The Mayor of Algeciras, José Ignacio Landaluce (PP), has assured that the people of Campo de Gibraltar “should always be” present “as a listener” in the negotiations regarding the situation of Gibraltar after Brexit after learning that the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, has summoned the mayors of this region, the Commonwealth and the Andalusian Government to a new information meeting on October 9.
“We are the ones who live here and who will be most affected if an agreement is reached,” Landaluce said in statements to journalists, arguing that “we have to have information” that is “basic, fair” so that “we have the same response that Gibraltar is having with the support of the United Kingdom.”
He has therefore asked “not only to be informed” with this type of meeting but also “to be in this negotiation” that “can have a very negative impact on Campo de Gibraltar if the negotiation is bad”, he warned, to clarify that he “does not want to be a prophet of doom” with this matter.
Landaluce has addressed Albares, to whom he has conveyed that it would be “intelligent” to have the Campo de Gibraltar “on his side”, “supporting or providing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with what we understand may have repercussions from these agreements or the requests that have to be brought to the negotiating table”.
“Do we want an agreement? For the umpteenth time I say yes, as long as it is good, not any agreement, and if it is going to be harmful,” he repeated, also establishing that this agreement can be modified in some points “if it is seen that they are nothing more than harmful and bring negative consequences” for the Cadiz region.
The Foreign Minister, Lancalude said, “must sit next to us when Gibraltar is discussed and he must tell us, when he has called us together for the 9th, everything there is about Gibraltar and these negotiations.”
The mayor of Algeciras also referred to the presence of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, at the UN in New York. In this regard, he valued the fact that Spain’s interests are being defended at this international forum, although he qualified that “it would not be understood if the President of the Government went to the UN and did not talk about continuing to demand the recovery of the Spanish territory of Gibraltar” or other issues related to the Rock such as the alleged “filling” of land.
“It is incomprehensible that we are talking about Venezuela, that we are talking about other countries, that we are aware of the suffering of all the people who are led by President Zelensky –in Ukraine– and we are not talking about issues that also affect us and that are very important,” Landaluce commented, adding that “we cannot think that we are going to take a position and bring up the subject of the Arab-Israeli conflict and that we are not talking about Gibraltar and the claim to our territory.”
