Spain rejects Balearics becoming NATO naval headquarters

In her X account, Belarra indicated that NATO military bases in Spain “not only represent an unacceptable cession of sovereignty, they are also playing a key role in the US support for the genocide that Israel is committing against the Palestinian people”.

Irene Montero also said: “Parliament voted for a President for Spain, not a NATO Secretary General. No to war. Not in our name”.
Meanwhile, the general coordinator of Més per Menorca, Josep Juaneda, has rejected this possibility and has assured that “the current geopolitical threats will not be solved by promoting rearmament policies or favouring violence, but by committing to dialogue and international harmony”.

According to El País, the Mahon naval base has become one of the three Spanish logistical support bases for NATO ships operating in the Mediterranean, along with Rota (Cádiz) and Cartagena (Murcia).
In April last year, the newspaper reported, the Spanish government offered Mahon to the Atlantic Alliance as a “port with permanent diplomatic authorisation” so that allied ships participating in Operation Sea Guardian could dock and anchor there, and since then it has been operating as such.

This operation, led by the Allied Maritime Command (Marcom), based in Northwood (United Kingdom), has as its missions deterrence and protection against terrorist attacks, knowledge of the maritime environment and the development of regional security capabilities, the newspaper added.
In the meantime, the Spanish frigate Navarra, deployed as part of NATO’s Sea Guardian operation, is scheduled to dock in the port of Mahon on 8 April.

The ship has put to sea from the Rota naval base in Cadiz to carry out security tasks in the Mediterranean and the Alboran Sea under operational command of the Atlantic Alliance’s Maritime Command Headquarters.
This is by no means her first visit to the island, confirming that Mahon is now in practice NATO’s third naval logistics support base in Spain, joining Cartagena in Murcia and Rota in Cadiz.

The activity of the Navy and NATO ships on missions in the Mediterranean is now even more relevant given the pre-war atmosphere in Europe since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Prime Minister of Poland, Donald Tusk, warned on Friday, in statements reported by several media and agencies, that “war is no longer a concept of the past”, but “is real and began more than two years ago”, and in this context the newspaper El País reported that in April 2023 the Spanish government offered Mahon to the Atlantic Alliance as a “port with permanent diplomatic authorisation”.
Now it appears to have changed its mind.