Eduardo González
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, assured yesterday in the plenary session of the Senate that the PP knows “perfectly” the content of the negotiation on Gibraltar and recalled that next Monday it will meet in Madrid, for the “third time”, with the mayors of Campo de Gibraltar to inform them of the details. For his part, the senator and mayor of Algeciras, José Ignacio Landaluce (PP), welcomed the meeting, but regretted that “it is a little late.”
Albares appeared before the plenary session of the Upper House at the request of Landaluce, senator of the PP and president of the Senate Foreign Commission, who assured during his first intervention that the mayors of the region have not been duly informed of the evolution of the talks. between the United Kingdom and the EU on the colony’s future relationship with the Union as a consequence of Brexit.
In his response, the minister reminded the PP senator that, next Monday, he will receive in Madrid the mayors of Campo de Gibraltar, the counselor of the Presidency of the Andalusian Government, Antonio Sanz, and the president of the Commonwealth of Municipalities, Susana Pérez Custodio, to inform them about the negotiations. “This will be the third time I’ve met with you, I don’t know why you seem like you don’t know anything,” he said.
“You have given me documents that have been my guide throughout the negotiation, and in all the committees I have offered the PP, with enormous silence on their part, a pact to reach an agreement for Gibraltar and I have been advancing how the negotiation,” he continued. “The last time was last Monday and you heard the silence of your PP colleagues. They know the things we want, that we want to tear down the Fence, that we are proposing the free movement of people and goods and that we are not going to renounce, at any time, our proposal for sovereignty,” added the minister.
Likewise, Albares assured that the negotiation with the United Kingdom began with the People’s Party Government. “This negotiation was not initiated by me, but by you, and you did not conclude it, and you did not ask for joint use of the airport, nor sovereignty, nor co-sovereignty,” he stated. “You also accepted the New Year’s Eve Agreement. They know many things, why do they want to worry the Spanish? You agree with all this, as does the president of the Board,” Juanma Moreno, who “said that he wants a shared space for workers and to guarantee legal security,” he continued.
“Therefore, less chest beating now,” claimed Albares. “Stay away from those colleagues of yours (in reference to the former Minister of Foreign Affairs José Manuel García-Margallo, who declared to the newspaper Europa Sur that Spain “is selling the sovereignty of Gibraltar for a plate of lentils”) and remember the 300,000 Andalusians who live in the area,” he concluded.
Landaluce
For his part, Landaluce welcomed Monday’s meeting, but regretted that “it is a little late.” “It arrives a year and a half late and after 18 rounds of negotiations, in which the Gibraltarians have been sitting with the English (within the British delegation) but never the Campo-Gibraltarians,” he denounced.
“We want to convey our desires and needs to achieve a good agreement, to hear and be heard, because we have important concerns” about the conditions of cross-border workers, the salaries of local workers compared to those in Gibraltar, the environmental problems caused by the spill. of untreated water from the Rock, the joint use of the airport, the future of the naval base, fiscal dumping, tobacco smuggling, money laundering or the claim of sovereignty over the Rock. Regarding all these issues, he warned, the PP wants “a good agreement, but not just any agreement.”
Likewise, he assured that it is “false” that the PP has information about the negotiations, because it has not been “shown anything” and has not had access to “any document.” Landaluce also made a mention of the Chief Minister of Gibraltar, Fabian Picardo, who, “after the president’s five-day vacation, said that Pedro Sánchez was good for him to continue because he is the one who best suits Gibraltar.” “But is it good for Campo de Gibraltar?”, he concluded.
