Spain accused of using Brexit to further Gibraltar territorial claims

GIBRALTAR’S government has accused Spain of trying to use Brexit to forward its territorial claims to the Rock, after an EU proposal to give Madrid a veto on decisions over the territory’s future.

Theresa May is coming under pressure to demand changes to Brexit negotiation guidelines set out by European Council president Donald Tusk, which would require Spanish agreement for Gibraltar to be included in future agreements between the EU and UK on issues like trade.

The proposal came just two days after the Prime Minister told MPs that the territory was “covered by our exit negotiations” and vowed never to enter into talks over its sovereignty against the wishes of its people.

Gibraltar’s first minister Fabian Picardo said the territory was being singled out for “unnecessary, unjustified and unacceptable” discrimination as a result of “a disgraceful attempt by Spain to manipulate the European Council for its own, narrow, political interests”.

Accusing Madrid of seeking to “mortgage the future relationship between the EU and Gibraltar to its usual obsession with our homeland”, Mr Picardo said: “The whole world and the whole EU should know: this changes nothing in respect of our continued, exclusive British sovereignty.”

Spain has a long-standing territorial claim on Gibraltar, which has been held by the UK since 1713 and currently has the status of British Overseas Territory.

Any suggestion Madrid might have a say over the future of the self-governing territory, which is home to important UK military bases, inevitably causes anxiety among its 30,000 inhabitants.

Gibraltar is addressed in a single paragraph of Mr Tusk’s ninepage document, which states: “After the United Kingdom leaves the Union, no agreement between the EU and the United Kingdom may apply to the territory of Gibraltar without the agreement between the Kingdom of Spain and the United Kingdom.”

Downing Street said Mrs May had made clear the Government was “absolutely steadfast in our support of Gibraltar, its people and its economy” in the House of Commons on Wednesday.

“We have been firm in our commitment never to enter arrangements under which the people of Gibraltar would pass under the sovereignty of another state against their wishes, nor to enter into a process of sovereignty negotiations with which Gibraltar is not content,” she told MPs.

The Tory chairman of the allparty parliamentary group on Gibraltar, Jack Lopresti, accused Spain of using Brexit as “a fig leaf for trouble-making over the status of Gibraltar”.

“It is shameful that the EU have attempted to allow Spain an effective veto over the future of British sovereign territory, flying in the face of the will of the people of Gibraltar,” said Mr Lopresti.

“The UK Government’s position is clear and will stand.”