Since 2026, 50% of the business of the tugboats owned by Opcsa in Las Palmas, that is, Mediterranean Shipping, is under direct interest from MSC at the port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. This does not take into account that Boluda has sold 50% of its terminal business in Tenerife and Las Palmas to the Kingdom of Morocco. The company where Felipe González works pressures, backed by UGT and CC.OO, to prevent Spain from heeding Brussels and putting an end to this anachronism. The red and yellow flag at the stern of the tugs is today a legal facade that allows MSC and Boluda to control the value chain vertically in critical ports such as Tenerife or Las Palmas, blocking the entry of other European operators that would provide the transparency and competition that Brussels demands.
A complete example for the youth
Maritime towing in the Canary Islands has become the last bastion of a protectionism that defies the logic of the European single market. Under the shelter of Regulation (EU) 2017/352, the Spanish state maintains a requirement for national registration for tugboats operating in its ports, hindering the employment of locals. This measure, officially justified by security and sovereignty reasons, acts in practice as an administrative lock protecting the hegemony of Boluda Towage against community competition. However, the narrative of the ‘Spanishness’ of the service clashes directly with the reality of the shareholder book: 50% of the company today belongs to the Italian-Swiss giant MSC.
This strategic alliance with Mediterranean Shipping Company, the largest container operator in the world, empties the argument of national sovereignty of its content. The requirement for a Spanish flag no longer protects an independent local champion, but rather a corporate structure where profits and key decisions are shared with a foreign multinational based in Geneva.
Isn’t Boluda satisfied with bananas?
The anachronism is blatant in a port ecosystem that demands agility. By imposing the national flag, Spain creates an artificial entry barrier that Regulation 2017/352 itself sought to eradicate in order to reduce logistical costs. While port authorities defend this requirement as a strategic safeguard, they allow a single entity—half-owned by the system’s largest customer—to dictate service conditions. This ‘convenience patriotism’ guarantees de facto monopoly rents under the pretext of a national identity that capital markets have already erased from the map.
Legal Frontier
The European Commission observes this shielding model with increasing skepticism. Financial transparency and non-discriminatory access are the cornerstones of community regulations, two concepts that hardly fit with a regulation that demands nationality for machines but accepts global capital in the boards of directors. The wear of this model is evident: Spain protects an administrative border for a business that has already been given over to global interests of MSC. Spanish towing is not today a matter of state, but rather a private asset safeguarded by a law that refuses to acknowledge that its main beneficiary no longer responds solely to the interests of Madrid or the Canary Islands.
