Tensions have risen between Spain and Gibraltar following the implementation of additional border checks between the two territories by the Spanish government. Gareth Stockey notes that border restrictions are likely to have a damaging effect on both Gibraltar and neighbouring Spanish communities. He argues that the Spanish government’s actions represent a break from the conciliatory stance pursued by the previous Zapatero government, and are more in keeping with the traditional ‘Francoist’ approach of using the Gibraltar issue to divert public and media attention away from domestic problems.
The most recent diplomatic spat over Gibraltar has now entered its third week. In recent years the vicissitudes of this long-running dispute have encompassed everything from airspace to territorial waters, from telephone lines to Gibraltar’s proposed membership of UEFA. But the recent renewal of tension has centred on the Gibraltar-Spain border, where travellers and commuters have found themselves waiting for hours in long traffic queues, owing to the enforcement of much more rigorous customs checks on the part of Spanish border officials. Britain and Spain show no signs of backing down from their respective positions, and in the meantime the residents who live and work on either side of this contested frontier suffer the consequences.
Spain’s use of the frontier to bully, cajole or simply irritate Gibraltar is hardly unprecedented, and has met with predictable nods of understanding in the Gibraltarian press. The move sits neatly with a commonly held view – and one shared by most who know anything about ‘the Rock’ in Britain – that Spain will push its 300-year-old claim to the territory at any opportunity, and that the border is the most frequently used weapon in the Spanish armoury.
In fact, using the border to ‘strangle’ Gibraltar is a relatively recent phenomenon, and originates from the time of the Franco dictatorship in Spain. Following his Cold War rehabilitation amongst the western powers in the early 1950s, Franco first ordered a range of restrictions at the Gibraltar frontier in 1954, ostensibly in protest at the visit of Queen Elizabeth II to the Rock on her coronation tour. Further restrictions were imposed in subsequent years, which culminated in the total closure of land and sea traffic between Spain and Gibraltar in 1969. If Franco’s aim had been to squeeze the Gibraltar economy and force its inhabitants into submission, his policy was totally self-defeating, as even his gushing British biographer, the late George Hills, was forced to admit. The border closure also solidified a nascent Gibraltarian identity, which became resolutely anti-Spanish thereafter.
Whilst the transition to democracy in Spain after Franco’s death eventually brought about the full reopening of the border in 1985, it is fair to say that successive Spanish democratic governments have felt obliged to follow the lead of the dictatorship in using the frontier against Gibraltar. Media discourse in Spain also maintains a largely intransigent stance on the subject of ‘El Peñón’, and arguably obliges politicians of all persuasions to uphold a common stance on the subject. In July 2009, for example, former Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Ángel Moratinos was castigated in several newspapers for the ‘shame’ and ‘historic treachery’ of travelling to Gibraltar to meet his British counterpart, David Miliband, and (then) Gibraltarian Chief Minister Peter Caruana. The visit was said to undermine 300 years of Spanish policy geared towards ‘anti-colonialism’ and the recovery of Gibraltar.
Moratinos’ visit certainly did mark a change to the pattern set for Spanish policy by the late dictator in 1954. Indeed, it was a symbolic culmination of a much more flexible position adopted by the PSOE administration of José Zapatero, which had agreed to participate in trilateral talks with Britain and (for the first time) Gibraltar over matters relating to the territory. As part of these discussions, and notwithstanding a degree of suspicion or outright hostility from some quarters in both Gibraltar and Spain, frontier relations had been normalised to a great extent, agreements had been made to expand the Gibraltar airport to the potential benefit of communities on either side of the frontier, and the Gibraltar Government had invited the establishment of an Instituto Cervantes on the Rock to promote Spanish language and culture.
