MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Falklands Legislative Assembly sends greetings to Gibraltar on its National Day

The text says the future of a people belongs to that people alone

The Falkland Islands Legislative Assembly, the archipelago's elected body, sent a message of greeting on Thursday to the government and people of Gibraltar to mark their National Day, and arranged for the flags of both territories to fly alongside one another throughout the day at Victory Green in Stanley.

In its public statement, the assembly described the two territories as kindred communities, separated by an ocean but bound by a British identity held by their own free choice and by a determination to decide their own future. The text says the future of a people belongs to that people alone.

Gibraltar's National Day commemorates the referendum of September 10, 1967, in which 12,138 voters chose to retain the link with the United Kingdom against 44 who preferred transfer to Spanish sovereignty. It is the 59th anniversary of that vote.

This year's celebration is the first since the entry into force of the treaty governing Gibraltar's relationship with the European Union, signed on July 14 in Brussels by British and EU representatives, with Gibraltar's Chief Minister Fabian Picardo and Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares present. The agreement, provisionally applied since July 15, removed routine checks at the land border with Spain, crossed daily by some 15,000 workers, and states expressly that it does not alter British sovereignty or the territory's constitutional status.

Both territories appear on the United Nations list of non-self-governing territories and their sovereignty is subject to competing claims. Spain claims sovereignty over Gibraltar and Argentina claims the Falklands, and neither state recognizes the results of the votes held in those territories as settling the question. In the 2013 referendum in the South Atlantic islands, 99.8% of voters chose to retain the status of a British overseas territory.

The message was issued during a week of rising tension over the South American archipelago, with criminal complaints and administrative proceedings opened by Argentina against oil companies and an intervention by the British prime minister in the House of Commons. The assembly did not link its statement to those events.