MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Spain hopeful of agreement on Gibraltar

Describing Gibraltar as an extremely sensitive issue for Spain, Director General for European Affairs Jose Pons declared that “we had never been as close to an agreement as we were at the time of the 2002 joint sovereignty negotiations”.

Mr. Pons addressing an audience in the University of Cadiz on the British-Spanish dispute over Gibraltar recalled that the sovereignty claim was a permanent feature of Spanish foreign policy and expressed the hope that "we can get even nearer this time" to an agreement.

The Spanish diplomat acknowledged that history cannot be altered or re-written, it would be a mistake to try and change it, and must be assumed as what it is "with the good and the bad, the things we got right and the errors that we made".

As to the future, "we must learn from history so that we can build something of which we are proud."

In his conference Mr. Pons reviewed the 300 year old dispute giving a century by century account of major events, with special emphasis on the historical, political and legal aspects from the Spanish diplomacy perspective.

Gibraltar he said had also been a permanent "irritant" that distorted and conditioned Anglo-Spanish diplomatic relations, and noted how in the past twenty years Spain had held bi-lateral summits with all other major European countries except UK.

Mr Pons regretted that relations with Britain were not more intense and meaningful and that this was "a kind of punishment in bi-lateral exchanges because of the Rock".

For Spanish ministers it had been a stone in the shoe for ever, while for their UK counterparts, a twice yearly visit to the dentist for a tooth extraction, he said.

The capture of the Rock, Treaty of Utrecht, Spanish UN doctrine, and what Mr. Pons described as "the lights and the shadows" of Spanish attitudes toward the Rock came under discerning scrutiny.

Finally the head of the European Affairs desk analysed Gibraltar's evolving position in the European Union, the origins of the Brussels Agreement, the separate treatment and development of the claim on the isthmus, the lead-up to the co-sovereignty agreement "carried out at lightning speed," and the breakdown in relations after the 2002 referendum.