Spain will tell Britain on Tuesday to push Gibraltar to let Spanish fishermen back onto waters off the UK territory after weeks of offshore skirmishes, the Foreign Minister said on Tuesday.
Spain has accused police from the British territory – a peninsular off the south of Spain – of chasing its fishermen from Spanish waters in recent weeks and has deployed Civil Guard officers to protect the boats.
Gibraltar and Britain say the police are simply enforcing a law that regulates fishing within the waters of the port of the peninsular ceded to the British in 1713 after a 1704 capture.
“No one chose this government to leave Spaniards without protection, so we are going to protect the Spanish fishermen,” Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo y Marfil told Spanish television Telecinco.
The dispute has reignited tensions between the two countries over the sovereignty of the peninsular which Spain has long claimed as its own.
Earlier this month, Spain’s Queen Sofia pulled out of a lunch to celebrate the diamond jubilee of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth as the dispute escalated and after news broke that Prince Edward of Britain would visit the Rock next month.
Spain’s right-leaning government led by Mariano Rajoy has taken a strident attitude on Gibraltar, which houses traditional British red phone boxes, pubs and fish and chip shops.
It believes the former Socialist government dealt a fatal blow to negotiations over its future by allowing three-way talks to include the pro-British Gibraltar government.
Garcia-Margallo was due on Tuesday to meet British Foreign Minister William Hague in London to discuss the dispute which has outraged many Spaniards. Radio and television talk shows have accused Gibraltar of harassing fishermen.
“I am going to ask Minister Hague to urge the government in Gibraltar to reach an agreement which respects the rights of the fishermen,” Margallo said.
Thomson Reuters