Ben Pawlowski
CENTURIES after the Spanish Armada was defeated by galleons under the command of Sir Francis Drake and co., Spain will finally get its hands on a piece of Britain’s naval fleet – by building the UK a warship.
For the first time in history, the construction of a Royal Navy ship will take place in Spain owing to problems at the Belfast shipyard best known for piecing together the Titanic.
Navantia, a Madrid-based defence company, told The Financial Times that much of the construction of the first of three ships it is delivering to the Royal Navy as part of a €1.8 billion contract will take place in Spain, rather than Britain.
Earlier this year, Navantia rescued Harland & Wolff, a Belfast-based shipbuilder famed for building vessels for the White Star Line, out of insolvency in a deal worth over €100 million that saved 1,000 jobs.
But plans to base construction in Northern Ireland have hit a brick wall with Donato Martinez, the Spanish company’s chief executive, admitting that ‘the facilities are not ready in Belfast’.
“We shuffled a little bit things for ship one into Spain, and we moved from Spain things for ships two and three,” Martinez said in an interview.
Under current plans, only the bow will be constructed in the UK at the H&W Appledore facility in North Devon, with the remainder of the ship put together in Cadiz.
Traditionally, British warships are built in the UK in port cities such as Belfast, Portsmouth, Plymouth or Barrow-in-Furness.
But a contract for fleet support ships was awarded in 2022 to Navantia and H&W, beating out a bid by a rival all-UK consortium, sparking union concerns that jobs would be lost to shipyards in Spain – although Spanish bosses insisted construction would take place in Britain.
Francis Tusa, an analyst and editor of the Defence Analysis newsletter, said that if Navantia builds the bulk of the first ship in Spain, there is no guarantee the other two would not also be built abroad.
“The Trojan horse was always ‘we will build ships in Britain’,” he said.
He added: “If it does indeed turn out that the first ship, which I think then means the whole of the class, is built in Spain, then the [UK Ministry of Defence] and the Royal Navy have been played for fools and been shown to be fools.”
Steve Aiken, a member of Northern Ireland’s Stormont Assmebly for the Ulster Unionist party, described Navantia’s approach as ‘pragmatic’.
“It’s disappointing that Belfast isn’t ready yet…but a properly equipped yard means that Navantia can also bid for Type 26 and 31 subcontract work, as well as being in a prime position for MRSS [Multi-Role Strike Ship],” he told the newspaper.
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