Two Navy ships leave Spain’s Cartagena to begin missions in the Mediterranean

TWO Navy ships left Cartagena this week to begin missions in the Mediterranean, as reported on Friday, September 2.

Navy patrol boat ‘Infanta Cristina’ left Cartagena to control national waters alongside the minehunter ‘Duero’, which is set to join a NATO patrol.

The offshore patrol vessel ‘Infanta Cristina’, which is based in Cartagena, began a new mission to monitor and defend the security of maritime areas under national sovereignty in the south of the peninsula.

This is an action included in the permanent operations of the Armed Forces.

In July, the patrol vessel ‘Infanta Elena’ also carried out a control patrol in the waters of the Mediterranean, the Alboran Sea and the Strait of Gibraltar, as well as in the territorial waters of the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla, in North Africa.

The ship is scheduled to call at the port of Algeciras from September 8 to 10, where it will hold an open day, as noted by the Spanish Navy.

They explained that the ship set sail with a crew of 82 people, plus seven marines from the Operational Security Team (EOS), belonging to the Tercio de Levante.

The ‘Infanta Cristina’ will collaborate with various public bodies in the control of maritime traffic, fisheries surveillance and the search and rescue of shipwrecked persons.

All of this is under the directives of the Maritime Operational Command (MOM), which in turn reports to the Admiral of Maritime Action (Almart). This military structure is, in turn, subordinate to the Chief of Defence Staff (Jemad).

The Navy recalled that the so-called Permanent Surveillance and Deterrence Operations “are an effective tool for maintaining surveillance of sovereign spaces”.

This is because they “allow for the early detection of threats and facilitate an immediate and viable response to a potential crisis” for Spain’s interests.

Every day, some 3,000 armed forces personnel are involved in these tasks, under the operational control of the Operations Command.

The M-35 minehunter ‘Duero’ left the home port of Cartagena to begin deployment on one of NATO’s permanent missions: Pollution Task Force 2.

For the next few months, it will sail in the Mediterranean Sea to “guarantee freedom of navigation and participate in multinational exercises”.

This Navy ship will also increase “its availability and readiness” for “a wide range of functions, from humanitarian tasks to operations” of locating, deactivating and clearing mines.

In this case, the ‘Duero’ is contributing to the ‘Sea Guardian’ operation, whose main objective is the fight against illegal activities at sea.

This is Spain’s “commitment to the Atlantic Alliance”, within a grouping whose rotating command has been taken over by Turkey.

Thank you for taking the time to read this article, do remember to come back and check The Euro Weekly News website for all your up-to-date local and international news stories and remember, you can also follow us on Facebook and Instagram.