The Diplomat
The President of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, Antonio Gutiérrez Limones, travelled yesterday to Gibraltar, where he was received by the Chief Minister of the Rock, Fabian Picardo, in what the authorities of the British colony described as a “courtesy visit”.
The meeting, according to a note from the Gibraltar government, was also attended by the deputy chief minister, Joseph García, and the attorney general, Michael Llamas.
The note adds that the conversation focused ‘on matters of common interest, especially those issues of concern relating to Gibraltar and the Campo de Gibraltar, which underpin many people’s views on the area’.
Picardo said he was delighted to have had the opportunity to discuss with Gutiérrez Limones “the issues that are relevant to the day-to-day reality of Gibraltarians and the people of the region around us”.
The president of the Foreign Affairs Committee was also in the Campo de Gibraltar, where he met with the mayor of La Línea de la Concepción, Juan Franco, and with representatives of the Cross-Border Group, which includes trade union and business representatives from both sides of the border. Yesterday, the Gibraltar authorities announced that 8,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine had already been administered to cross-border workers on the Rock.
Upon hearing of the visit of Gutiérrez Limones, who today will go to the Association of Municipalities of Campo de Gibraltar, the PP senator and mayor of Algeciras, José Ignacio Landaluce, said he thinks it is good that he is visiting the area, “at a time – he said – in which nobody understands anything at all, after the visit of the British Foreign Minister, Dominic Raab, to the Rock”.
Referring to the agreement reached between Spain and the UK at the end of last year on Gibraltar’s future relationship with the EU and the negotiations still pending, he said: “If the British foreign minister and the chief minister of Gibraltar say that Spain is showing goodwill in the negotiations, that means that things are going badly for us. If the British and the Gibraltarians are happy, it’s bad and we have been deceived”.
According to Landaluce, “Gibraltar has got the best out of being in the European Union and the best out of being outside, and at the same time, Spain, on the Campo de Gibraltar plan, nothing at all”.
For this reason, he asked Gutiérrez Limones that if he went to Gibraltar, he should be informed about what the Campo de Gibraltar is going to obtain with this agreement and what investments are going to be made in the area.
