid-1990s and the gradual naval buildup of both Algeria and Morocco. Spain maintains tense diplomatic relations with Algeria following the incident with the Polisario Front leader in 2021, and it has ongoing territorial disputes with Morocco over the delimitation of their Exclusive Economic Zones (“EEZ”) near the Canary archipelago. These problems have been further aggravated by a lack of strategic culture and sea blindness among the Spanish population (and thus, its government). This affects the naval capabilities and maritime culture a country as Spain – with almost 5,000 miles of coast and a privileged strategic position – should have.
Restoring the Axis in Spain’s Maritime Strategy?
With an increasingly contested maritime environment and the possibility of a global-scale conflict closer than in the past decades, the Spanish Navy will have to keep working to strengthen its naval capabilities. Only then will Spain be ready to rethink its approach to the Balearic-Strait-Canary Axis and adapt it to the current reality, benefitting its security interests for a number of reasons.
From a national security perspective, it would serve as a defensive barrier against the irregular migration flows and illicit drug smuggling from the African continent. It would also help the fight against the enduring terrorist threat stemming from the Sahel region – a threat that has had a significant impact upon Spanish security and is also a great concern for NATO and the EU.
From a purely maritime and naval perspective, the Axis concept will likely have a central role in guiding Spanish efforts to protect its undersea domain, including critical undersea infrastructure and the natural resources of its EEZ. Furthermore, emphasizing the importance of controlling both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar allows for better protection of Spanish maritime commerce and naval activity around its territorial waters and EEZ.
Should a global conflict or crisis break out in the North Atlantic or Western Mediterranean, as mentioned before, the Strait region would bear strong strategic importance for NATO. As U.S. Naval War College professor Milan Vego argues, “by establishing control over straits and narrows in peacetime one creates the main prerequisites for gaining control in the adjacent sea or ocean shortly after the outbreak of hostilities.” The Axis concept could help Spain and its allies achieve this prior to a conflict.
However, Spain is not yet in a position to achieve these goals. Although the S-80 Plus program represents a positive leap forward for the Spanish Navy, it will not be enough to ensure a proper maritime posture across all areas of national interest. As long as Spain does not fully understand the importance of the sea for its national security in a growingly competitive world, and invests consequently to bring its Navy back to the force levels it had in the 1990s, restoring the Axis concept as the basis for its maritime strategy would be useless.
Gonzalo Vazquez is a junior analyst at the Spanish Naval War College’s Center for Naval Thought. The views expressed in this article are his own.
The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.
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Center for Maritime Strategy
By Gonzalo Vazquez
On November 30th, 2023 the Spanish Navy (“Armada Española”) received the S-81 Isaac Peral, the first of four diesel-electric attack submarines of the S-80 Plus class, built by Spanish shipbuilder Navantia. The S-80 program is expected to revive the Navy’s diminished submarine fleet by 2028 and significantly enhance Spain’s maritime surveillance and area denial capabilities. The S-80-class submarines come at a time when the Spanish Navy is under-resourced to meet the strategic requirements and threats imposed by its current maritime environment.
Strategically important is accesses to the Strait of Gibraltar, stretching all the way to the Canary Islands in the Atlantic coast of West Africa and the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean. These three regions gave rise to a strategic concept upon which both the Spanish maritime strategy and national security strategy were developed during the late 1970s and 1980s, commonly known as the Balearic-Strait-Canary Axis (“Axis”). Through it, the Spanish Navy was tasked with ensuring a permanent watch over the coast of Africa and Soviet naval activity, and with the protection of Spanish sea lines of communication (“SLOCs”) in the region.
Although mostly abandoned since the mid-1990s, the concept has gradually returned to Spanish military journals and publications like the Navy’s “Revista General de Marina” or the U.S. Naval War College’s Center for Naval Thought quarterly publication, raising questions over the viability of adapting and restoring it as one of the pillars of Spanish maritime strategy. Yet, although Spanish submarine capabilities are expected to increase, Spain is not in a position to reinvigorate its 1970s and 1980s-era strategy.
The Balearic-Strait-Canary Axis and the Evolution of Spain’s Strategic Landscape
The Spanish Navy’s 1978 General Plan (“PLAGENAR”) gave birth to the concept of the Axis. It established that the center of gravity of Spain’s strategy ought to be the Strait of Gibraltar area and its prolonged accessed reaching to the two archipelagos. The document provided a geostrategic analysis to address both the global challenge posed by the USSR and local threats in northern Africa, which included Morocco’s expansionist ambitions and – in case of conflict – the protection of transatlantic convoys (as Spain would later do during Operation Desert Storm).
