Spain and U.S. plan to sign before Sanchez’s visit to the White House the arrival of two new destroyers at Rota

Spain and the United States plan to sign before next May 12 the reform of the bilateral defense agreement that will allow the establishment in the naval base of Rota (Cadiz) of two new destroyers as part of NATO’s anti-missile shield., which will join the four already installed there since 2014 and 2015.

Sources from the Ministry of Defense have assured that the agreement is already in its final drafting stage and will be sealed before the meeting between the Chief Executive, Pedro Sánchez, and the President of the United States, Joe Biden, on May 12 at the White House.

The expansion of the U.S. military presence in Rota was already agreed by Biden and Sanchez in the bilateral meeting they held at the Moncloa Palace in June last year on the occasion of the NATO Summit held in Madrid.

Since then, the U.S. Administration and the Ministry of Defense have been working in a continuous. exchange of proposals for the reform of the treaty, which has now been finalized and only the final phase of checking the correctness of the Spanish and English versions remains.

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Expanding military collaboration

This agreement will give continuity to the commitment expressed by Sanchez and Biden with the military agreement sealed in 1988, which allows the shared use of the bases of Moron (Seville) and Rota and which they described as. “a fundamental piece” of bilateral defense cooperation between the two countries.

The extension of this collaboration will take the form of the arrival at Rota of two new destroyer ships, which will. will be added to the four already there. permanently deployed since 2014 and 2015. The forecast is their arrival in Spain in 2024 and 2025, at the rate of one AEGIS destroyer, with its crew and embarked equipment, in each of those years.

Without going through Congress

The formula chosen for the agreement has been the modification of an amendment to the treaty, which makes it possible to does not have to pass through the Congress of Deputies.. This will make it possible to ‘bridge’ the discrepancies expressed by Unidas Podemos when the extension of the treaty was announced.

The Council of Ministers already gave its endorsement last January, stressing that this expansion of the U.S. presence in Spain contributes to “strengthening NATO’s ballistic missile defense system.”

The government justified the deployment “in view of the new security challenges posed in our environmentwhich require maximum coordination to continue to maintain the security of Spain and the United States and the mutual contribution of both countries to the Atlantic Alliance and international security”.