When two parties do not reach an agreement, whether for a war or to sign an armistice, they invariably resort to the art of periphrasis, which consists of making verbal detours so as not to declare the raw truth, if possible without incurring the enunciation of a lie. Yes but no. Rhetoric, since the Greeks, is the most intelligent way to twist reality. Up to a certain point. The meeting between Spain, the United Kingdom and the EU, which had to resolve the issue of Gibraltar, the British colony on the Iberian Peninsula, in the face of the Brexit situation, which has turned the Rock into an extra-community border, did not produce a definitive agreement on this issue. , pending since New Year's Eve 2020, when both foreign ministries explored an agreement to reformulate Europe's southernmost border for mutual benefit.
Gibraltar aspires not to be isolated from the continent after the departure of its metropolis from the Schengen territory; Spain needs to guarantee the (peaceful) transit of people – 30,000 individuals, half of them cross-border workers, cross daily between the Rock and Campo de Gibraltar, one of the poorest regions in Andalusia, punished by drug trafficking. The great obstacle seems to be the military one – Gibraltar was born in 1713, after the treaty of Utrecht, with the status of a military town, and that continues to be more than three centuries later – although it also overlooks the strange fiscal condition of the Rock, an offshore zone. between Europe and Africa.
The fence, built by the British in 1902, has since divided two worlds: on the Spanish side, a land condemned to unemployment and smuggling since Franco, in 1969, decided to isolate the colony; from the British, a smallholding similar to Macau, dedicated to casinos and the opaque flow of capital. An agreement, even if it takes weeks, would benefit both parties. There is no discussion about that. The obstacle is the resignations: the (joint) use of the Peñón airport and the question of a hypothetical shared sovereignty. Not de jure, but de facto. Two issues that greatly concern the Llanitos, the subjects (Cádiz) of Charles III of England.
