Maritime Security on NATO's Southern Flank: The Defense of a Spanish Coast Guard

With the return of great power skill and the prospect of a highly contested maritime space in the Euro-Atlantic area, NATO will have to play a more active role at sea to preserve stability and freedom of navigation. The protection of maritime commerce and critical undersea infrastructures, core topic engines of global Economics , are now combined with the need to strengthen naval deterrence and high-level combat capabilities. However, balancing both ends of the spectrum is likely to prove very difficult given the current fiscal constraints on allied defense expense . Allied governments and their navies will need to maximize their available resources and use them as efficiently as possible, especially in maritime security-related missions and operations.

Unlike many of its NATO allies, Spain does not currently have a Coast Guard to protect its waters. Instead, it has several services with different competencies, under the responsibility of six national ministries. While these services provide a constant presence throughout Spain's maritime territory, they lack a unified command and are often ill-equipped to perform their duties effectively. Last year's tragic episode in Barbate, Cadiz, where two civil guards were killed when rammed by a drug smuggling vessel while attempting to intercept it, is a case in point.

Following the example of many of its European and U.S. allies in NATO, it is worth exploring the possibility of establishing a Spanish Coast Guard that would merge all these existing services into a single professional service with a unified and clearly defined command structure. While the process would undoubtedly face considerable bureaucratic and economic hurdles in the short to medium term, it would be highly beneficial in the long term, providing NATO's southern flank with a greater police presence, especially at the busy approaches to the strategic Strait of Gibraltar.

NATO's southern maritime flank

After decades of a predominantly continental orientation to the Alliance's strategic calculus, and following the war in Ukraine, which still maintains most of its focus on its eastern flank, the return of great power skill has generated new and old threats to maritime stability around NATO's maritime flanks. The Baltic Sea has been the scene of a series of attacks on critical undersea infrastructure, prompting an increase in maritime surveillance resources. Despite receiving less attention, the security landscape in the Mediterranean region is also undergoing significant transformation.

As Jeremy Stöhs and Sebastian Bruns state, "with the return of great power skill and the corresponding activities of revisionist actors in the wider Mediterranean region, the Mediterranean has re-emerged strongly as a contested body of water." As a consequence, "Western policymakers should review their approaches to the use of naval power in the region." Among the major naval powers in the region, Italy has demonstrated a commendable commitment to strengthening its naval power and maritime presence throughout its 'extended Mediterranean', as evidenced by the ambitious plans announced for the Marina Militare and its successful deployments to protect merchant shipping in the Red Sea.

Among the most urgent security challenges for Spanish and NATO maritime security are the well-known and necessary protection of critical undersea infrastructures, especially in the south, the prevention of irregular migratory flows and the smuggling of drugs and weapons. There is also the relatively recent threat posed by the so-called Russian Dark Fleet. These vessels, "involved in illegal operations that in order to avoid sanctions seek to circumvent various aspects of maritime regulation and insurance provisions," operate in a manner that "the complexity of ownership and operating Structures deliberately seeks to obscure and confuse." Spain is highly vulnerable to environmental disasters due to the high traffic of Dark Fleet vessels on its coasts, as several Spanish analysts have been warning for years.

The need for a regeneration of allied naval power in its southern territory calls for a careful assessment of the existing Structures and agencies charged with providing the necessary policing and deterrence. A case in point is Spain, a major naval power in the Mediterranean and an active contributor to the Alliance's Standing Maritime Groups. Beyond the challenges facing the Navy today, including the need for a larger submarine fleet, the organization of Spain's highly decentralized police presence remains a constant headache for many within its maritime community.

The dilemma of the Spanish maritime police

A quick glance at Spain's position on the world map reveals its strong geographical inclination towards the sea. Its extensive coastlines in both the Mediterranean (including the Balearic Islands), the Cantabrian Sea and the Atlantic Ocean (including the Canary Islands), as well as its position as guardian of the Strait of Gibraltar, make it one of the most maritime nations in all of Europe. However, as history reveals, Spain's political elites have traditionally neglected this predisposition in favor of a highly contradictory continental mentality, thus preventing them from taking advantage of all the opportunities that the sea could bring to their national prosperity. In summary, Madrid has failed to comply with one of Alfred Thayer Mahan's pillars of maritime power: the character of government.

One of the main aspects in which this negligence is currently manifested is the complex organization of its numerous maritime services. Spain's policing presence around its territorial waters and EEZs comprises diverse actors and institutions, with overlapping and decentralized tasks and functions. This results in wasted effort and valuable resources that could otherwise be managed much more efficiently and effectively, particularly at a time when maritime services across Europe have a special demand to defend their existence and need for funding in the face of continental-minded political leadership.

Until 1986, maritime security responsibilities fell to the Customs Surveillance Service, focused on maritime interdiction operations, and the Navy, in the fulfillment of its military responsibilities and any other necessary tasks entrusted to it by any ministry. In 1986, the Government passed the Law on State Security Forces and Corps, which led to the establishment of new institutions involved in maritime surveillance operations. The first two were the Maritime Service(SEMAR) of the Civil Guard and the Maritime Safety and Rescue Service(SASEMAR), which were followed by others such as the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO), the Social Marine Institute (ISM) or the administrative office General of Maritime Fishing(SEGEPESCA).

Currently, the Navy is responsible for the surveillance and security of all maritime areas under Spanish sovereignty, from the coast to the EEZ boundary, from a national security perspective. The Customs Surveillance Service retains exclusive competences in customs and fiscal subject within the territorial sea, while the Maritime Civil Guard Service does the same in judicial, fiscal and management assistant subject also within the territorial sea.

