Spain tells UK to remove reef blocks off Gibraltar
Print Edition
Spain told Britain yesterday that 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 criticized Gibraltar’s creation of the reef last month in disputed waters used by Spanish fishermen.
Spain is willing to restart a dialogue with Britain and will accept the creation of forums that include Gibraltar and the neighboring 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 border checks this month saying it was cracking down on smuggling, but creating traffic queues. Britain accuses Madrid of using this to retaliate over the reef.
The European Commission is sending observers to the border next month.
It is the latest in a string of diplomatic rows over the self-governing British overseas territory, which measures just 6.8 square kilometers and is home to about 30,000 people.
Britain refuses to return sovereignty to Spain against the wishes of Gibraltarians, who are staunchly pro-British.
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