The mayor of Algeciras, José Ignacio Landaluce, hopes that the appearance that the Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, José Manuel Albares, will carry out today, Friday, before the Foreign Commission of the Congress of Deputies “will serve to shed light on the negotiations that Spain and the United Kingdom are maintaining about Gibraltar and the future of our region, and about which little or nothing is known for now.”
Despite having failed to get Vox and PSOE to sign a joint document, which had not been previously agreed upon, in which the presence of the mayors of the region in the negotiations between Great Britain and the United Kingdom was demanded, Landaluce insists on questioning the role played by the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs in this process. In that sense, Landaluce assured that he expects more information from the head of Spanish diplomacy: “Although I hope so, because the present and future of around 300,000 Campogibraltarians depends on it, it may also be that nothing happens, especially when this “That same week, Minister Albares has said publicly that his only priority within the framework of the European Union is to get Catalan spoken in the EU, and that worries me.”
“Honestly, with the problems that we have at the community level and that directly affect Spain, and of course the Campo de Gibraltar, it does not seem logical that the person in charge of Spanish Diplomacy would refer to that issue as his highest priority, and it is not worry about the increase in irregular immigration, the effects of the war between Russia and Ukraine, competition in electric vehicles, the common agricultural policy or fishing, just to name a few examples,” underlines the first municipal authority, online with his functions as president of the Senate Foreign Commission, in the ranks of the Popular Party.
A few days before Albares receives the mayors of the region and the vice president of the Junta de Andalucía, Landaluce recalled, on the other hand, that the Ministry “has dismantled the structure that it had deployed in the Campo de Gibraltar, since it could not “A substitute has not yet been appointed to occupy the position of special foreign delegate in the region,” since the appointment, in 2023, of Juan José Sanz as ambassador to Serbia.
Finally, he has demanded that the Government of Spain comply with this area “and invest the billion euros that it has committed, through twelve ministries, and that should have begun to apply since Pedro Sánchez arrived at La Moncloa six years ago. First, that it meets the needs of the Spanish people, and then that it opts for other projects.” It is worth remembering that Algeciras has been the City Council of the region that has received the most funds from the Government in the agreement of the last Council of Ministers, with two million euros.
Alfonso Dastis, former Spanish Foreign Minister
Dastis does not believe that Brexit will facilitate sovereignty
On the other hand, The Gibraltar Chronicle yesterday partially reproduced the interview given, on September 30, by the former Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Alfonso Dastis, to The Diplomat in Spain. From his perspective, the UK’s departure from the EU never presented Spain with a quick opportunity to advance its aspiration for sovereignty over Gibraltar.
In November 2016, shortly after the Brexit referendum in Great Britain, Dastis, a career diplomat, replaced his predecessor, José Manuel García-Margallo, at the head of the Santa Cruz Palace during the last stage of Mariano Rajoy’s government. And it was precisely Dastis, whom the Gibraltarian Government first contacted to seek a future solution to the Rock’s relationship with the rest of the continent.
“The two had very different approaches to Gibraltar, even if both maintained Spain’s long-standing sovereignty aspirations,” La Crónica analyzes. Mr García-Margallo, in a farewell speech in November 2016, described how he had paid “special attention” to Gibraltar and “… the opportunities that Brexit offers to recover the Spanish sovereignty that we have been demanding for more than 300 years … “Dastis, by contrast, took a more pragmatic approach that reflected the broader context of Brexit and the EU’s relations with the United Kingdom and ultimately laid the foundations for the treaty negotiation currently underway.”
In the interview with The Diplomat, Dastis rejects that he was soft on Gibraltar and that Spain had lost the opportunity that Brexit offered to recover sovereignty of the Rock, as García Margallo has been maintaining in books and in statements: «Well, I think that We insisted as much as we could, and I am sure that if you ask [el entonces negociador jefe de la UE] Michel Barnier will confirm my persistence and efforts,” said Dastis, in his statements to The Diplomat.
“The point is that this had to be the result of a multilateral agreement and, in short, it is easy to think that Gibraltar can be subdued.”
Dastis, unlike García Margallo, aligns himself with the negotiation line proposed since then: «Without altering the balance and complicating the negotiations, I sincerely believe that we did what was feasible, and even today we continue working to achieve a tripartite agreement between the “United Kingdom and Spain, with the approval of the European Union.”
Dastis does not give up the claim of Spanish sovereignty over Gibraltar, although he clarifies: “Everything is subject to opinions, but I honestly do not believe that there has been any special opportunity to recover Gibraltar in a matter of hours.”
