No more endless queues and long waits: thousands of Spanish and British workers will see their daily lives simplified with the entry into force, Wednesday, of a free movement treaty between the British enclave of Gibraltar and Spain.
This agreement, which lifts restrictions on movement between the British enclave of Gibraltar, located in the far south of the Iberian Peninsula, and Spain, was signed on Tuesday in Brussels under the aegis of the European Commission, six years after the United Kingdom officially left the EU.
Gibraltar, a tiny British territory of nearly 40,000 inhabitants in the far south of the Iberian Peninsula, welcomes some 15,000 Spanish workers every day, or almost half of its workforce. A “fluid border will make life easier” as well as the recruitment and retention, by Gibraltar companies, of workers who live in Spain, underlines Owen Smith, president of the Gibraltar Small Business Federation.
“Tear down the last wall”
The agreement was reached after years of difficult negotiations in the wake of tensions between London and Brussels after Brexit. This agreement “opens a new era” and “enormous possibilities three centuries later,” said Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares on Cadena Ser radio on Tuesday.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is due to visit the border area on Wednesday, where workers have been dismantling the old metal fence and border posts separating the enclave from Spain for several weeks. “Finally, after hundreds of years, it will be possible to tear down the last remaining wall within the European Union,” he welcomed.
The head of government of Gibraltar, Fabian Picardo, estimated that this agreement made it possible to remove “the physical barriers of a bygone era marked by tensions”, while retaining “the keys to our own front door”. Tensions peaked in 1969, when the regime of dictator Francisco Franco closed the border after Gibraltar voted overwhelmingly in a referendum to remain under British sovereignty. The border did not fully reopen until 1985.
Diplomatic tensions
Since this reopening, long queues have formed due to diplomatic tensions between Madrid and London over the sovereignty of this territory, leading Spain to strengthen its controls.
Often, “many workers did not know when they had to leave home to arrive at work on time” nor did they know what time they would return home, said a union official in Spain’s Campo de Gibraltar region, Manuel Triano Paulete. “It is important that this sword of Damocles disappears,” added this general secretary of the CCOO (Trade Union Confederation of Workers’ Commissions).
With an economy built on financial services and online gambling, Gibraltar – smaller than the Bois de Vincennes in Paris – has one of the highest per capita incomes in the world. The United Kingdom left the European Union in 2020, leaving the relationship between Gibraltar – historically an important military base for the British – and the European bloc unresolved.
At the end of 2020, Madrid and London reached a provisional agreement at the last minute, in order to maintain freedom of movement on the border between Spain and the Rock. But the signing of a final agreement was slow to materialize. Spain ceded Gibraltar to the British crown in 1713 as part of the Treaty of Utrecht but has never stopped claiming sovereignty, which gives rise to regular tensions between Madrid and London.
