Could royal family ties close Madrid, Riyadh warship deal?

Spain's King Felipe VI will on Saturday begin a three-day official visit to the Middle Eastern kingdom at the invitation of Saudi Arabia's King Salman. Spanish media has linked the visit to a much anticipated deal to sell Avante 2200 corvettes for an estimated 2 billion euros ($2.1 billion).

"We can only confirm that negotiations are very advanced to build five warships which would be sold to the Saudi navy," a spokesman for state-owned Spanish ship-builder Navantia told AFP.

Spain is currently the seventh-largest arms exporter in the world. 

Its arms exports jumped by 55 percent in 2011-15 over the previous five years, according to the Brussels-based Group for Research and Information on Peace and Security. And its sales to Saudi Arabia, the country with the highest military expenditure per capita, are on the rise.

Felipe's father, Juan Carlos, who reigned from 1975 to 2014, "had and still has an exceptional personal relationship with the Saudi royal family, which has boosted economic ties", said Ana Romero, who has written several books about the former king. 

Juan Carlos was a close friend of Saudi Arabia's late King Fahd, who reigned from 1982 to 2005, and is close to his brother King Salman. 

Fahd offered Juan Carlos a yacht and the two would meet frequently, in private, in France and at the Saudi monarch's luxurious palace in the upmarket beach resort of Marbella on Spain's southern coast.

The contract is not a done deal yet as Saudi Arabia is slashing spending with falling oil prices having led to a drop in revenues

Juan Carlos was credited with playing a decisive role in 2011 in helping a Spanish consortium win a contract worth 6.7 billion euros ($7 billion) to build a high-speed railway linking the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

"There has always been a suspicion that Juan Carlos was a great lobbyist not only for Spain but also to aid his friends, close businessmen and maybe even himself," Romero said.

"Everything is different with Felipe VI: Nobody thinks he can do something like that, Spanish entrepreneurs do not travel with him and his trips are much more controlled by the state."

If the deal for the five corvettes goes ahead, it would provide jobs for more than 2,000 people for several years, said Jose Antonio Fernandez Vidal, a representative of Spain's biggest union, Comisiones Obreras, in the northwestern region of Galicia, which is home to a major shipyard.

"We are awaiting this like rain in summer to create jobs in shipyards," he said.

Spain's jobless rate of 18.9 percent is the second-highest in the European Union after Greece.

The contract is not a done deal yet as Saudi Arabia is slashing spending with falling oil prices having led to a drop in revenues.

And Spain faces stiff competition. France hopes to sell another type of navy ship to the Saudis, a source at French defence contractor DCNS said.

"The question is: Is the contract legal or illegal. And it is clearly illegal," said Alberto Estevez, an expert on arms sales at the Spanish branch of Amnesty International.

A 2013 United Nations global arms trade treaty bans the sales of arms which could be used in attacks against civilians or other violations of humanitarian law, he said.

A coalition, which Saudi Arabia is part of, began airstrikes over Yemen in March 2015 after Houthi rebels and their allies, troops loyal to ex-President Ali Abdullah Saleh, overran much of Yemen.