The Government stepped in this Monday to quell the uproar caused by reports about warnings from the Defense Ministry and the CNI regarding the project to install a Chinese factory in Ferrol, the city that houses one of the largest facilities of the Spanish Navy and the military shipyard of Navantia. The Executive made it clear that it maintains its support for the factory planned by the largest Chinese electric car manufacturer, SAIC Motor, with a planned investment of 200 million euros and the consequent creation of a thousand jobs in a region that has long suffered from economic depression. Pedro Sánchez’s Cabinet wanted to send a reassuring message amid concerns raised both among the Galician authorities — the PP-led Xunta considers it a strategic investment — and Sumar, the Government’s minority partner.
The Ministry of Defense and the National Intelligence Center (CNI) have expressed their fear that the industrial initiative could facilitate espionage operations by China. The factory would be built in the outer port of the Galician city, about five kilometers in a straight line from the arsenal, the largest of the Navy in northern Spain, where five Álvaro de Bazán class (F-100) frigates and two combat supply ships (BAC) are based. Very close are also the facilities of the Navantia military shipyard, which builds warships sold to other countries. The project is pending final authorization from the Council of Ministers and has the full support of the Xunta of Galicia. The Galician president, the Popular Party’s Alfonso Rueda, sees it as an opportunity to relaunch a region that has never fully recovered from the naval restructuring of the 1980s, a decline captured in a journalistic label: “The Spanish Detroit.”
Sources from La Moncloa specify that Defense’s objections, due to hypothetical risks to national security, are just one of the reports issued by various bodies during the processing of projects of this magnitude. They emphasize that in no case is that opinion binding. The person tasked with voicing the official Government position was the Minister of Digital Transformation, Óscar López, who stated: “All industrial investments of that scale always have reports analyzing economic viability, job creation, industrial impact, and, of course, national security as well. Normally, all these elements are being analyzed, as in any other operation of that size, to guarantee such an important investment for the area, job creation, and industry.” López emphasized the message that the Executive trusts that the Chinese investment “will be compatible with guaranteeing industrial development, job creation, and national security.”
Pedro Sánchez himself had shown interest in the project during his last trip to China last April, and the Government has maintained contacts with the manufacturing company to encourage it to carry out the investment. The Galician president also traveled to the Asian giant to make arrangements in favor of the location in Ferrol and, in terms unusual in the current climate of confrontation between the two major parties, praised the collaboration of the two administrations to attract the new industry.
Rueda was quick this Monday to express his concern about the news regarding unfavorable military reports, which distrust the Chinese interest in choosing Ferrol over other possible locations. “I don’t like them nor do I think they do any favors to the project,” said the successor to Alberto Núñez Feijóo at the head of the Galician Government, in statements in Marín (Pontevedra). Rueda, who was already aware of the military objections from a conversation with the Defense Minister, Margarita Robles, criticized: “It is hard to understand. This is a file that the Government and the Xunta have been processing jointly for many months, where we know its content and the different circumstances involved perfectly, and it is surprising that a department of the central Government now makes these statements when at no time was there talk of lack of security or military risk.” He urged the Executive to “make national security compatible” with the continuation of the project.
The Galician president highlighted the importance of the investment for an “area especially in need of this type of opportunity.” There, in Ferrol, the concern caused by the Defense warnings was translated into the immediate reaction of the mayor, José Manuel Rey Varela, also from the PP and also president of the Senate Defense Commission. Rey Varela attributed the alerts “more to business interests than to security.” “No one would understand now an unfavorable report from any central Government body,” he warned.
From the other side of the ideological spectrum, Sumar also sees unconfessed interests behind the disclosed alerts. Enrique Santiago, deputy spokesperson of the formation in Congress, pointed to NATO as the spearhead of the struggle between the United States and China for world hegemony. “We will defend that the Government does not put up any problems, because it is not the Army, it is NATO that is pressuring,” he assured. Like the Ferrol mayor, Sumar gives no credibility to the supposed espionage risk associated with the factory: “If China wants to spy on the Navy, don’t they have satellites? Can’t they launch cyberattacks?”
Santiago highlighted the support of the unions for a plan that combines “quality employment and a commitment to digitalization and energy transition.” With it, he added, Spain can advance in the aspiration to become “the first European producer of electric cars.”
A hypothetical renunciation of the project, which the consulted sources completely rule out, would cause strong tension within the Government. The second vice president and until recently leader of Sumar, the Ferrol native Yolanda Díaz, is another of its great defenders. During an official trip to China last May, Díaz made arrangements in its favor with the authorities of the People’s Republic and the executives of the SAIC company.
The Chinese industry seeks with the Ferrol plant its entry into the European market through the former British brand MG. At the beginning of July, it already carried out a landing test of material in the Ferrol port with a ship that transported 700 vehicles there. Rueda then received company executives led by its vice president, Wu Bing, at his official residence in Santiago. SAIC Motor intends to assemble the cars in the Galician city with parts brought from China. The project promises to boost auxiliary industry and a logistics center in the town of As Pontes, in the same region.
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