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| · | Strait of Gibraltar Crossing |
| 0:00 | · | Could you imagine getting on a train in Madrid and getting off in Casablanca? Or how about jumping in |
| 0:04 | · | your car and driving from Europe to Africa in less than 30 minutes? If Spain and Morocco had their |
| 0:10 | · | way, that might be possible. They want to build an ambitious crossing over, or under, the Strait of |
| 0:16 | · | Gibraltar by the beginning of the next decade. I'm Regis, and in this video, we'll explore |
| 0:23 | · | the possibility of building a bridge or a tunnel between Europe and Africa |
| 0:27 | · | and why the 2030 World Cup could be the spark that sets everything in motion. |
| · | History of the Strait of Gibraltar |
| 0:33 | · | The Strait of Gibraltar lies where the Mediterranean Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean. |
| 0:37 | · | It's the only way ships can get directly from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, |
| 0:41 | · | and it's also part of a shortcut between the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean. Ships |
| 0:46 | · | travel through the Strait, along the Med, and then to the Indian Ocean via the Suez |
| 0:50 | · | Canal. The alternatives are a long trip around Africa or an even longer one across |
| 0:56 | · | the Pacific. As a result, more than 65,000 ships sail through the passage every year. |
| 1:03 | · | Because of its strategic importance, the countries around the Strait, and some from further afield, |
| 1:07 | · | have tried their best to claim the route as their own. From 1610 onward, |
| 1:12 | · | Spain had control most of the time. For three hundred years, anyone sailing through |
| 1:16 | · | had to identify who they were by flying their country's flag or face a volley of cannon fire. |
| 1:23 | · | One of the ways Spain managed to control the route entirely was by having a presence on |
| 1:27 | · | both coastlines. Even today, a tiny Spanish territory called Ceuta exists at the most |
| 1:33 | · | easterly point of the African side. Even so, not all of the European side belongs to Spain. |
| 1:40 | · | Opposite Ceuta on the European side is the Rock of Gibraltar, a small outcrop |
| 1:44 | · | that gives the Strait its name. You might know it best from videos of its mischievous Barbary |
| 1:49 | · | Macaques that terrorize tourists. Those monkeys, and the rest of the |
| 1:54 | · | Rock of Gibraltar, are a British Overseas Territory, so part of the United Kingdom, |
| 2:00 | · | and have been since a treaty was signed in 1713. Treaty or not, Spain has never recognized |
| 2:06 | · | Britain's sovereignty over Gibraltar and would like it back. The jury's out on the monkeys. |
| 2:13 | · | In 1907, France invaded Morocco, but they'd made a deal with Britain and Spain three years earlier, |
| 2:19 | · | promising not to build any new fortification on their side of the passage. After Morocco gained |
| 2:24 | · | independence in 1956, it took control of most of the southern half of the Strait, though not the |
| 2:30 | · | area around Ceuta. Now, control of the Strait is split between Morocco, Spain, and the UK. |
| · | Why Building a Crossing Makes Sense |
| 2:37 | · | It's not only access to the Atlantic that makes the Strait of Gibraltar important. At just over 14 |
| 2:43 | · | km at the narrowest point, it's also the shortest route from Africa to Europe and vice versa. |
| 2:49 | · | Of the 65,000 vessels that pass through the straits annually, thirty thousand cross |
| 2:54 | · | the narrow passage between Spain and Morocco, carrying millions of passengers and more than 13 |
| 3:00 | · | million cargo containers. With all those craft heading |
| 3:05 | · | East to West and those going from shore to shore, it's not surprising that the Strait is one of the |
| 3:10 | · | most crowded sea routes in the world. You might think that makes it dangerous, but it's not. They |
| 3:16 | · | have a range of systems to ensure safety, including patrol boats and watch stations. |
| 3:22 | · | Even so, a lot of traffic is moving over the Strait, and ships are slow, expensive, |
