Santander, Spain

Santander, Spain: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Santander is the capital of Cantabria, situated on the northern coast of the Iberian Peninsula facing the Cantabrian Sea. As a port city, it sits on a coastline that provides direct access to the open Atlantic, making it a viable terminus for long-distance submarine cable systems. Two submarine cables land at Santander, both of which are scheduled for completion in the mid-2020s and connect the city to destinations across the Atlantic Ocean.

The two cables landing at Santander — Sol and Anjana — together establish transatlantic connectivity linking Spain to the United States. The Sol cable additionally extends to Bermuda and Portugal, creating a multi-node transatlantic route, while Anjana provides a direct link between Santander and the United States. Both systems place Santander within a transatlantic corridor rather than a regional or inter-island one, connecting the northern Iberian coast to North American cable infrastructure.

Cables Landing at Santander

Sol is a submarine cable system measuring 8,153 km in length, with a planned ready-for-service date of 2027. In addition to Santander, Spain, Sol connects to landing points in Bermuda, Portugal, and the United States. This makes it one of the longer systems landing at Santander, spanning a transatlantic route that touches both mainland European and island waypoints before reaching North America.

Anjana is a submarine cable system measuring 7,121 km in length, with a planned ready-for-service date of 2026. Anjana connects Santander, Spain directly to the United States, representing a more direct transatlantic pairing between the northern Iberian coast and North American shores. It is scheduled to enter service one year ahead of Sol.

Regional Context

Within Spain's submarine cable infrastructure — which spans 34 cables across 46 landing points — Santander hosts two cables, placing it among the lower end of Spanish landing points by cable count. Peers such as Barcelona, Bilbao, Valencia, Alta Vista, Granadilla de Abona, and Santa Cruz de La Palma each host three cables. Santander is nonetheless a transatlantically oriented landing point, distinguishing its corridor from the Mediterranean-facing or intra-European routes served by some of those peers.

Network Role

Santander functions as a dual-cable transatlantic terminus on Spain's northern coast. Both cables landing here — Sol and Anjana — connect to the United States, and Sol additionally reaches Bermuda and Portugal, giving Santander a role in a multi-point transatlantic route. As both systems are in draft status with RFS dates in 2026 and 2027, Santander is an emerging rather than established node within Spain's submarine cable map.

The landing of two independent transatlantic cable systems at a single northern Spanish city adds a geographically distinct Atlantic-facing node to Spain's broader cable network, which is otherwise concentrated at landing points further south and east along the Iberian and Canary Island coastlines.