| First Sicilian War War of the Alboran Sea |
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Atlantic coalition: País del Oro Portugal Rif Celtic Alliance
| Mediterranean coalition: Sicily Spanish National Republic
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The War of the Alboran Sea (also referred to by historians as the 2004 Gibraltar Straits Conflict or the First Sicilian War) was a conflict between the predecessors of the Atlantic powers and the Mediterranean Coalition of Sicily and the Spanish National Republic between 2004 and 2006.
The war was primarily a clash of ideologies. Politicians in Palermo and Cartagena had progressive grew more aggressive following the 1983 Nuclear Exchange and by the early 2000s, both republics had begun to act upon their desires to expand their influence throughout the region, coming in direct opposition to their neighbouring states.
The roots of the war begin with increasingly hardline policies in both Sicily and Spain and both republics' desire to expand their influence in the region. In 2001 Sicily invaded Tripolitania and began to settle it with displaced Italians. In 2003, a revolt broke out in Cartagena, capital of the Falangist Spanish National Republic, and the rival País de Oro gave support to the rebels. The war itself began when Sicilian forces assisted the National Republic by attacking the Balearic Islands, an outlying territory of the País de Oro. A coalition of Atlantic states then formed to halt aggression in Spain and occupy the Strait of Gibraltar.
After the 2006 cease-fire, Sicily withdrew from Spain but was left in control of Sardinia and free to pursue its colonization in Tripoli. The republic's regime used the war to consolidate its power, turning Sicily into an effectively totalitarian state for the next several years. Following the war, the Atlantic allies committed to closer military cooperation, culminating in the foundation of the Atlantic Defense Community in 2007. Unresolved tensions and conflicts from the war led to the outbreak of the Second Sicily War in 2009.
Prelude[]
The post-Doomsday years had left the power balance of the northern Mediterranean in flux. Survivor states rise and fell along the seas the region failed to achieve political equilibrium. In Iberia and the former Spanish territories, a tapestry of states had begun to form. By the turn of the millennium, two republics had emerged as the strongest claimants to the the mantle of the successor to the Kingdom of Spain - País de Oro and the Cartagena-based Spanish Republic.
By 1985, much of land along both sides of the Straits of Gibraltar was left mostly dominated by nomads and rogue gangs. Although on the African side, a few rogue Moroccan military outfits were able to establish independent city states; the most famous of these city states include Kenitra, whose inhabitants valiantly resisted the Islamists to south, Ceuta which was controversially re-founded in 1987 by a large group of Spanish refugees fearful of being absorbed into the Moroccan majority, and Ksar el-Kebir, which became a powerful bandit-state that led the main resistance against being absorbed by the international zone. In 1990, former residents attempted to re-colonize the mouth of the Guadalquivir River, although theysoon found that the radiation levels in the water table were still strong and the effort had to be abandoned.
In the southeast of Iberia, from their command at Cartagena, The Spanish National Republic had secured a holding over Murcia, Granada, Albacete and Jaen, with additional frontier territory in Valencia. The Junta had established a strict, militarized zone of control into an expansionist policy of the Cartagena Junta, modelled after the Falangist party politics of Franco, the aim was to denounce any opposition to the government as communists and crush their dissent under grueling subjugation It was the goal of the National Republic to restore order and unity to the former Spanish Realm; in spite of their deep domestic unpopularity, they had thus far succeeded in re-uniting more of Iberia under the name of "Spain" than any other states up to that moment.
However, a larger remnant of the Spanish military and government had survived 1983 and managed to reorganise itself in the Canary Islands, Melilla and the Baelerics, later uniting with Western Sahara to form the bi-national republic known as País de Oro. With the destruction and abandonment of Gibraltar and Ceuta, the city of Melilla remained the closest free port of entry for what little trade trickled into the Mediterranean in the first decades following the bombs, which nevertheless remained a significant tax base for the fledgeling País de Oro. In spite of failed attempts to re-colonize the Spanish mainland, they nevertheless retained control of the Straits of Gibraltar alongside the Republic of Rif. By the late 1990s, more regular trade of higher-value goods from Western Africa and South America slowly re-entered the Mediterranean, enough to make organized piracy lucrative for those seeking to seize these vessels. Thus, control over the Straits became both a political, economic and national security matter for the sea-facing states.
