supersunbird
Honorary Master
I wonder if Spain is willing to give Ceutu to Morocco?
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The Gibraltar Thread: Britain versus Spain
- Thread starter LazyLion
- Start date
LazyLion
King of de Jungle
Like what?
LoL
Wait their aircraft carrier or at least what passes for one actually has jets unlike the Brits....
What other countries are you referring to ?
Its not annexed. Spain gave it up as part of the Treaty of Utrecht.
The UK position is clear. They will give it up if the residents prefer to be governed by Spain. The residents prefer the UK to Spain. And if you look at the Spanish economy, you can see why.
LazyLion
King of de Jungle
Britain to Protest as Gibraltar Border Queues return
Britain on Tuesday said it would lodge a formal complaint with Spain after drivers were subjected to five-hour-long queues to cross into the tiny British outpost of Gibraltar, in a growing diplomatic row.
"The Foreign and Commonwealth Office will be protesting to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the unacceptable delays seen this morning at the Spanish border with Gibraltar," a Foreign Office spokesman said.
Gibraltar has accused Madrid of imposing the checks in retaliation for its decision to drop concrete blocks into the sea to create a reef for fish at the mouth of the Mediterranean.
Madrid claims the border checks are necessary to combat smuggling and that the reef is a deliberate impediment to Spanish fishing vessels in a dispute over territorial waters.
Waiting times peaked at five hours in the early afternoon, according to the Royal Gibraltar Police.
Many people parked their cars on the Spanish side of the border and decided to walk across the border, carrying their luggage or briefcases in their hands to escape the tailback of cars waiting to pass the exhaustive checks imposed by Spanish authorities.
"This has happened to me several times, at least six or seven times" in recent days, said Francis Perez, a 30-year-old unemployed construction worker who waited for an hour and a half to cross the border into Gibraltar with his family.
Perez is from Madina Cidonia, a Spanish city located about 50 kilometres (30 miles) from Gibraltar, and like many area residents he heads to the British outpost to buy fuel for his car and tobacco because taxes there are lower.
"It's horrible to have to spend hours to get in and out of Gibraltar. Today it's not too hot but there are other days when it was unbearable. It's all just politics," he said, as his car crept ahead.
Britain and Spain are embroiled in an escalating diplomatic row over stringent car searches imposed since the end of July by Spanish guards at the Gibraltar border, which have regularly caused delays of several hours.
Britain on Monday threatened to take legal action over the checks on the border of the rocky outpost on Spain's south coast while Spain said it was considering taking the dispute to global bodies such as the United Nations and the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
Gibraltarians are firmly on London's side in the latest of a long string of spats.
"We don't want to belong to Spain, we are happy being British," said 42-year-old Gilbratarian Kim Bickerstaff, complaining that the Spanish border checks hurt both residents and visiting workers.
About 6,000 Gibraltarians live on the Spanish side where housing in cheaper, according to Madrid.
"Those of us who have family or work here have a different viewpoint from the rest of the Spanish, we are not anti-Gibraltarian," said Rafael Marquina, a 46-year-old government worker from the Spanish border town of La Linea who was visiting his aunt in Gibraltar.
"All the problems come from an incorrect starting point: that Gibraltar is Spanish. But Gibraltar is British and its people feel British," he said.
The British warship HMS Westminster set sail on Tuesday on a training exercise that will include a stop at Gibraltar.
The type 23 frigate left Portsmouth naval base on England's south coast to join nine other Royal Navy vessels heading for the Mediterranean and the Gulf.
Defence officials said the training exercise has long been planned and follows similar deployments in 2011 and 2012.
About 10,000 Spaniards cross the frontier each day to work in the self-governing British overseas territory which measures just 6.8 square kilometres (2.6 square miles) and is home to about 30,000 people.
Source : Sapa-AFP /mjs
Date : 13 Aug 2013 23:49
Britain on Tuesday said it would lodge a formal complaint with Spain after drivers were subjected to five-hour-long queues to cross into the tiny British outpost of Gibraltar, in a growing diplomatic row.
"The Foreign and Commonwealth Office will be protesting to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the unacceptable delays seen this morning at the Spanish border with Gibraltar," a Foreign Office spokesman said.
Gibraltar has accused Madrid of imposing the checks in retaliation for its decision to drop concrete blocks into the sea to create a reef for fish at the mouth of the Mediterranean.
Madrid claims the border checks are necessary to combat smuggling and that the reef is a deliberate impediment to Spanish fishing vessels in a dispute over territorial waters.
Waiting times peaked at five hours in the early afternoon, according to the Royal Gibraltar Police.
Many people parked their cars on the Spanish side of the border and decided to walk across the border, carrying their luggage or briefcases in their hands to escape the tailback of cars waiting to pass the exhaustive checks imposed by Spanish authorities.
"This has happened to me several times, at least six or seven times" in recent days, said Francis Perez, a 30-year-old unemployed construction worker who waited for an hour and a half to cross the border into Gibraltar with his family.
