Eduardo González
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, held a telephone conversation yesterday with the president of the Government of Andalusia, Juan Manuel Moreno, whom he asked for the regional government’s support for the future agreement between the EU and the United Kingdom on the relationship between Gibraltar. and the European Union after Brexit.
As reported by Foreign Affairs in a press release, Albares assured Moreno (of the PP) that “positions on the agreement are getting closer, as was evident in the meeting that the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs himself held in Brussels on April 12. Foreign Affairs, the British Foreign Minister, David Cameron; and the vice president of the European Commission, Maros Sefcovic, responsible for the negotiations between the EU and the United Kingdom after Brexit.”
In that meeting, “the highest level of those held so far,” points of understanding were reached “on general political lines, including the use of the airport, the traffic of goods and mobility,” he continued. The minister also assured the president of the Board that “the agreement will safeguard the Spanish position on sovereignty” and conveyed to Moreno “his personal commitment to the agreement, to the Campo de Gibraltar and to the well-being and projection exterior of Andalusia”.
For all these reasons, Albares yesterday asked Moreno for “the support of the Andalusian Government for this agreement that will bring shared prosperity to the Campo de Gibraltar region and the 300,000 Andalusians who live there” and offered “his full availability to meet in person.”
This contact, the Ministry recalled, is prior to the meeting that the minister will hold on Monday at the headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the mayors of Campo de Gibraltar, the counselor of the Presidency of the Junta de Andalucía, Antonio Sanz, and the president of the Commonwealth of Municipalities, Susana Pérez Custodio, to inform them about the negotiations. “It will be the third meeting in which the Board will have been present in just over two years, fruitful contacts in which both the mayors and the Board have been able to listen to the different positions of the negotiation from the minister and convey their opinions to him. comments,” said the Department headed by Albares.
Criticisms of the PP
After the call for the meeting on Monday, Antonio Sanz himself declared that this meeting with the minister “arrives late and badly” and expressed his “concern” about “the rush of the Government of Pedro Sánchez to look for a photo and be able to sign any agreement,” even if it is detrimental to the Campo de Gibraltar.” According to the counselor, the Board “had been warning for weeks that it was the first time in history that negotiations were taking place and neither the mayors of the region nor the Board of Andalusia were being informed, which had always happened.”.
In the same sense, the senator and mayor of Algeciras, José Ignacio Landaluce (PP), regretted this past Tuesday, during a debate with Albares in the Upper House, that Monday’s call “comes 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.”
