Eduardo González The new ambassador of the United Kingdom in Spain, Sir Alex Ellis, arrived yesterday in Madrid to take over from Hugh Elliott, at an important moment of political change in his country and and with the expectation of the resumption of negotiations on the future of Gibraltar in the EU. “I am very pleased and proud to represent His Majesty Charles III and my country as ambassador to Spain and Andorra,” the new ambassador said in a press release from the British Embassy in Madrid. “Our countries have a very strong relationship on so many levels: our citizens, our armed forces, at a cultural, educational, commercial level, among many others, and I will be delighted to work to make it even better,” he added. According to the Embassy, Ellis will present his credentials to King Felipe VI at a ceremony that will take place in the coming weeks. With this appointment, Alex Ellis returns to Spain, a country he knows well, since he was already posted to the British Embassy in Madrid in the 2000s. Later, he was ambassador to neighboring Portugal and Brazil. His last destination was India as British High Commissioner (equivalent to ambassador). In addition, he has held various positions in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in the Ministry of Exit from the European Union. After being in Spain, he also worked in the cabinet of the President of the European Commission. In fact, Ellis takes up the post at a particularly relevant time in the negotiations between the European Union and the United Kingdom on the future fit of Gibraltar in the Union after Brexit. The Spanish Government has already directly addressed the issue of Gibraltar with the new British cabinet of Prime Minister Keir Starmer. On July 11, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, held his first bilateral meeting in Washington with his new counterpart, the Labour Party member David Lammy, with whom he spoke about the negotiations and with whom he agreed on the need to “move quickly for the benefit and interest of all”. A week later, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, took advantage of his participation in the fourth summit of the European Political Community (EPC), held in Woodstock (Oxfordshire), to hold his first bilateral meeting with the newly appointed Keir Starmer. During this meeting, according to a press release from Moncloa, Sánchez conveyed to Starmer the need to create a bilateral and structured framework for dialogue and showed him his “constructive attitude” in order to reach an agreement on Gibraltar. For its part, the British Government reported that, during the meeting, Starmer expressed his hope that “the change of approach will pave the way for an agreement on Gibraltar that works for all parties.” The last meeting on Gibraltar was held in Brussels on May 16 with the participation of Albares, Lammy’s predecessor, David Cameron, and the vice president of the European Commission in charge of the issue, Maros Sefcovic, as well as the Chief Minister of Gibraltar, Fabian Picardo. That was the second meeting within this format, after the one held on April 12 and which concluded with a joint declaration in which the three parties limited themselves to announcing that the negotiations had been “held in a constructive atmosphere” and “significant progress” had been made. According to Albares, at the May meeting “significant progress” was made based on “the political lines already agreed on April 12, which referred to mobility, goods and the airport,” but he warned that, although the prospect is that “there will be an agreement,” there is still “no possible deadline.” In fact, the process came to a standstill after the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the conservative Rishi Sunak, announced on May 22 the end of the legislature and the advancement of the elections to July 4. A few days before the British elections, David Lammy assured -still as Foreign Affairs spokesman for the Labour Party- that if he assumed the position of Foreign Minister he would address the agreement on the future of Gibraltar from the point where David Cameron had left off. On the same day of Lammy's appointment, Fabian Picardo expressed his confidence that after the victory of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom the negotiations could be accelerated.
