America makes way at its historic Spanish plant — and China steps inside Europe’s tariff wall
The Hispano-Luso Report
In October 1976, the first Ford Fiesta rolled off the line at Almussafes, the plant Henry Ford II had built on Valencian orchard land three years earlier. Half a century on, the car expected to secure the factory’s future is roughly Fiesta-sized, electric — and Chinese.
Today, at an event attended by Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sánchez, the president of the Generalitat Valenciana Juanfran Pérez Llorca and Ford Europe president Jim Baumbick, Ford is expected to formalise an agreement with Geely — the Chinese giant behind Volvo, Polestar, Lotus, Zeekr and the maker of London’s black cabs — under which Geely will manufacture an electric vehicle at the Valencian plant. Ford has officially confirmed only “an important corporate announcement relating to the company’s operations in Europe”; the substance has been assembled by the Spanish press, led by Las Provincias, Expansión and the trade title La Tribuna de Automoción, whose reporting points to Geely taking over the Body 3 assembly hall — the newest facilities at the site, idle since Ford discontinued the Mondeo, Galaxy and S-Max.
The wires will carry the headline by this afternoon. What follows is the context they are unlikely to carry.
The tariff wall, entered through the front door
The commercial logic is disarmingly simple. The EU imposes tariffs on electric vehicles imported from China. A car built in Valencia is not an import. By assembling its compact EV — reported to be a derivative of the Geely EX2, sold in Europe as the E2, a ~4.14-metre urban SUV with around 500km of city-cycle range — inside Spain, Geely sells into the European market with no tariff attached and a “made in Spain” label to boot.
The policy irony writes itself: tariffs designed to keep Chinese EVs out of Europe are instead pulling Chinese manufacturing in. But the sharper point is how unexceptional this has become. Geely will be the fifth Chinese carmaker producing in Spain, after Chery in Barcelona, Ebro-partner Santana in Linares, MG in Galicia and Leapmotor in Madrid and Zaragoza. Deal by deal, quietly, Spain has become China’s manufacturing beachhead in Europe — and this is the highest-profile arrival yet, because of whose factory it is.
Why now: a clock running out in December
The timing is not incidental. Almussafes has built only the Kuga since 2024, running far below its capacity of well over 300,000 vehicles a year, and its 4,142 workers have spent eighteen months on a rotating furlough scheme — the government’s “RED mechanism” — at 90% of guaranteed salary. That scheme’s final extension expires on 31 December, and Ford’s own next model for the plant, the European Bronco, does not arrive until 2028. Between the end of state support and the start of the next Ford product lies a three-year valley the plant could not cross alone. Geely’s arrival is the bridge — and it explains why the Spanish government has not merely tolerated the deal but is turning up in force to bless it.
There is a further piece of Spanish industrial policy attached that has gone almost unnoticed: labour minister Yolanda Díaz has reached understandings with Geely and SAIC that Chinese investments in Spain will employ local workers. Read alongside today’s announcement, that is the outline of a bargain — market access through Spanish factories, in exchange for Spanish jobs.
The Volvo echo
For students of automotive history, there is a satisfying circularity. The last time Ford and Geely transacted, in 2010, it was Ford selling Volvo — the deal that transformed Geely from a Chinese domestic player into a global force, and one widely judged among the industry’s great acquisitions. Sixteen years later, the two are partners again, and again the direction of travel is the same: Western capacity and heritage moving under Chinese stewardship. Reuters reported in February that the companies’ talks extend beyond Valencia to a potential framework for shared vehicle technologies, including automated driving — and Ford’s CEO Jim Farley has been unusually frank in his admiration, calling Chinese EV technology “the most humbling thing I have ever seen.” The reported possibility that a Ford-badged model could eventually be built on Geely’s GEA electric platform in Valencia would complete the reversal: the company that once taught the world mass production, licensing its future from the pupil.
What to watch at today’s announcement
Several load-bearing details remain unconfirmed as this edition goes out, and the press conference should settle them. Whether Geely is buying Body 3 outright, as La Tribuna de Automoción reported in May, or entering a capacity-use arrangement — ownership matters enormously for how permanent this is. The jobs number attached, and whether furloughed workers transfer to Geely production lines. The investment figure, if any is disclosed. And whether the co-developed Ford model on Geely’s platform is mentioned at all — the detail with the largest long-term implications and the smallest chance of a straight answer.
What is already clear is the shape of the event: an American icon, a Chinese giant and the Spanish state, sharing a stage to announce that the future of Ford’s most storied European plant now runs partly through Hangzhou. For Almussafes’ workers, it is relief with an asterisk. For Brussels, it is the tariff policy’s paradox made concrete. And for anyone tracking where the global auto industry’s centre of gravity now sits, it is one more data point — delivered, fittingly, on the factory floor where the Fiesta was born.
The Hispano-Luso Report tracks the Iberian business stories that anglophone coverage overlooks — analysed here before the wires catch up. Sources: Las Provincias, Expansión, La Tribuna de Automoción, eldiario.es, okdiario; Reuters (February talks). This edition published ahead of the official announcement; details reported by the Spanish press and pending confirmation.
