Spain’s King Felipe VI will pay a State Visit to the United Kingdom in June, Spanish media reported. The visit, which has not been formally confirmed by either the British or Spanish governments, would be the first visit by a Spanish monarch to the UK in over three decades.
The futuristic €450 million yacht at the centre of a €15.3m legal wrangle has been freed from admiralty arrest and sailed from Gibraltar early Wednesday morning. Sailing Yacht A weighed anchor at around 8.30am and sailed from the Bay of Gibraltar in rough seas bound for the Mediterranean, reports the Gibraltar Chronicle.
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has defended his government’s co-sovereignty proposal for Gibraltar and reiterated that Spain will use Brexit to push its sovereignty aspirations over the Rock. Rajoy made the comments during a wide-ranging interview with Agence France Presse. “I think that our proposal of shared sovereignty is very reasonable,” he said.
Spain’s Foreign Minister, Alfonso Dastis, said that he believed Gibraltar should be Spanish, though he added Spain must be intelligent in its approach to the Rock. He was speaking during a wide-ranging interview on the morning politics show Los Desayunos, on state broadcaster TVE1.
Russia’s ambassador to the UN has suggested that Britain should “clean its conscience” by “giving back” the Falklands/Malvinas and Gibraltar before it passes judgment on the Kremlin’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula.
Britain will maintain Gibraltar’s existing access to the UK financial services market and broaden it where possible, a British Government minister told the House of Lords on Thursday, as he insisted sovereignty was “simply not on the table” in the Brexit process.
Spain is seeking “the consensus of everyone” in order to further its sovereignty aspirations over Gibraltar, the country’s Minister for Foreign Affairs said in an interview at the weekend.Alfonso Dastis Quecedo told La Vanguardia newspaper that “there is no doubt” as to Spain’s position in respect of the Rock. “We want that piece of Spain to be reintegrated into Spain,” he said.
Spain will not put Gibraltar at the centre of Brexit negotiations, the country’s Foreign Minister, Alfonso Dastis Quecedo, said in an interview with the Financial Times. Dastis Quecedo told the newspaper that the EU should start trade talks with Britain relatively soon and had no plan to impose a “punitive” Brexit deal that would weaken London as a financial centre.
Spain has little prospect of gaining joint sovereignty over Gibraltar, Spanish Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis said this weekend as he acknowledged that Gibraltarians “have a right” to reject the offer. In an interview with the leading Spanish newspaper El País, the foreign minister insisted any post-Brexit relationship between Gibraltar and the EU must first be agreed by the UK and Spain.
The United Kingdom House of Lords EU Select Committee has launched a new short inquiry on the implications of Brexit for Gibraltar. The committee will meet next week and take evidence from Gibraltar Chief Minister Fabian Picardo, Deputy Chief Minister Dr Joseph Garcia and Attorney General Michael Llamas.