Gibraltar: a common history and a future of shared prosperity | Spain

In the instances of instantaneousness and hyperbole by which we stay, it’s common to abuse when describing sure days as “historic”. But we’re shut, very shut, to with the ability to expertise a true “historic day” for the Campo de Gibraltar area and for your entire province of Cádiz. And as mayor of San Roque, “the town the place Gibraltar resides”, you’ll perceive that I’ve an overflowing feeling of pleasure for this historic milestone.

Thanks to the negotiating efforts of the Government of Pedro Sánchez, with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, on the helm, right now we’re nearer than ever to signing the EU-United Kingdom Agreement in relation to Gibraltar that enables us one thing that nobody in Our area had not even dared to dream: the elimination of the Fence and the creation of a Shared Prosperity Zone between the eight municipalities that make up the area of Campo de Gibraltar and the Rock.

Since 2016, when the present British Foreign Minister, David Cameron, referred to as, then as Prime Minister, the referendum on Brexit, there have been virtually eight years that we’ve got lived within the area with uncertainty concerning the affect that stated exit would have on our financial system, considering that greater than 15,000 cross-border staff, and of them greater than 10,000 Spaniards, cross the Fence day-after-day to earn a residing within the Rock.

The New Year’s Eve Agreement, signed on December 31, 2020 between the United Kingdom and Spain, already contemplated a historic change in relations with Gibraltar, however that may needed to be expressed between the negotiating events in a definitive settlement.

It has not been a straightforward highway to succeed in the historic second by which we discover ourselves. There has been no scarcity of those that have insisted on placing stones in the way in which or elevating flags to query the settlement provide made by the Government of Spain, a courageous and beneficiant proposal that, if the settlement is lastly signed, will permit the liberty of motion of folks and items, the bodily elimination of the Fence and the joint use of the airport, all with out giving up Spain’s authorized positions in relation to Gibraltar.

The closure of the Gate ordered by Franco on June 8, 1969 was a nonsense that induced financial and sentimental trauma in hundreds of households and had an infinite price for the area that lasted for a few years, even after the Government of Felipe González , in 1982, ordered the reopening.

Now, additionally with a socialist Government, a new historic step is being taken, this time of a magnitude that may take years to assimilate. Because a new stage is opening in relations with Gibraltar, a stage of shared prosperity. All the political events in Spain have to rise to this historic problem.

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