Thus, these and other agencies with similar tasks and responsibilities - all equipped with their own small fleets of ships, aircraft and independent command and control systems - have gradually resulted in the establishment of an almost hydra-like maritime police presence. It is inefficient and uneconomical given the overlapping responsibilities.

Overall, as retired Lieutenant Commander Fernando Novoa argues, the existence of agency-specific competencies, culture, responsibilities, training and procedures results in a veritable amalgam of ship types and aircraft models, which exacerbates the overwhelming lack of standardization. This translates into expensive and unnecessary maintenance, logistical and operational costs.

A Spanish Coast Guard

In view of these problems, and taking advantage of the existing discussion in Spanish maritime and naval circles, Spain should explore the creation of a Coast Guard with a model similar to that of the United States, Norway or Italy. A professional service is needed that collaborates with the Navy and assumes all civilian and security functions. This would eliminate the existing dilemma and resolve the duplications that exist between so many different institutions.

The idea is by no means new. On the contrary, it has been raised on numerous occasions in Spanish maritime debates. However, the argument needs to be broadened to include a discussion of the benefits that the establishment of such an institution could have for NATO's security presence on its southern flank.

Captain (r) Francisco Romero has been another advocate of the need for "a Coast Guard fully manager all the tasks of surveillance and national security, judicial, fiscal, management assistant, customs and control of contraband throughout the Spanish territorial sea". In his opinion, such an institution should be under the operational command of the Navy, taking the U.S. Coast Guard as a model , and also coordinating its activities with the Air Force's Maritime Patrol resources and the Navy's own offshore patrol vessels and their associated platforms.

Ideally, the creation of a Spanish Coast Guard should merge into a single service all (or most) of the existing services, with their resources and functions under the unified command of a single institution independent of the Navy and manager to the Chief of Defense Staff and the Ministry of Defense (as proposed by Frigate Captain Novoa). Others have even considered the creation of a single maritime border police force under the Ministry of the Interior. Logically, in the event of conflict, the fewer services that need to be coordinated to support the Navy, the better.

However, the successful establishment of such a service would face significant administrative and bureaucratic hurdles, given the variety of ministries and actors involved in the process. The first and perhaps most important unknown is which government actor should be the ultimate manager . As mentioned, both the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of the Interior are the most likely candidates. The second question is what resources should be pooled to constitute the new service. The various proposals put forward over the years range from merging only some existing institutions, leaving others with limited competencies, to merging all of them into a single service collaborating with the Navy (either under its command or separately). In the latter case, the Navy could provide the necessary human resources to reinforce the expertise of the staff. Perhaps the first step could be a reassessment of the current services to eliminate duplication of responsibilities before merging them into a new single service.

Although the process is lengthy and costly, the establishment of a Spanish Coast Guard would allow for greater interoperability between allied coast guard services on NATO's southern flank. This, in turn, would benefit the alliance by supporting security operations such as Operation Active Endeavour (OAE). Since its establishment in 2016, as the successor to Operation Sea Guardian, OAE has provided a significant presence on the alliance's southern flank. Its main missions include supporting maritime status knowledge , defending freedom of navigation, conducting interdiction tasks, countering maritime terrorism, contributing to capacity development , countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and protecting critical infrastructure. The operation is supported by allied navies, which provide surface and submarine units, maritime patrol aircraft and airborne early warning aircraft.

With the pressing demand for additional naval capabilities and the need to deploy larger warships (frigates and destroyers) to high-level operations, rather than purely maritime security operations, southern NATO coastguards could participate in support operations such as OAE to free up military units for high-level tasks. Even without integrating into these operations, the mere presence of European coastguards in the Mediterranean and the Strait of Gibraltar would provide an additional and more structured maritime presence. Most of the current challenges at sea can be mitigated to some extent by increased knowledge of the maritime domain, something for which the coastguards are more than capable.

Overall, NATO's maritime threats and challenges have highlighted the need for increased awareness and naval presence, assuming that budgetary constraints will remain a major obstacle to expanding the size of navies, both in terms of assets and staff. Governments and allied staffs must strive to find the most effective ways to maximize the use of their available assets.

Conclusion

While the case of the Spanish police presence at sea is very specific in the broader NATO context, it remains a telling example of the complex challenges facing the Alliance today. At a time when European nations are called upon to play a more important and relevant role in protecting Europe's maritime flanks, amid significant budgetary constraints, allies must strive to maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of their maritime institutions and avoid any unnecessary duplication of effort.

The past decades have witnessed the emergence of a wide range of asymmetric threats in its waters, including ongoing attacks against critical undersea infrastructure, irregular trafficking of people and drugs from the African continent, or the imminent risk of environmental disaster posed by Russia's dark fleet. These threats overlap with the ongoing need for high-level naval capabilities, as the Red Sea crisis demonstrated.

Overall, the European maritime and naval services will have to intensify their efforts and assume greater responsibility as the United States continues to shift its priorities to the other side of the world. Spain and its need for a single Coast Guard to assume responsibility for closer security operations is a clear example of the necessary changes that allies will be forced to consider in order to succeed in this new era of great power skill at sea. The need for a Spanish Coast Guard is just one example, among many, of the debates that European NATO nations will face in making the most of their limited resources and finding the most efficient ways to do so.

* This text was originally published in English by the Center for International Maritime Security (CIMSEC), April 22, 2025.

Gonzalo Vázquez is associate researcher at the Center for Naval Thought of the Spanish Naval War College and team member of GASS.