MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Majority of Spaniards say Gibraltar is and issue of little interest for foreign policy
A survey by the leading Spanish think tank Real Instituto Elcano has found that nearly 60% of those polled believe Gibraltar is of little or no importance to Spanish foreign policy. Read full article
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Disclaimer & comment rulesGood thinking for the 60%. Spain should treat Gibraltar as a neighbouring territory and nothing more. Live and let live.
Jul 09th, 2012 - 01:54 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Bad translation
Jul 09th, 2012 - 02:22 pm - Link - Report abuse 0The people are not interest,
Only the incompetent government, who uses it as a distraction against their own problems,
Just like another country, that we know very well
.
Shame for Spain. It encourages fishermen to trespass in another country's territorial waters and undertake activities that would be illegal in its own waters. And it sends the paramilitary thugs of the Guardia Civil with them to “protect” them. From what? The Royal Gibraltar Police coming along and telling them to go back to their own waters? Or to “protect” them from getting arrested? And how does Spain justify these illegal activities? Gibraltar has no territorial waters, it says. Not mentioned in the treaty, it says. So the waters are Spanish, it says. Conveniently forgetting to mention that nowhere had any “territorial waters” as understood nowadays. Let's go to the ICJ, says Gibraltar. Spain ignores that. Just like a certain other country. And for the same reason. Spain knows it would lose!! Just like that certain other country.
Jul 09th, 2012 - 03:54 pm - Link - Report abuse 0“It's the precious.” “they” say. Too right it is. But not “their” precious. Those “territories” belong to Britain and to the people that live there. There is no conceivable way in which Spain, or that other country, can LEGALLY claim what they do claim. Perhaps the right place to settle these matters is not the ICJ but the International Criminal Court. Unfortunately, the ICC would need an increase in the scope of its jurisdiction. But maybe, come 2017, we can get them both for the crime of aggression.
Spain is in the S**t over its economy. Therefore Latin macho doctrine says, chose an issue that will deflect our countrymen from our problems we have self-inflicted on ourselves. Both Gibraltar and the Falklands are small countries in relation to their large neighbours, but instead of making the most of their large countries, Spain and Argentina go chasing after tiny ones because they feel a need to beat their chests and grow enormous moustaches rather than make the most of their own countries abilities and huge resources. Pathetic.
Jul 09th, 2012 - 09:00 pm - Link - Report abuse 0perhaps spain thinks all the water south of gibralter, to just north of argentine atlantci, is all hers ??
Jul 09th, 2012 - 10:49 pm - Link - Report abuse 0@4
Jul 10th, 2012 - 01:41 am - Link - Report abuse 0Sounds just like Britain in the colonial age, going to pick on people's with inferior technology that could not defend themselves.
Admittedly, that is the European way. Europe was luckly to be in the trade routes of knowledge, then went to pick on areas like Africa, Australia and America where people had to invent everything on their own, not fall on their lap (like gunpowder and the compass, which was the difference maker for Europeans, yet you didn't invent it).
6 - Thats right picking on Spain with there Eurofighter Typhoon jets and aircraft carrier, along with modern military infrastructure!!!! doh wrong again Troll
Jul 10th, 2012 - 07:04 am - Link - Report abuse 0@6 -Tobias
Jul 10th, 2012 - 08:21 am - Link - Report abuse 0Don't forget that your ancestors were those colonial Europeans. Short memory you have. Or are you now going to claim that you are 100% pure South Amerindian?
Yes the Chinese invented gun powder not Europeans, all we Europeans did was develop it into a weapons instead of fireworks. That's called invention. The europeans also used the compass developed in China (Wiley people the Chinese). All a compass can do is point you to magnetic north, it can't tell you where you are in the world.
It was an Englishman, John Harrison, who invented a clock so accurate that it allowed sailors to navigate. Hence why we have Greenwich Mean Time, which the world measures its time from (well before the invention of atomic clocks), and how all ships and planes navigate. Zero longitude goes directly through Greenwich.
We also invented the telegraph, the telephone, antiseptics, antibiotics, discovered x-rays, analgesics, television, computers, the Internet, rockets, industry, the car, trains, modern engineering and architecture, steam power etc... I could go on all night. Not bad for us 'Europeans'.
In regards to the story, it seems the people of Spain want their government to stop prancing around over this non-issue and get on with the job that they were elected to do. In other words, sorting out the Spanish economy.
Waving Gibraltar in the faces of the Spanish people has only made them angrier at the government for its failure to tackle the economic problems, and they are not easily distracted from this important issue.
Maybe Argentinians should take a leaf out of Spain's book, and start demanding that the government do their job... oh wait, they are beginning to do that, aren't they?
Hey but don't forget the great Argentinian inventions........... O.K. they may not be good at science but they ares till very cultureed and creative - they can do videos of hockey players desecrating war memorials.
Jul 10th, 2012 - 11:38 am - Link - Report abuse 0Hello,
Jul 10th, 2012 - 12:24 pm - Link - Report abuse 0As usual, these posts contain a number of emotional outbursts and half-truths but very few rigorously established facts.
To cite an example:
8 LEPRecon (#) states:
“It was an Englishman, John Harrison, who invented a clock so accurate that it allowed sailors to navigate”.
That IS PARTIALLY true but at the time, there were many other equally accurate horological artefacts about. Harrison’s REAL DEAL was to make the first clock that could consistently keep good time aboard a SAIL SHIP, ON THE HIGH SEAS, even in quite adverse weather. On second thoughts, perhaps I’m being a wee bit too pedantic here. Anyway, my real point is this:
Unless I’m mistaken, Harrison’s long-lasting, painstaking triumph came about in response to the offer of a prize, offered in the name of the King –I’m not sure but was it 5,000 quid? –the answer will probably be found somewhere on the Web...
And guess what? Surprise, surprise! The ol’ boy NEVER GOT HIS MONEY! He was fiddled-out-of-it by the nefarious financiers and politicians of the day! As I’ve said before, “It was déjà vu, all over again”
3 Conqueror (#)
makes a particularly virulent and untrue affirmation:
“And it sends the paramilitary THUGS of the Guardia Civil with them to ‘protect’ them.”
Many years’ ago, during the Franco Regime, I became involve in a clandestine, nonviolent, Left-Wing political organization. Eventually, some of my Spanish ‘comrades’ and I were apprehended by the Guardia Civil and ‘slapped-about a bit’. But believe me, that kind of behaviour is NO LONGER TOLERATED. The Police here are SHIT SCARED of “Being done for Abuse of Human Rights” –even more so than are their counterparts in the UK!
Cheers!
Jim, in Madrid.
@10 - Jim
Jul 10th, 2012 - 01:08 pm - Link - Report abuse 0There were many people trying to do it but Harrisons was considered the most accurate at the time, hence why he won. But even Harrison's competitors were European, so whoever won, it would have been a European who invented modern navigation. Since ships could keep accurate time, it meant that thy could work out their longitude and latitude very precisely.
I only mention this as Tobias ( or TTT as he sometimes is known), seems to believe that a compass alone could allow people to navigate. He has a problem with Europeans, despite being descended from them himself, and doesn't believe that Europeans actually discovered or invented anything. I was just putting him right.
In regards to Gibraltar I stand by what I said in my earlier post, namely that the Spanish people want their government to sort out the economy, not drip on about a non-issue.
6 Truth_Telling_Troll (#)
Jul 10th, 2012 - 09:18 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Nope. Just in your silly little imaginations. Move along now...
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