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.
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.
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.
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said he hopes for dialogue with Britain soon regarding Gibraltar, but added that until talks take place his government would continue to consider unilateral measures to defend Spanish interests. He said the country will take “all legal measures” to protect its interests in Gibraltar.
The Foreign office and the Gibraltar government confirmed they are collecting a dossier on politically motivated queues at the Spain/Gibraltar border with a view to making a formal complaint to the European Commission.
Leading Gibraltar and Spain’s Campo unions - Unite the Union, Comissiones Obreras (CCOO), and Union General de Trabajadores (UGT) - have jointly released a statement and manifesto urging good neighbourly relations. The states that any diplomatic scuffle and/or show of strength by one or all of parties involved has immediate and negative consequences for the people who live on either side of the border.
Gibraltar Government House issued a statement following Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and PM David Cameron exchange and later intervention of foreign ministers Garcia-Margallo and William Hague to find a way to de-escalate the situation by reducing measures at the Gib/Spain border.