Spain and U.S. sign the deployment of two more destroyers in Rota four days before Sánchez’s visit to the White House

The Rota naval base (Cádiz) will host two more American destroyers, which will Will join the four that are already deployed at present.. The Ministry of Defense and the U.S. Embassy in Spain have signed this Monday the agreement for the arrival of two additional U.S. Navy ships.

Precisely this pact was reached by the Spanish president, Pedro Sanchez, and U.S. president, Joe Biden, in June last year during the NATO summit in Madrid, and the ratification of this agreement takes place four days before the former’s visit to the White House.in Washington, at the invitation of the latter.

The agreement was signed by the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, and the U.S. Ambassador to Spain, Julissa Reynoso, on behalf of the respective governments. It is a modification of the Defense Cooperation Agreement which both countries have maintained for decades and which, apart from Rota and among other things, involves the deployment of US Marines at the base of Morón de la Frontera (Seville).

The agreement signed this Monday allows to extend from four to six ships the authorization to station in Rota, without modifying either the missions or the types of forces. nor the maximum force levels of both U.S. civilian and U.S. military personnel currently authorized for that base in the Defense Agreement, which remains in full force and effect.

For the Ministry of Defense, with the signing of this agreement “Spain and the United States thus reiterate their commitment to the Atlantic Alliance. in this new context of the war in Ukraine and the security environment in Europe.sharing its concern for the situation in the Mediterranean and Africa and also conveying a message of responsibility and reassurance in the South, to which this agreement confers a singular strategic importance”.

The deployment of the two additional warships is scheduled to materialize in the coming years, one in 2024 and the next in the following years. To explain the agreement, the Minister of Defense will register on Tuesday a request to appear before the Congressional Defense Committee.

The formula chosen for the agreement has been the modification of an amendment to the treaty, which makes it possible that it does not have to be voted on by Congress and ‘bridging’ in this way the discrepancies expressed by the minority partner of the coalition government, Unidas Podemos, when the extension of the Defense Agreement was announced.