Quite apart from the logic of preferring carrot to stick, Zapatero’s Gibraltar policy joined a long line of reforms which were sure to irritate the (then) PP opposition and highlight its political debt to Francoism: to name but a few, the legalisation of gay marriage, the passage of further powers to the autonomous communities (particularly Catalonia and the Basque Country), and the hugely controversial ‘law of historical memory‘, which attempted to address the legacies of Francoism left untouched during the transition.
Seen in this light, some degree of change in Spanish policy to Gibraltar might have been expected after the election of the Partido Popular to office in December 2011. And true to form, tensions have increased in the last 18 months. The PP has refused to engage in the ‘trilateral process’ begun under Zapatero. Moreover, radically different interpretations of Gibraltar’s right to ‘territorial waters’ have led to several altercations between the Gibraltar police and their Spanish counterparts in Gibraltar Bay, culminating recently in Spanish officers allegedly shooting at a British jet-skier. Finally, as events of the past two weeks have shown, the border has once again been used to push Madrid’s ‘traditional’ claims to the Rock. It has not been lost on Gibraltarian observers that the latest restrictions were imposed on 4 August, the day that Franco declared ‘Day of Gibraltar’ in 1951 to mark the loss of the territory on that date in 1713, and to mobilise Spanish public opinion against British ‘occupation’ of the Rock.
Contrary to accepted wisdom in Britain, Spain and Gibraltar, we must understand that the notion of Spain’s ‘traditional’ claim to Gibraltar – and more specifically the use of the ‘contentious’ frontier to put pressure on the Rock – is largely a policy and narrative invented by the Franco regime. Indeed, for most of the period after 1713, the border was relatively open, official relations excellent, cross-frontier commerce considerable (both licit, and illicit in the form of a truly Brobdingnagian smuggling trade), and socio-cultural exchange the accepted norm. In one of its more bizarre manifestations, the Royal Calpe Hunt, this closeness was represented for over a century by British officers (and later Gibraltarian notables) riding out with Spanish officers and aristocrats to hunt foxes in the neighbouring Spanish countryside. The kings of Britain and Spain were joint patrons of the hunt. On a larger and more significant scale, the symbiotic relationship across the frontier was confirmed and cemented by large-scale intermarriage, the predominant use of Spanish amongst civilians on the Rock, and widespread interest in Spanish culture.
Gibraltar’s ‘contentious’ frontier also operated to solidify local loyalties, which often stood in opposition to the respective national priorities of London or Madrid. For example, many a Gibraltar governor found out to his cost that it was unwise to place British military interests on the Rock ahead of the local contraband trade, for fear of upsetting the Gibraltarian merchant community and its powerful economic allies in Britain. Similarly, when another Spanish dictator, General Miguel Primo de Rivera, attempted to enact strict customs controls on the frontier in the 1920s, Gibraltarians combined with their civilian counterparts in the surrounding Spanish towns to force a policy u-turn.
Some sense of the border’s ability to blur loyalties can be seen this past week by the observation of the Spanish mayor of La Línea that the recent frontier restrictions have harmed as many Spanish travellers and workers as they have Gibraltarian, to the detriment of an already deprived local economy and at a time of grave economic crisis. The PP’s obsession with the Rock is not necessarily shared by Gibraltar’s immediate Spanish neighbours, and arguably never was.
The Gibraltar ‘problem’ thus remains much more complex than the simplicities of a largely-Francoist narrative would allow for. In using action against Gibraltar to distract Spanish public and media attention from other internal problems – on a macro level Spain’s economic woes, and on a micro level the ongoing allegations against Prime Minister Rajoy in the Barcenas scandal – the PP is arguably following a genuinely ‘traditional’ policy towards the Rock. If history has taught us something about this relationship, however, it is that carrot is much more effective than stick. An open frontier has served to unite the two communities for much of the last three hundred years. By contrast, frontier restrictions begun under Franco have, quite understandably, solidified a Gibraltarian identity that defines itself strongly against the Spanish ‘other’.
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Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.
