Spain seeks expanded military role in post-Brexit Europe, including leading the fight against piracy

With naval power Britain at the EU’s exit door, Spain has gone on the offensive to be the next major player defending European shores.

Madrid’s manoeuvring comes as the EU looks to deepen military cooperation to show unity in the wake of Brexit. The bloc’s 27 remaining member states have already embarked on big plans to build what some see as the embryonic stage of an EU army.

Spain wants to be at the heart of that effort and has laid out the red carpet to assume command of Operation Atalanta, an anti-piracy mission along the Horn of Africa that Madrid says should be run from its Andalusian naval base in Rota. But Spain is not just seeking the command centre, which is currently based in north London – it also hopes to make Rota the EU’s fifth operational headquarters, which Britain also holds.

“The Spanish offer is a headquarters for all types of missions,” Admiral Antonio Martorell Lacave said on board the Spanish amphibious assault ship Juan Carlos I. “With Brexit, the EU is left without a headquarters that is totally focused on Atalanta.”

Lacave is at the forefront of the MILEX18 military manoeuvres that took place at the base this week, during which Spain sought to convince the EU it was ready to swap places with Britain.

The EU launched Atalanta in 2008 to fight brazen acts of piracy off the coast of Somalia, including the spectacular hijacking of a Spanish tuna boat in 2009.