In October 1979 at a civil-military conference held in the Canary Islands, Spanish Minister of Defense Agustín Rodriguez defended the need for “bolstering our position in the geostrategic Balearic-Strait-Canary zone, with enough capacity to prevent any aggression against our sovereignty,” an idea he would reiterate on several other occasions in the Spanish Senate. The concept can also be found in unclassified reports by the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, which described it back in 1984 as “the hinge around which the Spanish defense effort swings, facing threats that may come from three areas: the western Mediterranean, the southern mid-Atlantic and North Africa.”
The logic of the Axis concept addressed both Spanish national security interests of the time and NATO’s collective security interests. The former was mainly focused in the region of North Africa and the protection of commercial shipping. The latter included the Spanish Navy’s contribution to NATO in the Western Mediterranean and Atlantic regions, plus the strategic position of the Canary Islands and the Strait in case of a Fourth Battle of the Atlantic against the USSR.
Figure 1. The Balearic-Strait-Canary Axis. Image from Revista Ejércitos.
The departure from the Axis concept became evident with Spain’s National Defense Directive 1/92, which did not make any reference to the Axis, justifying that “the conception of our security is not circumscribed to a concrete and immediate territorial space, given that our national interests also require protection beyond the limits of that space.” In other words, Spanish strategic focus shifted from its predominantly maritime orientation towards a land-centric one in which the Axis concept was no longer needed. The decline of the concept’s preeminence in Spanish geostrategic calculus also coincided with the shift experienced by most European nations in the late 1990s and early 2000s, which led to a sharp decline of European naval power.
At that time, the Spanish Navy had a strong and balanced fleet that included the R-11 Principe de Asturias light carrier (decommissioned in 2013), four amphibious ships, 11 guided missile frigates of the Canarias (five) and Santa María (six) classes (based on the Knox and Oliver Hazard Perry classes, respectively), eight submarines of the S-60 and S-70 classes (four + four), and a strong fleet of P-3As maritime patrol aircraft. Most of them have already been decommissioned, and together with scarce defense spending and subsequent failure to provide a replacement for some of those assets, the fleet of submarines has been left at just two units, and the maritime patrol aircraft fleet without P-3A Orion aircraft.
This decline in naval capabilities has been matched by the growing strategic instability around the Strait. Regional instability is mostly due to the emergence of massive flows of irregular immigrants reaching the Canary Islands from the coast of Africa since the mid-1990s and the gradual naval buildup of both Algeria and Morocco. Spain maintains tense diplomatic relations with Algeria following the incident with the Polisario Front leader in 2021, and it has ongoing territorial disputes with Morocco over the delimitation of their Exclusive Economic Zones (“EEZ”) near the Canary archipelago. These problems have been further aggravated by a lack of strategic culture and sea blindness among the Spanish population (and thus, its government). This affects the naval capabilities and maritime culture a country as Spain – with almost 5,000 miles of coast and a privileged strategic position – should have.
Restoring the Axis in Spain’s Maritime Strategy?
With an increasingly contested maritime environment and the possibility of a global-scale conflict closer than in the past decades, the Spanish Navy will have to keep working to strengthen its naval capabilities. Only then will Spain be ready to rethink its approach to the Balearic-Strait-Canary Axis and adapt it to the current reality, benefitting its security interests for a number of reasons.
From a national security perspective, it would serve as a defensive barrier against the irregular migration flows and illicit drug smuggling from the African continent. It would also help the fight against the enduring terrorist threat stemming from the Sahel region – a threat that has had a significant impact upon Spanish security and is also a great concern for NATO and the EU.
From a purely maritime and naval perspective, the Axis concept will likely have a central role in guiding Spanish efforts to protect its undersea domain, including critical undersea infrastructure and the natural resources of its EEZ. Furthermore, emphasizing the importance of controlling both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar allows for better protection of Spanish maritime commerce and naval activity around its territorial waters and EEZ.
Should a global conflict or crisis break out in the North Atlantic or Western Mediterranean, as mentioned before, the Strait region would bear strong strategic importance for NATO. As U.S. Naval War College professor Milan Vego argues, “by establishing control over straits and narrows in peacetime one creates the main prerequisites for gaining control in the adjacent sea or ocean shortly after the outbreak of hostilities.” The Axis concept could help Spain and its allies achieve this prior to a conflict.
However, Spain is not yet in a position to achieve these goals. Although the S-80 Plus program represents a positive leap forward for the Spanish Navy, it will not be enough to ensure a proper maritime posture across all areas of national interest. As long as Spain does not fully understand the importance of the sea for its national security in a growingly competitive world, and invests consequently to bring its Navy back to the force levels it had in the 1990s, restoring the Axis concept as the basis for its maritime strategy would be useless.
Gonzalo Vazquez is a junior analyst at the Spanish Naval War College’s Center for Naval Thought. The views expressed in this article are his own.
The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.