The proximity and growing support for the legitimate successors to the Madrid government gave the Cartagena Junta reason to panic. The two forces were evenly matched, and the fear of being blockaded by País de Oro from their forward patrols in Palma and Melilla gave the nationalists a genuine concern for their own survival and goals of uniting Spain.
On the southern Italian Peninsula and the island of Sicily, a new hegemon was growing. The Sicilians had been at odds with other remnants of the Italian state to the North since the 1980s, although they reached an armistice with their Alpine sponsors several years after. Thus it was time that the Sicilians turned their eyes to the Sea. The aims of the Palermo-based regime were to dominate all trade flowing into and out of the Mediterranean, both via licit and illicit means. There were two campaigns orchestrated by Sicily in this time, the annexations of Sardinia and the conquest of Tripoli. This meant that all trade flowing through the central Mediterranean would have to flow through Sicilian controlled Lampedusa Corridor, and ships would have to circumnavigate the coast of Africa if they wanted to avoid the Sicilians.
There were still ongoing issues surrounding the Suez Canal which meant the eastern exit out of the Mediterranean was too dangerous to attack now. The Sicilians then looked west to the Straits of Gibraltar. Gibraltar, the former British holding, had been left in an abandoned state since 1983 when the Soviets levelled the territory, Patrol boats bearing the seven striped banner of the PdOr would pick up the Sicilian boats in the straits and escort them to Melilla. The Sicilian laid out their plans to the garrison force commander at Melilla who scoffed at the proposals; the Sicilians wanted to build a trade post along the mostly abandoned city of Ceuta and dictate the flow of ships into and out of the Mediterranean in return for free trade with the PdOr. The PdOr countered that they already controlled the Straits from their vantage point at Melilla and thus would not need the Sicilian interference in the trade routes out of the Mediterranean. The talks were a resounding failure for the Sicilian forces, who left under trained fire the next day.
By 2002, Anti-Nationalist sentiment had begun to spread throughout the Cartagena Junta's territory. The PdOr were openly challenging the legitimacy of Cartagena and announced their intentions to move the Capital from Laayoune to Palma de Mallorca, in preparations for a proper reclamation of the mainland. The Junta recognized this as a power move that would further undermine their power in the region and thus looked to its allies abroad. Talks with their Sicilian trading partners uncovered mutual distrust of the African-Atlantic bloc. The Junta offered the Sicilians their original claim to Gibraltar as well as an additional military base in the Baelerics in return for helping push the PdOr out of the Mediterranean and back to the Canaries. This was considered by the Sicilians who recognised the threat the Saharan Spanish faced. The Sicilian asked for one further concession, a second garrison on Formentera. The Junta agreed to this proposal and began to scheme an plot to overthrow the government of Palma and force the capitulation of País de Oro.
In 2003, the unjust incarceration of a Mallorca native sparked protests across Cartagena and Nationalist Spain. Anti Junta sentiments at this point were at a fever pitch and the arrest was the lit match to blow the powder keg. The PdOr saw this as an opportunity to sow unrest and eventually overthrow the Cartagena Junta, as Anti-Nationalist groups came ashore from their stronghold in Mallorca. The intended coup was to be swift, the officers landing at Canteras were to quickly push north to Cartagena Casco and the City Hall where the Junta were situated, forcing a capitulation ad transfer of power to the government stationed at Palma. The force however came up against fierce resistance in the town and ultimately failed in their coup attempt, either being arrested or killed in the ensuing skirmish. This was enough justification for the Junta to enact its plans for the Balearic Islands; a call was made to the Sicilian naval commander out in the wester Mediterranean to begin the operation to conquer the PdOr holdings.
Initial Stages of the War[]
Balearic Blockade[]
The first movements of the war saw the Mallorca government at Palma cut off from the assistance of the PdOr Forces elsewhere in the Mediterranean. A contingent of Sicilian ships, who had claimed prior to the offensive that they were patrolling the western Mediterranean for Barbary Pirates, had mobilised and formed a defensive blockade between Almeria and the enclave of Melilla.The blockade would fire upon any ship wearing the PdOr banner, effectively isolating the Palma government from Saharan or Canarian relief.
