Spain seeks post-Brexit leverage on Gibraltar

Madrid’s last-ditch threat to derail a hard-negotiated Brexit deal over Gibraltar has left some wondering how the tiny rocky British overseas territory came to play such a crucial role. The answer lies in Spain’s hopes to gain some control over the territory it lays claim to once Britain leaves the European Union (EU) and a desire for more influence in the bloc, analysts say.

“Anyone can see that Gibraltar is an issue of huge symbolic – and not only symbolic – importance for Spain,” wrote Madrid’s Real Instituto Elcano think tank on Friday. Spain is furious that the deal outlining Britain’s exit from the EU does not explicitly state that Madrid has a veto on any accord on future relations between the EU and Gibraltar after Brexit.

That had initially been agreed between the 27 member states but does not appear in the final draft withdrawal agreement. “They have tricked us again,” said conservative newspaper ABC. It drew a parallel between the current state of play and 1713. That was the year when Spain ceded Gibraltar under the Treaty of Utrecht to Britain, which had occupied the territory during the War of Spanish Succession.

An initial clause had stipulated that after the United Kingdom left the EU, any agreement on Gibraltar between the bloc and the UK could only apply if it had previously been agreed between Spain and Britain on a bilateral basis. That clause, negotiated by Spain’s previous conservative government, had been seen as a major opportunity for Madrid as it gave it an effective veto.

“Madrid saw Brexit as an opportunity to reconfigure the status of the territory which is administered by the United Kingdom,” wrote Ignacio Molina, an expert on the EU at the Real Instituto Elcano, in Agenda Publica, an analysis website. That could mean either an “all-out” approach, by bringing up the issue of sovereignty, “or more modestly to resolve concrete problems in the areas of regulation, tax and cross-border freedom of movement.”

But now, the formal withdrawal agreement on the table appears to suggest that, after the transition period, relations will be decided simply by London and Brussels. Beyond these strategic considerations, analysts said the non-inclusion of the clause negotiated by Spain left Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez vulnerable to criticism from the opposition at home.

“It’s a complete failure,” Jose Ramon Garcia Hernandez, spokesman on foreign affairs for the conservative Popular Party, told reporters last week when the Brexit deal was unveiled. It’s “probably Spanish foreign policy’s worst fiasco in the last 100 years.”

Elections are fast approaching in Spain’s southern Andalucia region, which neighbours Gibraltar. “That’s why Sanchez came out and said no, ‘we’re going to be firm’ and threatened not to reach an agreement on Brexit,” said Oriol Bartomeus, politics professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Then there is Sanchez’s desire to wield more influence within the European Union.