Spain is coming for Gibraltar after Brexit, just like it said it would
LONDON -- Spain warned us this would happen.
As it became clear early Friday morning that the UK public had voted to leave the European Union, Spain wasted no time in calling for "joint sovereignty" over Gibraltar, which is a tiny territory of Britain that Spain continues to claim sovereignty over.
"The Spanish flag on the Rock is much closer than before," Spain's acting foreign minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo said in a radio interview.
You May Also Like
Britain's Europe minister David Lidington (who surely must be having the craziest day ever), rejected the idea, as did Gibraltar's chief minister Fabian Picardo.
But surely they must have expected this as Garcia-Margallo has already made it pretty clear that Spain was coming for Gibraltar if the vote went a certain way -- and even stuck precisely to his timeline for doing so.
In the event of a vote for Brexit, "We would be talking about Gibraltar the very next day," he told Spanish radio earlier this year.
Friday afternoon Picardo dismissed what the Spanish minister said as “irrelevant noises” and a "waste of breath," after starting the day with a calm and rational tweet:
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
Gibraltar was the first to report its results in the referendum on EU membership. The territory of about 32,000 people voted to Remain by an overwhelming 96%. (It's represented on Mashable UK's Lego Brexit map by the little pirate on the bottom left corner.)
Gibraltar has been a sticking point in British-Spanish relations for, well, hundreds of years. It was captured in 1704 and British sovereignty was established in 1713.
The "joint sovereignty" idea was mooted in 2002 but was wholly rejected in a referendum there. Nowadays thousands of people cross the border between Spain and Gibraltar every day for work, and the Brexit referendum result brings that freedom of movement into question.
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.
Liza Hearon was the Deputy Editor for Mashable UK. Liza started her career in journalism writing about punk bands for a 'zine in Florida, and her wanderlust has led her to work for news organisations in Russia, Japan and now London. Prior to joining Mashable, she was the European homepage editor for the Wall Street Journal. Liza loves podcasts, karaoke and really, really spicy food.
