Britain rejected a Spanish proposal to hold one-on-one talks over the sovereignty of the contested British overseas territory (BOT) of Gibraltar after Spain issued an appeal for such negotiations to be held as soon as possible.
The following column was published on Tuesday’s edition of The Wall Street Journal displaying the Spanish position in the current dispute with Gibraltar and the border controls.
The column is credited to Jose Manuel García-Margallo who is Spain’s Foreign minister.
Gibraltar opposition Leader Daniel Feetham has urged a cooling down of the language in the row with Spain and confirmed that the GSD Opposition would agree to quadripartite talks with Spain so long as the Gibraltar delegation retained its own separate voice, vote and veto.
Spain’s King Juan Carlos told Margaret Thatcher’s most senior official at least twice that “it was not in fact in the interests of Spain to recover Gibraltar soon, even if it were possible.” Instead he agreed with the United Kingdom that it was for Spain to make herself attractive to the Gibraltarian people.
Roger Boyes, Diplomatic Editor of The Times, has criticised the recent tactics by Spain and urges the conservative government to return to a more positive approach to the Gibraltar question. Likewise by invoking the Falklands and making common anti-British cause with Argentina the Spanish PM “has burnt his boats with British PM David Cameron”.
Britain is likely to win a case against Spain over the imposition of excessive border queues and could get an interim order to ease the controls from the European Court of Justice said Professor Damian Chalmers an expert in EU law at LSE and who is a Jean Monnet Chair and was editor of the European Law Review and EU Jurist.
The leader of Spain’s opposition Socialist Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba called on the government of president Mariano Rajoy “to avoid adventures that could end looking ridiculous” such as the possibility of a ‘hand to hand’ with Argentina on the Malvinas and Gibraltar cases and instead should look at all the money laundering that takes place in the British Overseas Territory.
As queues at the border with Gibraltar get longer and little advance is seen in the diplomatic front, Spain’s Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Environment, Miguel Arias Cañete, warned that Madrid would continue to impose the border checks and has plans to target bunkering in ‘Spanish protected waters’.
The Gibraltar Government said it appreciated the “huge” level of support for Gibraltar from UK, European and Spanish parliamentarians, and announced the launching of a media operation to reverse the ‘bought-in’ misleading versions propagated by the Spanish government on the current situation.
A political adviser on Arab affairs at the UN in New York said Spain operated “double standards” by dismissing Moroccan sovereignty claims over Ceuta and Melilla as unfounded while pursuing its own claim over Gibraltar.