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Gareth Stockey – University of Nottingham
Gareth Stockey is Lecturer in Modern Spanish Studies at the University of Nottingham. His book, ‘Gibraltar: A Dagger in the Spine of Spain?’ was published through the LSE’s Sussex/Cañada Blanch Studies on Contemporary Spain series. It will be published in paperback in November.
I disagree most strongly with this piece. It portrays an unfair and ideological picture of spanish politics which ignores most of the issues that as a matter of fact divide the government and the opposition on this or many other matters. I am not a supporter of the present President of the spanish government, nor his party (the PP), but it is just simply false that the PP is a francoist-inspired party or that it defends francoist ideas or that it wants in any way a return to a Franco regime on Gibraltar or any other issue. Just to mention two items that appear on this article: the Government, and its Minister of Justice, recently endorsed the Constitutional Court’s approval of Zapatero’s gay marriage laws, which in no way have been affected, repelled, diminished or rejected. There is a huge consensus in Spain in favour of gay marriage and gay rights and it certainly includes many supporters and politicians in the PP. As for endowing the autonomous communities with further powers, it was the previous PP government (under Aznar) which transferred both education and health to the autonomous communities, a move that the present government continues to endorse in spite of major and growing sentiment in many spaniards (myself included) in favour of a return of these and other powers to the central state. The author simply does not know what he is talking about here, and it is the author of this article, and not the Spanish government, who seems driven by some sort of ideological British nationalism. The present spat between the UK and Spain does not concern any “francoist” legacy, or supposed ideology, of the Spanish government. And it certainly affects the local communities, in particular the fishing community in La Línea de la Concepción who have been deprived of what has been their livelihood for hundreds of years by an arbitrary, unannounced, and unilateral decision of the Gibraltarian authorities to build an artificial barrier reef in disputed waters outside the port of Gibraltar. (The growing smuggling culture coming from Gibraltar certainly also affects and imperils many of the poorest people in the area who are forced into illegal trade as their only means of livelihood).
We are academics. Let us see past rhetoric, please, and let us focus on the legalities of the matter. The bottom line is that Gibraltar is an obscene tax haven at the heart of the European Union, in violation itself of EU fiscal policies, and other regulations on trade, with an incredibly lax attitude to taxing business (registering of the order of 20,000 to 80,000 companies in an area with fewer than 30,000 residents- and the estimates varying greatly partly because the Gibraltar government refuses a proper inspection), and in violation of a United Nation resolution against its status as a colonial outpost. For the British and Gibraltar governments now to appeal to the European Commission is just about as rich as one can have it.
You all only need to read how things have gone over the Gibraltar territory since it was given (¿pickpocketed?¿pirated?) to the UK. You all only need to read the treaty and what the UK is entitled to under it.
It is NOT our main problem currently but YES, it is a problem having a trickster in your backyard. And it will increase if we don’t act accordingly.
Francoist? Franco was not a good leader (like most under this Sun) but on this issue he knew perfectly well what to do. And did it.
I certainly can’t agree with the above piece of Spanish nationalistic rhetoric either! Franco closed the border but that is now simply impossible since both countries are EU members – the border must and will of course remain open. What the Spanish Government is proposing, as far as I know, is a 4-party negotiation on financial, fiscal and trading matters (involving London, Madrid and the governments of Gibraltar and Andalucía). I can’t see how any reasonable person can object to that.
The treaty established that the border must remain closed. Telling that this point must be enforced is nationalistic?
Did the treaty not establish that there would be ‘no commerce across the border (by land or sea)’? That is not the same as saying the border must be shut. But it is certainly consistent with imposing a levy on crossing it for work, employment or trading business. It is also consistent with coming down extremely strongly against smuggling, money laundering, tax evasion, and what to my mind is worse, the common practice by Gibraltarians to cross the border for medical treatment in the spanish health system, without having paid a single euro in tax for it. Given the delicate state of spanish public services – the severe cuts in the system, etc -, this practice is arguably the most immoral and indecent of them all.