Perez is from Madina Cidonia, a Spanish city located about 50 kilometres (30 miles) from Gibraltar, and like many area residents he heads to the British outpost to buy fuel for his car and tobacco because taxes there are lower.
"It's horrible to have to spend hours to get in and out of Gibraltar. Today it's not too hot but there are other days when it was unbearable. It's all just politics," he said, as his car crept ahead.
Britain and Spain are embroiled in an escalating diplomatic row over stringent car searches imposed since the end of July by Spanish guards at the Gibraltar border, which have regularly caused delays of several hours.
Britain on Monday threatened to take legal action over the checks on the border of the rocky outpost on Spain's south coast while Spain said it was considering taking the dispute to global bodies such as the United Nations and the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
Gibraltarians are firmly on London's side in the latest of a long string of spats.
"We don't want to belong to Spain, we are happy being British," said 42-year-old Gilbratarian Kim Bickerstaff, complaining that the Spanish border checks hurt both residents and visiting workers.
About 6,000 Gibraltarians live on the Spanish side where housing in cheaper, according to Madrid.
"Those of us who have family or work here have a different viewpoint from the rest of the Spanish, we are not anti-Gibraltarian," said Rafael Marquina, a 46-year-old government worker from the Spanish border town of La Linea who was visiting his aunt in Gibraltar.
"All the problems come from an incorrect starting point: that Gibraltar is Spanish. But Gibraltar is British and its people feel British," he said.
The British warship HMS Westminster set sail on Tuesday on a training exercise that will include a stop at Gibraltar.
The type 23 frigate left Portsmouth naval base on England's south coast to join nine other Royal Navy vessels heading for the Mediterranean and the Gulf.
Defence officials said the training exercise has long been planned and follows similar deployments in 2011 and 2012.
About 10,000 Spaniards cross the frontier each day to work in the self-governing British overseas territory which measures just 6.8 square kilometres (2.6 square miles) and is home to about 30,000 people.
Source : Sapa-AFP /mjs
Date : 13 Aug 2013 23:49
A better question is, I wonder if Morocco is willing to allow people in and out of Morocco, from Ceutu, without proper border checks.
Seriously, searching cars at your border is now seen as a problem?
The problem is that the border between Gibralter and Spain has always been incredibly relaxed/lax - you could just walk in and out, pretty much. Which is fine, but, of course, Gibralter is a tax haven and not part of the Schengen area. Now Spain is tightening controls on their border, which every country is allowed to do, and the UK is having a hissy fit...
LazyLion
King of de Jungle
Spain tells Britain to remove Gibrltar Reef
Spain told Britain on Tuesday it must remove 70 concrete blocks dropped into the waters off Gibraltar before Madrid will agree to dialogue in a heated dispute over the British outpost.
In an article in the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo sharply criticised Gibraltar's creation of the reef last month in disputed waters that were used by Spanish fishermen.
Spain is willing to restart a dialogue with Britain and it will accept the creation of ad-hoc forums that include Gibraltar and the neighbouring Spanish province Andalusia for issues relating to residents on both sides of the border, Garcia-Margallo said.
"But as Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy observed earlier month to his British counterpart David Cameron, it is first necessary for the UK to show that it intends to undo the damage that has already been caused, in particular by removing the concrete blocks."
The Gibraltar government says the concrete reef in the Bay of Gibraltar will regenerate marine life and argues that the Spanish raked for shellfish there illegally in its waters.
But Garcia-Margallo said Spain had "no doubt" about its sovereignty over the waters, arguing that they were never included in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht under which Spain ceded Gibraltar to Britain in perpetuity.
"These waters and this land therefore have always remained under Spanish sovereignty," the foreign minister said.
Dropping the concrete blocks was a "violation of the most basic rules of environmental conservation," he said, adding that local fishermen who relied on the area for a quarter of their activity had been deprived of their livelihoods.
Spain stepped up checks at the border with Gibraltar this month saying it was cracking down on smuggling but creating hours-long traffic queues. Britain accuses Madrid of using the border to retaliate over the reef.
The European Commission is to send observers to the border next month at the invitation of both Madrid and London.
It is the latest in a string of diplomatic rows over the self-governing British overseas territory, which measures just 6.8 square kilometres (2.6 square miles) and is home to about 30,000 people.
Garcia-Margallo also protested against:
- The refuelling of ships in waters off Gibraltar, saying it risked releasing toxic discharges into the sea;
- Smuggling over the border from the low-tax territory. He said illegal cigarette seizures surged 213 percent between 2010 and 2012.
- The opacity of Gibraltar's tax regime. The minister said Gibraltar had 21,770 registered companies of which only 10 percent paid taxes and most had been formed by non-residents seeking to avoid taxes at home. Shell companies in Gibraltar concealed the true ownership of 3,000 properties in Spain, he said. And some 6,700 Gibraltarians lived in Spain while claiming tax residence in Gibraltar.
Garcia-Margallo urged Britain to re-open talks on sovereignty for Gibraltar, saying UN General Assembly resolutions established that the "colonial situation must end" through talks between London and Madrid.
