The Rock of Gibraltar is the only colony that still remains in Europe and, far from solving the anachronism, it is getting bigger and bigger. The latest expansion plans involve reclaiming land from the sea to create a luxury tourist complex of 45,000 square meters and appropriating more Spanish waters, which Gibraltar has already delimited with buoys despite the fact that there is no treaty that recognizes the Peñón own guides.
The British authorities do and undo as they please in Gibraltar in the face of the passivity of the Spanish Government, of the different governments, since The United Kingdom has always managed the colony, ignoring Spain.
The Treaty of Utrecht, signed between 1713 and 1715, which recognized Gibraltar as British territory and which remains in force, only speaks of the transfer by Spain of “the city and castle of Gibraltar, together with its port, defenses and strengths”, and also cites that The United Kingdom has “no territorial jurisdiction” and no waters of its own.
That is to say, Gibraltar does not have territorial waters beyond those covered by the old port, but taking into account the traditional fait accompli policy on the part of the British, these they claim 15 nautical milesa maritime space that they call British Gibraltar Territorial Waters (‘British Territorial Waters of Gibraltar’) based on arbitrary issues, since they have no legal support.
In the more than 300 years of British control, The colony has been expanding without ever counting on Spain. In 1815, the Rock experienced a yellow fever epidemic and Spain voluntarily established a neutral zone beyond the Gibraltar border for humanitarian reasons, to set up a medical camp. But the British ended up ignoring the temporary nature of the camp and They took over the landwhere in 1938, taking advantage of the fact that Spain was immersed in the civil war, the British illegally occupied the waters of Algeciras to build an airport where the camp waswhich continues today and whose flights always invade Spanish airspace.
They called this airport in 1938 “emergency landing strip” to try mitigate the appropriation of Spanish land and the expansion of this British military base that is Gibraltar, where it is not strange to see British nuclear submarines parked, since Gibraltar is the world’s largest workshop for UK nuclear submersibles.
Spanish stones
In 2013, Gibraltar inaugurated a new breakwater that enters Spanish waters, built with stones from our country. The Spanish Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero simply submitted a note verbale of protest to the United Kingdom.
Gibraltar then intended to reclaim land from the sea to build a real estate complex and to do so it bought stones and aggregates from a Spanish company, the General Quarry Companycoming from a quarry in La Utrera, located between the Malaga towns of Casares and Manilva, which occupies an area of more than 30 hectares.
It is a place of great ecological diversity and one of the few limestone extraction sites left in Spain, a fact denounced by environmentalists, but stones continue to be extracted from there. What’s more, the General Quarry Company has renewed the exploitation agreement until 2038.
In any case, the Rock has been growing with fill material from the La Utrera quarry and other nearby quarries, especially since 2006, although it was in 2008 when the arrival of stones to the Rock from Spain skyrocketed, when it was built. the Ocean Village development very close to the airport. The Zapatero Government ignored the expansion of Gibraltar, which continues to plan to grow among other things because nothing ever happens. With the arrival of Rajoy to power, Spanish passivity continued.
One hundred trucks with rocks a day
Now, Gibraltar imports stones from Spain at full capacity to the satisfaction of the Spanish company that sells them, with the intention of build a new tourist complexand that the Council of Ministers approved a Royal Decree that creates a special environmental protection zone in Gibraltarand which expressly prohibits building in the enclave where the new Gibraltarian real estate complex is going to be built.
Gibraltar also imports sand from Tarifawhich is used to reclaim land from the sea in the area of the Peñón that overlooks Sotogrande and the Alboran Sea, and this week the Ministry of the Interior vetoed the arrival of trucks, in a decision unprecedented until now that, however, does not seem to be going to undermine the British plans to expand the colony.
In fact, Gibraltar manages to accelerate the importation of stones from Spain for its fills in the sea after having received complaints from the environmentalists of Verdemar-Ecologistas en Acción before the State Attorney General’s Office. They demand the intervention of the Spanish and European authorities to stop what they consider a project that will only contribute to the environmental destruction in the Special Area of Conservation (SAC) of the Strait of Gibraltar eastern.
More than a hundred trucks are crossing the fence daily to carry some 50,000 tons of rocks. The Prosecutor’s Office has committed to investigating the Gibraltar landfills in Spanish waters due to the environmentalists’ complaint, although at the moment lThe rocks are being used for construction of breakwaters and fills over the sea for the construction of the so-called Eastside Projectthe luxury tourism macro project promoted by The TNG Global Foundation (TNG).
The Eastside Project
The Eastside Project foresees the construction of a large luxury complex with residential towers, the installation of numerous commercial premises and a marina in a new surface reclaimed from the sea of 45,000 square metersfor which TNG has signed a 90 million pound contract (108,477,000 million euros), with the Government of Gibraltar. Therefore, the company wants to advance development as soon as possible, to prevent any Spanish reaction to the importation of stones and materials or any other impediment that may arise.
The Eastside project is planned as a complex aimed above all at luxury, in a Gibraltar’s new strategy to attract tourism and investmentand comes at a time of widespread tensions between Spain and the colony. The Prosecutor’s Office assured that it accepted Verdemar’s complaint for processing, but The Gibraltar authorities continue to do their thing with its territorial expansion project.
For this, Gibraltar has delimited an area with buoys that has banned boatsthus strengthening its plans for expansion over Spanish maritime spaces, to make those 45,000 square meters reclaimed from the sea a reality where there will also be a marina with 400 berthsat least one hotel, 1,300 homes and a multitude of shops.
And it is that UK plans for Gibraltar are as clear as they are illegal but, once again, it seems that they are counting on the usual passivity of Spain.
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