Military mobility becomes part of the transport policy of the European Union and this will entail a new requirement for Spain: to accelerate the connection of its main port centers with the international gauge. Spain must be able to send trains with troops, military material and other equipment to Eastern Europe, if necessary. The warning lights went on this week in Brussels. Military mobility is the new watchword on the circuits that connect the European Commission with NATO headquarters.
Militarization is advancing faster than it seems in European structures. Not everything is limited to a succession of public statements in favor of more defense spending. Some changes in focus are beginning to be visible, such as the one that took place this week at the biannual meeting of European rail corridors, the Connecting Europe Days forum, in which the main people responsible for transport policy in the European Union participate with representatives of all the countries involved in the construction of the nine railway axes that are currently a priority, among them, the Mediterranean corridor, which has been discussed so much in Spain.
The novelty this year has been the presence in the debates of senior officers of the General Staff of the European Union (EUMS), operational command of all operations carried out in the field of the common security and defense policy. Dutch General Gert Dobben, head of the logistics division of the European General Staff, was in charge of announcing the new approach: military mobility must be one of the priorities of the European railway network.
Main focus: Ukraine, Moldova, the three Baltic republics (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), along with Spain and Portugal. What do these countries, located at the two ends of the European continental shelf, have in common? These seven countries barely have a direct connection to the European railway network. Its conventional railway networks are isolated from the rest of Europe since they were built with different gauges. In the three Baltic republics, in Ukraine and in Moldova, a republic located between Romania and Ukraine, the Russian railway gauge predominates: 1520 millimeters.
For freight trains in Spain and Portugal, the old Iberian gauge continues to rule: 1668 millimeters. It was once said that the Iberian width protected Spain from an outside invasion. Today the Iberian width would prevent Spain from being an effective rearguard in the event of a military conflict that overflows the borders of Ukraine. The cries of alarm from prominent European politicians, the last of them, Donald Tusk, Prime Minister of Poland, do not arouse unanimity in Spain. An important part of public opinion is suspicious of this alarmism and perceives it with a certain suspicion: war drums to spend more on weapons. In the societies of Eastern Europe the dominant feeling is different, and in Brussels contingency plans are beginning to be drawn up.
Spain, isolated from the rest of Europe, having the largest high-speed network in the EU, the second in the world behind China? The almost 4,000 kilometers of European gauge tracks that make up the powerful Spanish high-speed radial network are obsessively connected to Madrid and can only be used for passenger transport. The AVE network is not designed for freight trains and heavy military convoys. Nobody thought about freight traffic along European width until talk began about the Mediterranean corridor, a project that José María Aznar strongly rejected in 2002, and that the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero managed to include in the map of European priorities in 2011. after many discussions. Aznar did not want Barcelona to have a key position in the Spanish logistics network. Catalans and Valencians pressed in favor of the Mediterranean corridor.
The European track gauge is 1435 millimeters. Currently, Barcelona is the only metropolitan node on the Iberian Peninsula that can send long freight trains to the European network without axle problems. The rest of the Mediterranean corridor is still under construction. If necessary, the EU and NATO could only use Barcelona to send military convoys to Eastern Europe by rail. Since the Barcelona port is also home to the largest regasification station in the Mediterranean (owned by Enagas), we can affirm that Barcelona is today a place of high strategic interest for NATO. Bad times for the Russian fantasies with which a sector of the Catalan independence movement flirted. Bad times also for the biography of former president Aznar: his was the decision to delay the Mediterranean corridor.
The military revaluation of the gauge also illuminates the recent takeover bid by the Hungarian consortium Ganz Mavag, backed by the Government of Budapest, for the Spanish company Talgo. One of Talgo's assets is the patent for the construction of trains with axle change. Trains capable of running on different track widths. Talgo in Hungarian hands would make the Government of Víktor Orban, a member of the EU and at the same time an ally of the Russian regime, an important operator in those Eastern countries that need to connect the Russian gauge with the European network.
Military mobility. This is the new concept.
