Rota exists because of the Cold War bargain Spain struck with the United States. The agreements signed in Madrid in September 1953 (Wikipedia and most sources give 23 September; GlobalSecurity gives 26 September) gave the Americans the right to develop and use Spanish military installations in return for economic and military aid. The text insisted that the jointly used areas would "always remain under the Spanish flag and command", and Rota has been run that way ever since: a Spanish naval base with an American naval station inside it.

The US Navy’s own profile dates Naval Station Rota to 1953 and the start of construction to 1955. Spanish Wikipedia describes the land as expropriated along the coast of Rota and El Puerto de Santa María, about 2,400 hectares in all; the US Navy gives 6,100 acres, which is about the same. The base is commanded by a Spanish admiral (a rear admiral according to Spanish Wikipedia, a vice admiral according to GlobalSecurity), and Spanish forces guard the gates.

For the Armada the base was a chance to rebuild. Spanish naval aviation had disappeared into the new air force in 1939 and had restarted only in 1954, with three Bell 47 helicopters landed at Vigo. In 1957, the Armada’s history records, the helicopter group was moved to Rota, which was then still under construction. It has never left.

Rota became a jet base because of a ship. The United States lent Spain the light carrier USS Cabot in 1967, and as Dédalo she was first a helicopter carrier. A Harrier landed on her wooden deck on 8 November 1972, and Spain ordered the type through the US Navy, because relations with Britain made a direct purchase awkward. In December 1976, the Armada records, Dédalo berthed at Rota carrying the first seven AV-8A Harriers, which Spain called Matador; Wikipedia counts six single-seaters and two two-seaters delivered during 1976. From then on the Flotilla de Aeronaves was a fixed-wing service as well as a helicopter one.

The second generation arrived in 1987: the AV-8B Harrier II, for which Spain was the first export customer. Aeronaves Militares Españolas dates its entry into service to August 1987, Wikipedia the arrival of the first aircraft to 6 October. In 1996 and 1997 eight new AV-8B Plus aircraft, assembled by CASA (in Seville, according to the Armada), joined the 9th Squadron, and the older aircraft were rebuilt to the same standard. The Matadors were sold to Thailand.

Today the 9th Squadron lives in hangar 9, the westernmost of the flotilla’s hangars. The Armada lists 12 AV-8B Plus and one TAV-8B; Wikipedia and Aeronaves Militares Españolas list ten plus one. The squadron counts more than 50,000 flying hours and more than 100 people. It goes to sea on the Juan Carlos I, which is also based at Rota, and it has no successor on order: the F-35B was reported shelved in August 2025, and Aeronaves Militares Españolas reports that in May 2026 the Secretary of State for Defence confirmed Harrier operations will end in 2032.

Most of what flies from the Spanish side of Rota is rotary-wing, and the helicopter fleet has been almost entirely renewed in three years. The 10th Squadron, created in 1988, received its first six SH-60B Seahawks on 22 December 1988 and flies detachments from the frigates of the Santa María and Álvaro de Bazán classes and from the amphibious ships, including a permanent helicopter presence in the Indian Ocean for the anti-piracy mission. In November 2025 it absorbed the 5th Squadron and its six SH-60Fs, and it is due to receive eight MH-60Rs to replace the SH-60B.

The 12th Squadron was created on 6 February 2023 and received its first two H135s, 1201 and 1202, on 11 December 2023, flown in from Airbus at Albacete. It trains and selects helicopter pilots, supports the ships and the marines, and completed its operational evaluation on 2 November 2024. The 14th Squadron, created by a resolution of 23 April 2024, received its first two NH90 MSPTs on 24 July 2025; the Armada plans seven by 2027, for troop lift in amphibious and special operations, search and rescue and medical evacuation.

The fixed-wing support side is small. The 4th Squadron, activated on 21 October 1964, flies three Cessna Citation IIs and a Citation VII from the western apron, the plataforma de poniente, for maritime surveillance, VIP transport and medical evacuation; its 36 people once flew Piper Comanches, from 25 January 1977 until 1992. Only the drone squadron, the 11th, is not at Rota: the Armada places it at the flotilla’s installations at Torregorda, near Cádiz.

The US presence at Rota is described here only from published sources. In the Cold War its most important tenants were not aircraft at all. According to Wikipedia, Submarine Squadron 16 was based at Rota from 28 January 1964, supporting Polaris and later Poseidon ballistic-missile submarines, until it was withdrawn by July 1979 under a treaty ratified in 1976. The airfield hosted the VQ-2 electronic reconnaissance squadron from 1959; GlobalSecurity records its move to Whidbey Island, Washington, effective 1 September 2005, with six aircraft and 450 sailors. English Wikipedia also lists a C-130F logistics squadron from 1962 to 1993 (VR-22; Spanish Wikipedia calls it VR-24).

The present era began on 5 October 2011, when the US Defense Secretary announced that four Aegis destroyers would be based at Rota as part of NATO’s missile defence. The first, USS Donald Cook, was announced to arrive in mid-February 2014. The ships have since rotated; the US Navy’s Rota pages record USS Oscar Austin arriving on 15 October 2024 to complete her homeport shift from Norfolk, making five. Spanish Wikipedia records an agreement reached at the 2022 NATO summit in Madrid, signed in May 2023, to raise the number to six; the arrival of a sixth ship was not confirmed for this page.

The destroyers bring helicopters. The US Navy’s Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron 79, active since June 2016 according to Wikipedia, flies MH-60R Seahawks from Rota and sends detachments to the forward-deployed ships. The airfield also serves as a transit stop for US Navy and US Air Force aircraft; the US Navy says the station supports more than 40 tenant commands and about 7,000 Americans, including more than 3,500 active-duty personnel, nearly 3,000 family members and more than 500 civilian employees.