Straits in focus as Tarifa forum links border pressures to Arctic ‘Intelligence’ debate

Straits in focus as Tarifa forum links border pressures to Arctic ‘Intelligence’ debate | Photo: Tom Lorber

TARIFA, Spain, An international meeting held in Tarifa from Jan. 23 to 26 brought together academics and civil-society actors to examine how Europe’s borders are shifting, and why their effects spill beyond familiar narratives and policy templates, at a time of environmental and digital upheaval.

Under the title Borders in Motion, the programme argued that border regions have become “pressure points” where political turns, security choices, migratory flows and competing storylines collide. In that frame, the Campo de Gibraltar, with La Línea and the nearby Gibraltar frontier as a reference point, was presented as a case study where the debate over Schengen free movement and security remains close to the surface.

The event took place at The White House Tarifa, a venue that routinely hosts gatherings linked to the Sustainable Development Goals and also home to Global Society News (GSN). Tarifa was described in the programme as mainland Europe’s southernmost point, closer to Tangier than to the next Spanish city, at the hinge where Europe and Africa meet and where the Mediterranean converges with the Atlantic. That proximity, a border visible to the naked eye across the Strait, reinforced a central idea of the meeting: in few places is the boundary felt as so immediate and tangible, as two continents appear to face one another at close range.

Sessions combined in-person discussion with online contributions, moving from “macro” questions of geopolitics and power rivalry to more local concerns about regional development, cooperation and everyday life at the edge of political space. The programme placed Tarifa alongside two northern case studies, Finland’s Kainuu region and Kirkenes in northeastern Norway, to probe shared patterns, including polarised narratives, security-driven pressures and the way conflicts intensify in borderlands.

Against that backdrop, attention also fell on locally rooted civic work. Strait Up, a non-profit association registered in Spain, describes itself as a bridge between young people and civil-society organisations, connecting them with resources and opportunities, with expertise in international project design, mediation and organisational capacity-building. From the Strait of Gibraltar, its approach treats borders not only as lines between states, but also as boundaries between cultures, languages and communication styles. Its stated aims include boosting youth participation, fostering cultural cooperation, stimulating debate on the European project and EU–southern neighbourhood relations, promoting healthy lifestyles and advancing gender equality.

The agenda also drew a link between Europe’s southern rim and the Arctic through the Calotte Academy, presented as a “school of dialogue” whose travelling format, mobility, open discussion after each presentation and participatory methods, was cited as a model that could be adapted to other border settings. Its 2026 edition has issued a call centred on the theme “Intelligence”, arguing that the concept has returned to the heart of public debate amid the rise of artificial intelligence and the renewed prominence of military intelligence in a tense geopolitical climate. The call also frames today’s overlapping crises as crises of information, decision-making and knowledge production, highlighting frictions between epistemologies, from Indigenous knowledge to algorithmic prediction, and focusing on disinformation and “narrative battles”.

Calotte Academy 2026 is scheduled for June 8–14, with an itinerary across Sápmi in northern Finland, Norway and Sweden. The application deadline is March 31, 2026, and requires a 250–350 word abstract, a short bio/CV including academic status, and a brief publications list, submitted online via the academy’s official website, where further requirements, contacts and updates are provided.

Taken together, the Tarifa meeting underscored a core message: borders are no longer only about lines on maps. They are also about how perceptions are shaped, which institutions and communities absorb the consequences, and what methods, dialogue, comparison across regions and cooperation, can offer something more durable than automatic answers in an age of uncertainty.