The 10th National Congress of the Technical Association of Ports and Coasts (ATPYC), which concluded Thursday at the Alfredo Kraus Auditorium in Las Palmas, brought the Naval Command of the Canary Islands and China’s state-owned shipping company Cosco to the same table. The company has been formally identified by the U.S. Department of Defense and NATO as a logistical and military instrument of Beijing. The event was co-chaired by Álvaro Rodríguez Dapena, president of Puertos del Estado from December 2021 to April 2025 and the public body’s current deputy director for International Strategy. Since June 2023, he has also served as honorary president of the ATPYC, which organized the event. Nothing discussed behind closed doors was disclosed, triggering serious diplomatic friction in an enclave of high sensitivity for the southern flank of the European Union.
Ethical degradation against Spain’s interests in the West
The Spanish Constitution does not apply in China. The audio recordings of the explanations provided by the Galician conference agency selected by Arana and Dapena are worthy of being deposited in the Library of the U.S. Congress, for when a geopolitics expert decides to analyze the ethical and moral degradation surrounding Rodríguez Dapena and the national leadership of Puertos del Estado. State personnel brought the Navy into an issue as sensitive as China. The conference company bought time by issuing a string of contradictory instructions, which have already been referred to the courts over preventing the media from accessing the public debate.
The media ban at the Alfredo Kraus
Although it was an event financed with public money and organized with the assistance of serving officials, the congress organizers—working through a Galician firm selected by Manuel Arana Burgos, director of Planning and Development at Puertos del Estado and former president of the association—barred the media from entering, arguing that it was “a private event.” In China, Rodríguez Dapena’s actions are governed by procedures very different from those in Spain.
The ban was intended to prevent any press coverage of the direct contact between the Navy’s senior command in the Canary Islands and the leadership of the Chinese giant, just as China is trying to overturn the ban on its operations in Galicia and Puertos del Estado has much to say on the matter. The question that the opaque Dapena did not want to answer before the media was logical: What do China’s geostrategic interests have to do with a congress on infrastructure? The maneuver obstructed journalists’ work, contrary to the position of the Las Palmas Port Authority, which had previously facilitated publicity for the forum, and directly clashing with Navy doctrine, which under no circumstances prevents the press from attending institutional events.
Public funding and coinciding allowances
The forum received direct financial backing from the General State Administration. The current acting president of Puertos del Estado, Gustavo Santana, ordered the congress sponsorship in August through the award of a small-value contract worth €14,950 to the Technical Association of Ports and Coasts (tax identification number G82431016). The event coincided on the island’s calendar with a meeting of the board of directors of the Port of Las Palmas, a session for which Rodríguez Dapena himself would receive €600 in travel and subsistence allowances. It is particularly striking that a technical congress organized months in advance scheduled its dates to coincide with a meeting of the governing body of the Gran Canaria port complex.
The ‘new order’ panel and the institutional double hat
The Chinese shipping company’s participation was arranged through the debate panel titled ‘Are ports ready for a new world order?’, which focused on security and strategic infrastructure. The panel brought together Rear Adm. Santiago de Colsa Trueba, commander of the Naval Command of the Canary Islands; Elías García Gutiérrez, senior advisor at Cosco Shipping Ports; Alberto Camarero Orive, professor at UPM’s School of Civil Engineering and director of the UPM–Puertos del Estado Chair; and Álvaro Rodríguez Dapena. The latter took part in the event and was identified in the official documentation solely as deputy director for International Strategy at Puertos del Estado, omitting his status as president of the association that organized the event.
The organization’s technical team
The congress’s organizational structure brought together a large group of senior public port officials and private-sector executives. On the public side were Antonia Bordón Guerra, head of Technical Land Management at the Las Palmas Port Authority; Araceli López Mentado, head of Projects and Works at the Las Palmas island facility; Ana Lope Carvajal, head of the Infrastructure Planning Department at Puertos del Estado; and José María Gómez Fuster, director of the Port Authority of Cartagena. From the private sector were Ana Ulloa Piñeiro, director of Aporta Consultores Estratégicos and a former port executive; Noelia González Patiño of Dragados; and Ignacio de la Peña Zarzuelo of Retailgas.
Geopolitical friction on the southern frontier
The attempt to normalize dealings with Cosco in the presence of Navy commanders contrasts with the warning maintained by Western intelligence agencies regarding the dual civilian and military use of Chinese transport terminals. The Port of Las Palmas thus becomes the setting for a maneuver in which Puertos del Estado’s bureaucratic apparatus supports engagement with Beijing’s strategic capital, ignoring the security guidelines governing critical infrastructure in the mid-Atlantic.
The article Dapena’s talk-shop operation puts Cosco face to face with the Navy in Las Palmas was first published on canarymaritime.com.