| 3:27 | · | and bad for the environment. That's why for some time, the people on both sides have wondered if |
| · | Could a Bridge Actually Work? |
| 3:33 | · | it might be better to build… A Permanent Crossing. |
| 3:38 | · | Okay so how could they do that? The first consideration would be |
| 3:42 | · | to build a bridge, and if they did that, it wouldn't be the first very long bridge built |
| 3:46 | · | across the sea. For example, Hong Kong's 55km Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge is much longer |
| 3:53 | · | than you'd need to cross the Strait of Gibraltar. However there are a couple of problems that make |
| 3:57 | · | a bridge in this location much more difficult. A bridge across the Strait of Gibraltar has to |
| 4:02 | · | put up with high winds. The climate in the Strait of Gibraltar is governed by |
| 4:06 | · | two winds – the Levante and Poniente – that run east to west or west to east, |
| 4:11 | · | depending on the season. These often reach 72km/h, and that could make a crossing pretty scary. |
| 4:19 | · | Some bridges already deal with gusts higher than that. For example, France's Millau Viaduct |
| 4:23 | · | doesn't shut down for traffic until wind speeds reach 110km/h. So perhaps that would even work. |
| · | The Greatest Challenge |
| 4:32 | · | The real problem with a bridge across the Strait isn't the distance or the wind. |
| 4:36 | · | It's the height, or should we say 'depth.' The average depth of the Strait is 365m, |
| 6:45 | · | with some of it as deep as 900m. Then, you'll need enough room for some of the largest ships |
| 6:51 | · | in the world to pass underneath. So the bridge needs to be even taller. |
| 6:55 | · | Building a bridge pillar at such depths underwater is just not realistic yet. The water pressure down |
| 7:01 | · | there is no joke—at that depth, it's around 30 times what you'd feel at sea level, putting |
| 7:07 | · | extreme stress on anything built to withstand it. Then there's the issue of strong currents and |
| 7:12 | · | tides, which would be constantly scouring the seabed, making it tricky to keep any |
| 7:17 | · | structure stable over time. And if human divers can't safely reach that depth, |
| 7:22 | · | then robots would be needed to handle everything from drilling to securing the foundation. Right |
| 7:27 | · | now, the deepest bridge foundation in the world is the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge in Japan, |
| 7:32 | · | which goes 60 meters underwater—over 300 meters would be a whole new level of difficulty. |
| 7:38 | · | And even if this wasn't a problem, they'd still have the seabed to contend with. |
| 7:42 | · | Surveys have shown it to be far from even with underwater mountain ranges, valleys, |
| 7:47 | · | and mud volcanoes. And then there's the chance the ground could just move. |
| 7:53 | · | The bridge would have to account for the Earth's tectonic plates. The African Plate |
| 7:58 | · | has been moving into the European Plate at one inch every two and a half years, |
| 8:02 | · | right where they'd want to build. These challenges haven't stopped |
| · | An Insane Proposal for a Gibraltar Bridge |
| 8:06 | · | people from putting ideas forward. In 1996, a brilliant structural engineer named Professor |
| 8:12 | · | Tung-Yen Lin suggested a bridge between Port Oliveros and Point Ceres. It's the |
| 8:17 | · | same man who once proposed a bridge across the Bering Strait from Russia to the USA. |
| 8:22 | · | His Gibraltar bridge would have been 14 km long, with insane 910-meter-tall towers. That would be, |
| 8:29 | · | by far, the biggest bridge ever built. Such an insane plan was obviously meant |
| 8:34 | · | more as an inspiring vision than an actual idea as this just pushes |
| 8:38 | · | the limits of what is considered achievable. So if a bridge seems impossible, let's take a |
| · | A Tunnel Between Continents |
| 8:44 | · | look at a more realistic method: How about… …An Intercontinental Tunnel. |
| 8:48 | · | It was 1930 when Spain first suggested building a tunnel, but the rock underneath the Strait was too |
| 8:54 | · | hard for the technology at that time. Undeterred, they suggested fastening a prefabricated concrete |