An emergency war government gathered in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, and a flotilla of ships thundered into the Strait of Gibraltar soon after, in hopes of breaking through the blockade. This however proved fruitless, the ships were harassed by Nationalist naval forces and pushed back by the Sicilian blockade, Palma was alone.
Minorca Offensive[]
With the Islands isolated from PdOr support, the invasion could begin. on the 2nd of June, Sicilian amphibious forces would land in the dead of night near the village of Fornells to establish a landing point for further forces onto the island. Paratroopers would be flown into the vicinity of Tudon in the west of the island, near the city of Ciutadella de Menorca and St Climents, in an effort to take the islands airport before turning their focus to Mahón. The Tudon group were to storm the Ciutadella and sow chaos on the island to quickly overwhelm the local defence forces. The landing force in Fornells were to take strategic points along the Me-1, the main arterial road of the island and sweep the interior of defenders, while capturing strategic points such as radio towers and ports.
The Sicilians managed to capture the town of Platja de Fornells and Fornells in mere hours, using them as staging grounds for the operation and to create a landing site between Sicily and the Balearics. By mid-morning the paratroopers managed to capture es-Mercadal and the islands airport. cutting the island in two and denying reinforcement from the air. PdOr forces on the island by this time were on the alert and were preparing to repel the invaders. Several skirmishes and engagements with between the two forces did occur, in particular in the direction of the island capital of Mahón, the PdOr forces were under-equipped and overall numerically inferior to the Sicilians, but they manage to hold the front for several days in the direction of Mahón, until on the 4th of June when the Junta reinforcements landed at Cala es Morts.
From Cala es Morts, the 2nd invading force advanced south towards Alaior, using the town of Port d’Addaia as a staging ground and also connecting with the established forces in Fornells. By the next day the coalition forces had managed to arrive at the outskirts of Alaior and putting the PdOr defenders under serious pressure. Meanwhile, on the eastern side of the island the Sicilians had managed to capture the city of Ferreries after heavy fighting with a PdOr detachment present there, it was only cleared out after the arrival of reinforcements from the interior that manage to provide support to the ground force present there. The town would be fortified and used a defensive point against any possible PdOr invasion from that point. The capture of Mt. Toro on the first day of the invasion by the paratroopers of the Folgore give the Sicilians a clear advantage over the defenders, as with the mountain fully secured they could direct artillery strikes towards the capital.
By the 6th all the central part of the island was under Sicilian-Junta control, it was the next day when the invading forces would focus their attention on Mahón. The day began with airstrikes on the harbour, making any attempt to reinforce the garrison at Mahón very difficultly. The Sicilians would advance from the directions of L’Argentina and Serra Morena in order to do a pincer movement on the city and cut off the city from the rest of the island, this would take several hours for advancing in the direction of Mahón and by night they arrived at the outskirts of the city, it was during the night when the Sicilians positioned themselves around the city and shelled it with artillery, in order to break the morale of the defenders, by dawn it was decided that the assault on the city would begin.
The advance was slow due to the determination of the defenders to resist, but by the afternoon with the help of the S. Marco the Sicilians managed to advance to the suburbs of the town, the old city was still in the hands of the PdOr who started to evacuate civilians and soldiers into merchant ships, the Sicilians indiscriminately targeted any ship leaving the port resulting in the destruction of a cruise ship and the sinking of one ferry used for the evacuation of civilians and soldiers.
The Battle of Mahón would continue for the next two days until the last defenders surrender to the Sicilians, who managed to retreat to Illa del Rei, in order to battle a last stand against the Sicilians. All the prisoners of war were embarked onto cargo ships and relocated to prison camps in Sicily.
With the news of the fall of Mahón, the Spanish commanders in Palma urged the still present forces in the west at Ciutadella to retreat and fall back now to Majorca, the local officers agreed and in two days they manage to evacuate the majority of the defenders from the city before their positions were overrun by the coalition forces. The Junta forces arrived mere hours after the evacuation, by the 11th the Island of Menorca was under Sicilian occupation and it would remain so until 2006 after which command was handed back to the Cartagena Junta.
