Uruguayan president Jose Mujica, 78, cancelled the last leg of his European visit, Italy, saying he was exhausted and suffering from jet-lag. He has been in the road since May 22, with a first official three-day visit to China, later to Spain, the Vatican and to Galicia and the Basque country, from where his family came.
The British Government has no plans “at present” to extend British territorial waters around the Rock but does not rule out doing so in the future. The position was revealed in a statement by David Lidington, Britain’s Minister for Europe, in response to a question in the House of Commons.
Uruguayan President Jose Mujica begins on Wednesday the longest and most ambitious of his overseas trips hoping to convince China to invest in infrastructure projects that are crucial for the development of the country and its foreign trade: a deep water port and recovering the rail cargo network.
Chief Minister Fabian Picardo has told German readers of Frankfurter Allegmeine Zeitung that he is firmly convinced that Gibraltar will never be Spanish because today’s Europe is about the people rather than the states.
Spain’s Foreign Affairs Minister José Manuel García Margallo said the Spanish government is no longer “discussing” Argentina’s “sovereign decision to seek energy sectors’ control.” “It could seem to me a mistake, but it is the responsibility” of the Argentine government, García Margallo stated.
Uruguay has formally requested Pope Francis to receive President Jose Mujica when he travels at the end of the month to China, Spain and Italy. Mujica is an agnostic and Uruguay is one of the few Latinamerican countries in which the Catholic Church has been separated from the State for almost a century.
UK Minister for Europe David Lidington has warned that an escalation of tension with Spain in the waters row could damage Gibraltar’s prosperity and wider UK interests and pointed out that the incursions were not “an armed attack or invasion” and that the response to them must be proportionate.
The Spanish National Statistics Institute, INE, reported on Thursday that the nation's unemployment rate shot up from 26.02% in the last quarter of 2012 to 27.16% in the first three months of this year. This is approximately 6.2 million Spaniards are out of a job. Youth unemployment stands at 57%.
Spain's official population fell last year for the first time since the 1940s as immigrants fled a five-year on-and-off recession that has sent unemployment soaring. The number of residents fell by 206,000 to 47.1 million, the National Statistics Institute said on Monday.
Gibraltar will commemorate, not celebrate the 300 year old Treaty of Utrecht this year, Chief Minister Fabian Picardo, told members of the Fabian Society in London earlier this week. The treaty refers to the cession in perpetuity by Spain to the British Crown of Gibraltar in 1713 under Article X of the agreement which put an end to the War of Spanish Succession (1701/1714)