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Cruise ships could arrive in Puerto de Mazarron by 2024
Mazarrón wants to adapt its Port to allow cruise ships to anchor off shore by next year
Cartagena is already a major Mediterranean port city in the Region of Murcia, but there could soon be another if the Town Council of Mazarrón gets its way.
In an interview this Wednesday September 20, Mayor of Mazarrón Gines Campillo stated his ayuntamiento’s objective to ensure that the Port of Mazarrón can host cruise ships in 2024.
The Council will present its final project to the Cartagena Maritime Captaincy and the shipping company at the end of this month so that they can give their approval. If granted, it could be a massive boost for Mazarrón tourism and the local economy, as well as an exciting new destination for Mediterranean cruise passengers to explore.
Campillo revealed that in July he held two meetings with both the Cartagena Maritime Captaincy and the shipping company, which “welcomed” the possibility that large yachts could dock at the Mazarrón docks and that larger cruise ships would remain anchored just off the coast, in which case passengers would arrive at the port in smaller boats.
This will be necessary since the depth of the water in Puerto de Mazarrón is barely 3 metres, while at the Cartagena docks it is around 24 metres deep. However, such cruise arrangements are not unheard of, and cruise passengers visiting Monaco, for example, have to be ferried to the city in smaller boats.
At the next meeting, Mazarrón Town Council will present its tourist, cultural and gastronomic offer, “focused on its Argaric, Phoenician and Roman history; on its more than 10 kilometres of virgin coves, and on its restaurants and typical dishes, such as rice with lobster.”
He stressed that the scheme is not at all about reducing the number of tourists going to Cartagena, but rather that passengers who dock in that city and choose to visit Mazarrón by bus – a journey which take about two and a half hours – can now arrive directly and spend an entire day there.
For his part, the maritime captain of Cartagena, Oscar Villar, has pointed out that the decision for cruise ships to arrive in Mazarrón does not depend solely on the Captaincy and the consignee company, but must also be approved by the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda. They will have to authorise the arrival of international ships into Mazarrón waters and implement a customs service, which would be dependent on the Civil Guard, since from the moment the passengers arrive at the Port of Mazarrón it will become a border crossing.
Given the fact that “the cruise travel market is expanding, with high demand,” he further said it “is not a bad idea” for other ports in the Region of Murcia, such as Águilas and San Pedro del Pinatar, to be specially adapted for the arrival of cruise ships.
In this sense, he has given as an example the port of Motril, in Granada, “which a few years ago built a dock for cruise ships and since then they have been arriving loaded with tourists eager to see the Alhambra,” he concluded.
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