Majorca Offensive[]
The coalition forces would set their eyes on the seat of power in the islands next, Mallorca. With momentum at their backs the plan was a larger scale repeat of Minorca, destabilise the defenders and rush the civilian government. Paratroopers would set off from the Aeroport de Menorca with hopes to capture the resort town of Alcúdia and the western Port d'Andratx. The northern town of Alcúdia would be the staging areas for an amphibious landing of Sicilians and Port d'Andratx the major supply fort for the Junta forces storming the western part of the island. The junta pushed to Andratx with relative ease in the early hours of the assault. The Sicilians too found themselves establishing a solid base in the north to sweep down into the island centre.
The Junta forces pushed east towards Palma, coming up against growing resistance. The reinforcements who had evacuated Menorca had bedded in on the island, further bolstered by reinforcements being flew in to Palma via the Son Bonet Airport. By midday the Junta were preparing to advance along the Ma-1 to Magaluf, leaving them within marching distance of Palma. Sicilian forces had managed to reach the central town of Inca, picking of defensive cells along the way with relative ease. Inca itself had a strong garrison that took a few further hours to overwhelm, but this too fell under the Sicilian offensive machine. This time, the goal was the government in Palm, the east of the island was left relatively unscathed.
The writing was on the wall for the Palma government. In two direction, incursionary coalition forces were homing in on the city. Clearly out manned and out gunned, the goal instead shifted to escaping the wrath of the Junta coalition forces. The defenders would fight on until surrender was inevitable, giving the government enough time to flee via mercantile ships. Officials would flee in the night leaving command to the PdOr officers to negotiate the surrender. The ships would travel west from the island, slipping through the blockade line and making it to Ceuta before further pushing on to the cnaries the following day. The PdOr forces did as was asked, the resisted until defeat was all but certain and surrendered. The Sicilian and Junta were furious that the authority of the islands had managed to escape but there was little to be done.
Straits of Gibraltar Crisis[]
Local resistance was brutally crushed as Sicilan-Spanish troops solidified their control over the islands. The Sicilian armed forces wanted to build on this success by taking control of the Strait of Gibraltar in order to prevent País de Oro from mounting a counterattack. The Sicilian navy first took the tiny isle of Alborán, which was declared annexed to the republic. An amphibious joint operation by Sicilian and Spanish forces then occupied Tarifa and much of the territory south of Gibraltar. Blocking access to the sea would allow the allies to strike a final debilitating blow to their enemies and dominate the western Mediterranean.
The Coalition[]
The seizure of the Straits, together with Sicily's other aggressive moves both during and before the war, alarmed people around the Mediterranean. País de Oro had already formed diplomatic ties to other states the region, especially with the former NATO powers, the Portuguese Interim Government and the Celtic Alliance (the C.A.'s Nato ties came through its ex-British member nations). In addition, the Rif was a close partner because, like Western Sahara, it had broken away from Moroccan control. Now, the governments of Rif and Portugal protested the aggressive acts by Spanish and Sicilian forces in their backyards, while mercantile interests in the C.A. looked on with fear as two authoritarian powers assumed the ability to close off the Mediterranean entirely, depriving them of their most important emerging market.
País de Oro convinced the other three powers to form a coalition to re-open the sea lane and contain the power of Sicily. It was a pivotal moment for the region, beginning an era of military cooperation by the Atlantic powers that continues today. The four powers concluded a pact of alliance to last for the remainder of the war. Staff officers convened in Ponta Delgada, capital of the Azores, to form an allied high command to coordinate objectives and strategy.
Battle for the Straits[]
Sicilian soldiers in a foxhole near the city of Tarifa
Coalition leaders at first hoped that the size of their alliance would be sufficient to get the Sicilians and falangists to back down. Both sides agreed to a temporary cease-fire and agreed to meet for peace talks. Such was the state of tension and rivalry in the region that it was a challenge simply to find a neutral site willing to host any talks. At the end of 2004, the Basque Country agreed to host and mediate peace talks, extracting at the same time formal recognitions of Basque independence from both of the rival Spanish governments. Delegates met early in 2005 in Biarritz, on the French side of the former border. Meanwhile the coalition partners continued to amass naval and ground forces in the Atlantic islands to keep pressure up.
