Between The Rock and a hard place

Amid ongoing tensions between the UK and Spain over Gibraltar, the British Royal Navy is sending a fleet of warships to the disputed peninsula, but stresses the move is part of a “routine deployment” and not connected to the current political row, writes the Financial Times.

The news follows reports days earlier that Gibraltar’s Chief Minister Fabian Picardo requested additional naval support in the simmering dispute, which came to a head last week when The Rock’s government sank concrete blocks in retaliation for what it views as Spanish fishermen’s encroachment in Gibraltar’s waters.

The London Evening Standard’s defence correspondent Robert Fox, writes –

The latest flare-up is one of the sharpest for some time. But for all the heated tempers in the baking midday sun at Gibraltar’s frontiers, it is inconceivable that Britain and Spain, who work very closely in Nato and the UN, could come to serious blows.

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Meanwhile, The Economist proposes that the strategic importance the peninsula once had for Britain, no longer exists, so asks: “Why not hand it over?” It continues –

... attempts were made by a British government a decade ago to broker a joint-sovereignty deal. But Gibraltarians were outraged, and Spain was interested in the plan only as a step towards recovering the full sovereignty which was ceded in the Treaty of Utretcht in 1713. In a referendum in 2002, 98 per cent of Gibraltarians rejected the idea. This is a dispute with no end in sight. [...] The latest confrontation will prevent a settlement for yet another generation.

In Spain, conservative daily ABC’s leader condemns the “Unacceptable British provocation”, and calls for a “fix to a problem that affects Spain’s national interests, sovereignty and dignity,” regarding illegal activities around The Rock. Modern History Professor Ricardo García Cárcel clearly highlights in ABC that Spain’s “stigma” has been the lack of a state policy towards The Rock –

three hundred years later, nothing has been learnt about what Utrecht really meant: State fragility costs, sectarian divisions, the lacking national self-esteem.

But Ramón Pérez-Maura states that –

Now is the time when the most independent-minded English people confess their contempt for that cave of pirates [Gibraltar] while they argue that London can not make any move without taking into account the will of the “llanitos’” [the name given to those living on The Rock].

Nevertheless, other commentators, such as Luis Arroyo argue that current Spanish attention on The Rock may be strategic, but adds that “Ten ‘Gibraltar affairs’ would be needed to stave off Barcenas’ tsunami”, referring to the latest political corruption scandal involving the former treasurer of the People’s Party, Spain’s ruling party.