SAIC Motor plant in Ferrol: Spanish Navy warns of security risk

The Chinese car plant putting Spain's Navy on alert in Ferrol

Here is a paradox that even the sharpest geopolitical analyst could not untangle without a smile: the Spanish Navy has spent decades trying to shield the Ferrol arsenal and its F-100 frigates, and now it will have to share the estuary with a Chinese car factory. SAIC Motor, the automotive giant from Shanghai, has chosen the port of Ferrol for its first plant in Spain, a short distance from the quays where the fleet's supply ships are moored. Military reports circulating this August warn: "It is a threat".

Genuine risk or electoral wildcard

The military warning has not gone down well with those who see this deal as the biggest lifeline for a region still mourning the closure of the public shipyards. On the other side, the numbers: Navantia supports 1,885 direct workers in Ferrol, plus another 9,000 counting the auxiliary industry and the supply chain. SAIC's arrival promises to put many more to work. So the question is not whether there is a risk — there always is — but why it is being invoked now and not when arms contracts with third countries were signed.

Double standards at the Ministry

The memory of Altri is unavoidable. That Portuguese pulp project in Lugo ran into a wall of environmental reports and institutional rejection. SAIC, however, has been welcomed with the red carpet and the "industrial hub" rhetoric before Brussels. The difference is plain to see: one would have created dozens of jobs and a political problem for the Galician government; the other promises thousands of jobs and an electoral photo for Madrid. The suspicion that security is applied selectively runs through the analysis of this project.

The full file, with the military reports and the developers' submissions, remains under wraps. Meanwhile, the Ferrol estuary will keep the Navy on one side and the assembly line on the other. Who wins in the end? It will depend on whether the military report becomes a veto or just a scrap of paper for a project that has already started turning the key in the lock. Judging by the track record of Spanish industrial policy, no one would bet on a sure thing.