| 9:01 | · | tunnel with cables to the sea floor with cables. That idea was dropped, probably |
| 9:04 | · | because of the complex, mountainous seabed and the powerful currents that rush through the Strait. |
| 9:09 | · | The tunnel idea was taken seriously again in 2008. The plan was to build a rail tunnel that's |
| 9:15 | · | 27 km long and 475 meters deep between Tarifa in Spain and Tangier in Morocco. |
| 9:23 | · | But the design had all the problems a bridge had like the uneven landscape |
| 9:27 | · | at the seabed and the shifting Tectonic Plates. It also had the same depth issue, |
| 9:31 | · | though down instead of up. Depth wasn't a massive problem for the Channel Tunnel, |
| 9:36 | · | but the English Channel is only 174m deep, and the sea floor is pretty uniform. The 2008 tunnel |
| 9:43 | · | would have been nearly three times deeper than that and cut through potentially unstable rock. |
| 9:49 | · | Deeper and much longer tunnels, like the Gotthard Base Tunnel in Switzerland have been built - that |
| 9:54 | · | one is 57 km long and 2.3 km deep, so much longer and deeper than any Strait of Gibraltar |
| 10:01 | · | tunnel would need to be even if they dug through the deepest point. It must be noted, however, |
| 10:05 | · | that the Gotthard Base Tunnel passes under stable mountains, not the sea at a plate boundary. |
| 10:11 | · | In the end, the plan was shelved because it was thought to be almost impossible. |
| · | Gibraltar's New 2030 Tunnel |
| 10:17 | · | Then, on October 4th, 2023, Morocco, Spain, and Portugal won the competition to host the 2030 FIFA |
| 10:24 | · | World Cup. That's reawakened the tunnel idea, and Spain and Morocco seem to at least give it a try. |
| 10:31 | · | Right now, the Moroccan National Company for Strait Studies, or short SNED, is carrying |
| 10:36 | · | out a feasibility study. And Spain has been doing the same since 2023 via the |
| 10:41 | · | Spanish Society for Fixed Communication Studies across the Strait of Gibraltar. |
| 10:46 | · | So what initially sounds like a hypothetical idea is actually being examined more closely |
| 10:51 | · | and could actually become a reality. The new plan is to build a single rail |
| 10:55 | · | tunnel from Madrid in Spain to Casablanca in Morocco, heading under the Strait |
| 11:00 | · | between Punta Paloma and Punta Malabata. The new tunnel would be about the same |
| 11:04 | · | depth as the 2008 plan, but a lot longer at nearly 42km. That's still shorter than the |
| 11:10 | · | Gotthard Base Tunnel, so it's not impossible. As for the cost, recent estimates have put that |
| 11:16 | · | at $6 - $10.5 billion. By contrast, the Channel Tunnel cost $14.5 billion, which is roughly |
| 11:23 | · | $28.5 billion in today's money. So surprisingly the current estimate for the Gibraltar tunnel |
| 11:29 | · | is a lot less. However, we also know that these estimates are often not very realistic. |
| 11:38 | · | Like the Channel Tunnel, the two countries plan to share the costs |
| 11:41 | · | by borrowing from European and African lenders. It makes financial sense because the new route is |
| 11:46 | · | predicted to carry 12.8 million passengers between Europe and Africa every year. It |
| 11:52 | · | will also boost the economies at both ends. Not only will the construction create jobs, |
| 11:57 | · | but it will also increase trade between the entire EU, North Africa, and beyond. |
| 12:03 | · | Morocco and Spain hope that it'll be built and operational before the first game of the |
| 12:08 | · | tournament kicks off in June 2030, although in our opinion that seems highly unlikely. As of |
| 12:14 | · | this video, there's no solid start date or deadline, but you never know. A World |
| 12:19 | · | Cup can be a powerful incentive, especially in the football-obsessed Iberian Peninsula. |
| 12:26 | · | What do you think about the idea of a Strait of Gibraltar crossing? Do you think at some |
| 12:30 | · | point of time this tunnel will exist? Or do you think that's never gonna happen? |
| 12:34 | · | Let us know in the comments below. Thank you for watching, and we will see you in the next one! |
