In Casa África, the Spanish Navy explains its missions off Somalia and the Gulf of Guinea

Spain ranks as the second European country in terms of number of troops contributed to joint international missions in Africa and the only one which has participated in all the European Union peacekeeping and security operations on the continent since 2003. 745 Spanish soldiers are deployed today in Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, the Central African Republic, Gabon and Somalia. The work of Spanish defence diplomacy, and more specifically the work of our country’s Navy in Africa, took centre stage at a conference this morning in Casa África, organised by the Canary Islands Naval Command in collaboration with Casa África, thanks to the the stopover of the patrol vessel Serviola (recently arrived from the Gulf of Guinea) at the Naval base in Las Palmas.

The director general of Casa África, Luis Padrón, and the Admiral of the Naval Command of the Canary Islands, Juan Luis Sobrino Pérez-Crespo, presented the conference, called Defence diplomacy: deployments of the Spanish Navy in Africa in which the Lieutenant Commanders Salvador Moreno Regil and Gabriel Pita de Veiga also participated. Lieutenant Commander Moreno, commander of the patrol vessel Tornado, spoke of the Spanish deployment in Somalia with Operation Atalanta (EUNAVFOR), while Lieutenant Commander Pita de Veiga explained the mission in the Gulf of Guinea, where the number of armed robberies on ships, especially oil tankers, has seen a worrying increase in recent years.