The Biarritz talks made little progress, however. Neither side was willing to budge on the issue of control the Balearics. In April, hostilities resumed. Rif launched an overland campaign to control the African side of the strait, an area where the Sicilians and Spanish nationalists had occupied some points in an area where neither of the rival Moroccan governments had secure control. The Atlantic coalition simultaneously sent a naval operation to establish a beachhead south of Tangier that could resupply the Riffians. This operation drew some of the enemy ships into the open sea, whereupon more coalition ships engaged them. Sicilian losses mounted until they were no longer able to block the Strait. An Atlantic fleet sailed in to reinforce Rif and Melilla.
With the momentum in their hands, the coalition also lay the ground for combat operations on the land. Riffian ground forces now beseiged enemy positions south of the strait, of which the largest and strongest was the otherwise-abandoned city of Ceuta. Portuguese, Sahrawi, and Spanish troops effected a landing on the Spanish mainland and began to advance toward Tarifa. Against the urging of the Sicilian officers, the nationalist Spanish high command ordered a withdrawal to more secure positions to defend the republic's core territory. Tarifa was abandoned without a shot. The tide of the war had turned, and the Atlantic coalition was left in control of the strait.
The offensive of 06[]
Major combat again took a pause as talks resumed in Biarritz, and the warring sides reached the same impasse over control of the Balearic Islands. When the Atlantic coalition began a new campaign in 2006, it clearly had the superior navy. Sicilian resources were stretched thin by the need to defend and supply its new territories in Libya and Sardinia, while keeping an eye pointed northward toward the independent Italian states. Early in 2006, Sicily was forced to withdraw from its forward base on the isle of Alborán, and ground forces approached Murcia in Spain, the center of the Spanish National Republic.
In the summer, an amphibious assault began on Ibiza, in tandem with an uprising by local resistance. After days of hard fighting, Sicilian forces withdrew across the strait to Mallorca, while Spanish troops returned to the capital. With control of the islands slipping and enemy forces steadily advancing on the capital, the Republic of Spain demanded that Sicily sue for peace. Both sides declared a cease-fire for the third time, and this time it held. Sicily withdrew its forces from the Balearics before the end of the year.
Aftermath[]
The Atlantic coalition lacked the strength to pursue the war further either on the Spanish mainland or in Italy, so in 2007 the cease-fire became a permanent peace, signed in Biarritz by all belligerent nations and the long-suffering Basque mediators. Sicily's authority over both Sardinia and Tripolitania was recognized, while all sides recognized the Balearic Islands as a permanent part of País de Oro.
While machinations of the País de Oro had provoked the war, much of the Mediterranean already had reason to distrust the Sicilian Republic, and Sicily's aggressive actions added to this climate of tension and fear. Di Stefano had already captured Tripolitania, and now, despite some setbacks, he had accomplished the subjugation of Sardinia. The alliance of Sicily, the Spanish Republic, and Tunisia endured, but it was increasingly isolated diplomatically. Many of their neighbors - the Alpine Confederation, the states of northern Italy, Corsica, Greece, and Cyrenaica - began to pursue ways to build up their armed forces. Mutual defense against future Sicilian aggression became a common concern.
These concerns resulted in the formation of the Atlantic Defense Community (ADC), founded on September 26 2007. The community included the coalition partners of the Alboran War, Corsica and Greece, and a few North Atlantic nations who increasingly depended on trade in the Mediterranean and whose governments hoped that an alliance would guarantee peace and stability.
Some more distant nations, namely Australia-New Zealand, Brazil, and some other South American states, were also beginning to engage in Mediterranean trade, and they also saw the Sicilian Republic as a threat to this commerce. South America and ANZ together enacted a few sanctions against Sicily, which proved almost completely ineffective. They were lifted in December 2007.
Palermo was undeterred. The regime's next move was a blockade of the Lampedusa Corridor in November 2008; Di Stefano's government announced that foreign vessels would be stopped and searched for arms and contraband. A swift reaction by the ADC, the Alpine Confederation, Australia-New Zealand, and intervention by the brand new League of Nations convinced Di Stefano that he had miscalculated. The Sicilians were forced to back down. Conflict erupted again the following year. This time, Sicily instigated an attack against Greece and Cyrenaica, drawing both allies and enemies into the Second Sicily War.