MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Bordering Spanish towns want to improve cooperation with Gibraltar

Isabel Beneroso visited Gibraltar CM Peter Caruana (Photo Gibraltar Chronicle)

Spanish towns neighbouring with Gibraltar have said they want to improve cooperation and day to day communications with the Rock. Isabel Beneroso president of the Mancomunidad de Municipios (Commonwealth of municipalities) visited Gibraltar’s Chief Minister Peter Caruana, the second PSOE politician to call within the space of a week.

The meeting was aimed to re-establish cross-border communication at a local, day-to-day level by setting a new agenda for the so-called Comisión Mixta, a committee that brings together Gibraltar, the municipalities represented in the Mancomunidad and the regional Junta de Andalucia.

Caruana, quoted by the Gibraltar Chroncile said that the Trilateral Forum (UK, Spain, Gib) had, in fact, adopted many of the issues that had already been under discussion at local level.

“A lot of those issues were displaced into the architecture of the Forum,” he said.
“One of the unintended consequences of that is that there has been less contact with the local Spanish politicians.” He said it was good to “keep the political pot boiling”.

While the major, complex issues such as fiscal cooperation and environmental issues will remain under discussion within the framework of the Forum, both Mr Caruana and Sra Beneroso said it was useful to renew local links.

The Chief Minister said that, in any event, many of the matters under discussion in the Forum would, once resolved, require the involvement of local bodies in order to implement them.

Ms Beneroso spoke of an existing “business relationship” with Gibraltar – a Mancomunidad company handles Gibraltar’s rubbish, for example – and said there was scope to develop other services along similar lines.

She also spoke of establishing “a flexible line of communication” at local level. There was a sense among some of the Spanish reporters at the press conference that the visit also had a lot to do with the forthcoming municipal elections in Spain.

The visit came just days after Gemma Araujo, the PSOE candidate in La Linea, upset the town’s Partido Popular mayor Alejandro Sánchez by calling on Gibraltar’s Chief Minister. Two visits from PSOE politicians within the space of a week. Even if it was unintentional, it was a tactic that would clearly taunt the PP.

For his part, Mr Caruana would not be drawn on those issues. “I don’t comment on other people’s reactions,” he replied when asked to comment on Sánchez’s angry response to the first visit. But, he quickly added, it had been a “constructive and useful” meeting, one that was “highly in the interests of La Linea and Gibraltar”.