Ceuta crisis clouds Vicente Boluda’s plan
The crisis in Ceuta has thrown dirt over the Vicente Boluda project from Valencia of bringing Morocco into the port premises in the Canaries to handle sensitive business data for the islands’ logistics, in other words, to test Spain’s economic sovereignty in the archipelago. This Monday, the president of Gran Canaria, Antonio Morales, confirmed that the central government has the purchase of 45% of Boluda’s terminals by the state company Marsa Maroc paralysed following the complaint filed by the island in January 2026.
From Las Palmas, the operation received a lawsuit, and in Tenerife, according to Canarymaritime, a professional organisation. In Las Palmas, it was backed by the employers’ association of which a senior Boluda executive is part of the board of the Las Palmas port, Javier Climent. Fedeport, and Oneport’s thesis is assumed to coincide with Morales’s, as does Asocelpa. On the board of Boluda Corporation, which is a shareholder in Cope, sits Felipe González. There, the source of the attacks by the former PSOE secretary general against Pedro Sánchez, and by the president of Castilla–La Mancha, Emilio García-Page, a trusted man of José Bono, former minister of Defence, and now an entrepreneur with companies based in Tangier, would have to be found.
“Trojan horse”
Up to now, the official line said all of this was closed, but Morales has sparked doubts about the opaque sale of a state concession that has not also been discussed in the boards of the ports of Las Palmas and Santa Cruz de Tenerife. He said: “The acquisition of 45% of Boluda—port and shipping operator with a presence in the Canaries—by Marsa Maroc, a semi-public Moroccan company, I doubt that this operation will not affect the Canaries or the security of the State; I know that it is being studied by the Junta de Inversiones Exteriores and it must pass through the Council of Ministers, and I insist that it be assessed rigorously.”
Gran Canaria’s island president, Antonio Morales, placed the entry of Moroccan state capital into the Boluda group at the centre of the geostrategic threat looming over the Canaries. The acquisition of 45% of the tugboat subsidiary of the port operator by the semi-public company Marsa Maroc represents, according to the island leader, a Trojan horse that compromises the operating sovereignty of the archipelago’s critical infrastructure and the security of the State itself.
Economic weakening plan
For the island president, the combination of Dakhla’s advance and Marsa Maroc’s landing in Boluda is not down to market coincidences, but to a deliberate plan to weaken the economy. Morales calls for a firm response from the Government of Spain to prevent the main port of the Mid-Atlantic from ending up subject to the geostrategic interests of a neighbour that uses migration, military pressure and commercial diplomacy as tools of political blackmail.
The operation, which is currently under the scrutiny of the Junta de Inversiones Exteriores and pending a ruling by the Council of Ministers, would give Rabat an unprecedented share of control over the first maritime and tug operator with a presence in the Port of La Luz and Las Palmas. Morales brands the tepid response of both state and regional institutions to this corporate penetration as “irresponsibility”, stressing that it is unacceptable to allow a firm controlled by the Alaouite Kingdom to take key positions in the supply chain and the day-to-day operations of the Canarian quays.
This corporate move aligns with the port expansion strategy promoted by Morocco in the Western Sahara. Morales again launched a hard attack on the commercial mission driven by the public company Proexca and the employers’ association Fedeport to encourage Canarian businesspeople to invest in the construction of the Dakhla mega-port. With an investment of 1.3 billion euros, the Moroccan infrastructure in the Western Sahara is designed to replicate the Tánger Med model and wrest leadership of transatlantic transshipment from Las Palmas.
Morales persuaded Moncloa to halt Morocco’s entry into Boluda terminals in the Canaries on national security grounds. This article was first published at canarymaritime.com.
