Long Queues and Unrest at Gibraltar-Spain Border Crossing

Las colas have once again been protagonists in the Defend that separates La Línea with Gibraltar. For the umpteenth time and as happened shortly before Christmas, pedestrians have had to endure this Friday a wait of more than an hour to leave the Rock to Spanish soil. Several Gibraltarian media have echoed the citizen’s unrest and have pointed to the “meticulous controls” of the Spanish authorities to check the documentation of people arriving from outside the European Union. Sources of National Police Corps Spanish They explain that the queue, as is usual at the Gate, forms because the customs service of the British colony requires queue one by one until they enter the Spanish Police building, where there are twelve posts operating simultaneously. Therefore, they maintain that it has no relationship with a possible increase in the intensity of controls.

With the Brexit negotiation as an eternal background still to be resolved, the queues come and go to the Gate, and are especially accentuated on festive dates when the numbers multiply. tourists. Many of the cross-border workers who cross on foot daily from the Campo de Gibraltar to the Rock also suffer these long, unpredictable waits.

In the last episode experienced at the border crossing, the collapse on December 16, provoked the intervention of the Spanish Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaskawhich, following a phone call made by the Chief Minister of Gibraltar, Fabian Picardoasked the police commanders to relax the passage control to alleviate the traffic jam.

The Spanish National Police insist that they are taking all possible measures to speed up pedestrian crossings across the border and They point towards the British and Rock authorities for not allowing the queue to spread to the other side of the fence..

Gibraltar Chronicle has transferred on its website this Friday the “long queues” suffered by pedestrians throughout the afternoon “while the Spanish police carried out meticulous checks on non-EU citizens“.

The Peñón newspaper explains that the queue It extended from the border to the air terminal and details that a journalist from the house who was at the scene took an hour to cross, at which time the wait was still increasing.

As has happened on previous occasions, the delay is due to the fact that National Police officers were carrying out detailed checks on the travel documents of all non-EU citizens, including Gibraltarians with red identity cards. “Those who did not have red ID cards had their passports scanned and stamped and were asked to present proof of hotel and return travel,” it says. Chronicle.

The Gibraltarian newspaper maintains that In the queue there were people from Gibraltar, from the United Kingdom who had arrived on a flight, tourists of multiple nationalities and cross-border workers. The passage of most European Union citizens was smooth, but the controls of non-EU citizens created a bottleneck at the entrance to the customs building that led to queues outside.

2023-12-29 19:57:07
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