Gibraltar: enough with the grandstanding

When the UK’s preliminary position on Brexit negotiations was communicated to the European Union on 29th March, no mention was made of Gibraltar. This was considered by many in Gibraltar and the UK to be an error; not to mention to the Rock was, it was feared, an invitation to Spain to demonstrate intransigence over Gibraltar’s future status during the negotiations.

The fears of Gibraltarians were realised when the EU issued its draft guidelines for the Brexit negotiations. Unlike the UK, it was unequivocal: “After the United Kingdom leaves the Union, no agreement between the EU and the United Kingdom may apply to the territory of Gibraltar without agreement between the Kingdom of Spain and the United Kingdom.” Gibraltar’s economic future—its access to the free market and to the European labour market, most importantly migrant workers who commute daily across the frontier from Spain to Gibraltar—was seemingly handed to a hostile neighbour.

In 1973, as a UK overseas territory that is nevertheless located in Europe, Gibraltar joined the then European Economic Community along with the UK. The Rock’s economy has changed dramatically since then, and has done so within the context of EU membership and within the context of an open frontier with Spain, the latter being insisted upon before Spain could join the EU in 1986. As Gibraltar prepares for Brexit, concerns about its economic future are necessarily to the fore.

Put another way, the EU’s position that any agreement over Gibraltar would have to be come to through bilateral negotiations has opened the door to Spain pressing its claim to sovereignty by threatening to exclude Gibraltar from two vital components which make up its economy. Access to the common market is important, but a free and flowing frontier with Spain, which allows for between 9,000 to 12,000 workers to enter Gibraltar daily, is vital. It is not that sovereignty itself is part of the negotiations, but rather that Spain might effect an economic blockade which would necessitate joint sovereignty with Spain in order to keep the economy afloat.

Gibraltarians will remember the experience of the frontier being closed in the days of General Franco, from 1969-1985. Travel to Spain had to take place by ferry via North African ports, and family ties which stretch across the frontier were severed. It was not uncommon for Gibraltarian new-borns to be taken to the frontier and held up so that family on the Spanish side might come to dote, albeit at a heart-breaking distance.

But here’s the rub—it is, in fact, not in the material interests of any one of Gibraltar, the UK or Spain to affect negatively the Gibraltar economy. Gibraltar is a thriving territory which borders onto a Spanish hinterland which is part of one of the poorest regions in Spain and which has one of the highest rates of youth unemployment in the country. The Rock provides vital jobs and income to its Spanish neighbours and to this end, the years of the frontier closure aside, on a local level the relationship between Gibraltar and the surrounding region has been friendly.

Disruption at the frontier has occurred when the Spanish government has needed a distraction from its own problems. Pressure at the frontier, disruption to tourism and to the movement of labour are all part of tried and tested tactics to distract people from political problems in Madrid. They are handled calmly in Gibraltar, supported by the UK (the latter albeit in differing measure over the years). But Michael Howard’s inference that the UK is prepared to act militarily to assert its sovereignty over Gibraltar and the subsequent media furore, combined with unhelpful and ill-informed calls by politicians such as Nigel Farage for Gibraltar’s integration with the UK, has added a new dimension to the on-going dispute. We are now seeing politicians in the UK grandstanding to distract the media from domestic political problems.

Handled sensibly, the issues surrounding Gibraltar and Brexit can be solved to the satisfaction of all concerned. The worry comes if both UK and Spanish politicians cast the question of Gibraltar’s economic future as instead being about its sovereignty. Then, an amicable solution may become impossible.