Britain refuses to return sovereignty to Spain against the wishes of Gibraltarians, who are staunchly pro-British. But Garcia-Margallo said the UN did not recognise their right to self-determination, only calling for their interests to be taken into account.
Source : Sapa-AFP /pk
Date : 20 Aug 2013 10:05
Spain told Britain on Tuesday it must remove 70 concrete blocks dropped into the waters off Gibraltar before Madrid will agree to dialogue in a heated dispute over the British outpost.
In an article in the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo sharply criticised Gibraltar's creation of the reef last month in disputed waters that were used by Spanish fishermen.
Spain is willing to restart a dialogue with Britain and it will accept the creation of ad-hoc forums that include Gibraltar and the neighbouring Spanish province Andalusia for issues relating to residents on both sides of the border, Garcia-Margallo said.
"But as Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy observed earlier month to his British counterpart David Cameron, it is first necessary for the UK to show that it intends to undo the damage that has already been caused, in particular by removing the concrete blocks."
The Gibraltar government says the concrete reef in the Bay of Gibraltar will regenerate marine life and argues that the Spanish raked for shellfish there illegally in its waters.
But Garcia-Margallo said Spain had "no doubt" about its sovereignty over the waters, arguing that they were never included in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht under which Spain ceded Gibraltar to Britain in perpetuity.
"These waters and this land therefore have always remained under Spanish sovereignty," the foreign minister said.
Dropping the concrete blocks was a "violation of the most basic rules of environmental conservation," he said, adding that local fishermen who relied on the area for a quarter of their activity had been deprived of their livelihoods.
Spain stepped up checks at the border with Gibraltar this month saying it was cracking down on smuggling but creating hours-long traffic queues. Britain accuses Madrid of using the border to retaliate over the reef.
The European Commission is to send observers to the border next month at the invitation of both Madrid and London.
It is the latest in a string of diplomatic rows over the self-governing British overseas territory, which measures just 6.8 square kilometres (2.6 square miles) and is home to about 30,000 people.
Garcia-Margallo also protested against:
- The refuelling of ships in waters off Gibraltar, saying it risked releasing toxic discharges into the sea;
- Smuggling over the border from the low-tax territory. He said illegal cigarette seizures surged 213 percent between 2010 and 2012.
- The opacity of Gibraltar's tax regime. The minister said Gibraltar had 21,770 registered companies of which only 10 percent paid taxes and most had been formed by non-residents seeking to avoid taxes at home. Shell companies in Gibraltar concealed the true ownership of 3,000 properties in Spain, he said. And some 6,700 Gibraltarians lived in Spain while claiming tax residence in Gibraltar.
Garcia-Margallo urged Britain to re-open talks on sovereignty for Gibraltar, saying UN General Assembly resolutions established that the "colonial situation must end" through talks between London and Madrid.
Britain refuses to return sovereignty to Spain against the wishes of Gibraltarians, who are staunchly pro-British. But Garcia-Margallo said the UN did not recognise their right to self-determination, only calling for their interests to be taken into account.
Source : Sapa-AFP /pk
Date : 20 Aug 2013 10:05
Compton_effect
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They estimaqte those oild fields will give around $180 billion in taxes to the Falklands islands.
As for Gilbratar. Spain is in financial problems - if they get Gibratar - they can easily start taxing traffic through the Straits.
http://www.theleader.info/article/40287/spain/national/spain-to-introduce-tax-on-sun/
Compton_effect
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Yes, let's resort to racial stereotypes why don't we
¡Ay, caramba!
Rocket Raccoon
Executive Member
Yes, let's resort to racial stereotypes why don't we
National stereotypes, not racial, okay?
FYI This pic isn't directed at you. I just think it's appropriate for this thread.
Well I hope they're all learning to speak Spanish and following local customs. None of this multicultural nonsense.
That's really the only reason. Although the Falklands war was also a very lucky accident for Thatcher. Some current Tories seem to be hoping this Gibraltar thing can also exhume their career.
Wrong century. Wrong millennium. Nothing much mighty about Britannia. Hasn't been for decades.
Compton_effect
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Those two specific territories are invaluable. One has massive fishing reserves and is a liquid goldmine worth fighting for.
And the other controls access into the Mediterranean sea, the busiest mass of water on the planet. If Egypt goes bad it will be the only available shipping route. Giving them up would be like the US giving Alaska back.
Yes, let's resort to racial stereotypes why don't we
Siestas are very much part of their culture, how is it a racist stereotype?
Because the way he said it implied that they are lazy and don't work or do anything useful, all they do is take siesta. It was meant as an insult. The Spanish have become known for siesta, but this is from centuries ago when farmers rested during the hottest part of the day. Even today, when they do take siesta they then work longer into the evening to make up the time. Today, in Spain, where many people work in air-conditioned offices, there is no siesta.
In the UK, and elsewhere, many people also have siesta except they call it a "power nap".
Rocket Raccoon
Executive Member
It's not racist though.
LazyLion
King of de Jungle
Sounds like your assumption, not his insinuation.