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New era for Gibraltar with removal of border controls with Spain
- precommunicator 4mo agomy experience with border control in Gibraltar (foreign car, 2023): entering: Spanish side: passport scan, UK side: 5 second look exiting: waving through
- amunozo 4mo agoThat can be a problem for the thousands of people that commute daily.
- alex000kim 4mo agosame experience last year, existing without having to stop was especially surprising
- unkeen 4mo agoFrom a purely geographical point of view, it is so absurd that there is even a debate about to which land mass Gibraltar "belongs" to. As a colonialist, I would find it very difficult to justify my own behaviour nowadays.
- manarth 4mo agoWhilst I don't disagree, Spain has similar questions to answer about Ceuta and Melilla.
- unkeen 4mo agoI didn't debate that.
- hermitcrab 4mo ago"Ah, but that's different!" I was told when I asked some Spanish people about the apparent hypocrisy of Spanish enclaves.
- darkwater 4mo agoAnd, to a lesser extent, Canary Islands.
- Buxato 4mo agoNo, Ceuta and Melilla are not recognized as colonies by UN (see my previous comment about it, and you could add other historic reasons.
- kdheiwns 4mo agoGibraltar has been part of the UK for over 300 years and the people are all UK citizens. Forcing those people out or seizing the land from them would be the definition of colonialism, yes. And exclaves exist all around the world. Geography has never really meant anything in national terms. Spain has a piece of land on Africa and I don't think they plan on giving that up.
- unkeen 4mo agoI was not talking about any of the points you mention, I was refering to the geographical facts alone. Wouldn't you agree that in general it is kind of silly to claim ownership of a piece of land that is far, far away from your own country?
- kdheiwns 4mo agoI was born in a country that has islands and I live in a different country that consists exclusively of islands. The islands spread out thousands of miles in various directions. Land being far apart is just a reality of how countries work. The distance from London to Gibraltar is closer than the distance from London to Bermuda, but nobody finds that weird. France has French Polynesia on the opposite side of the world. Russia has Kaliningrad. Norway has Svalbard. South Africa has another country, Lesotho, right in the middle of it. India wraps around Bangladesh like a tentacle. Azerbaijan has a random piece of land and makes a sandwich out of Armenia. Spain has islands directly west of Morocco. France has land on South America. The whole world has freaky borders. The only clean borders are places like Wyoming and Colorado.
- rmunn 4mo agoI would add natural navigation barriers such as rivers and lakes (and some, but not all, mountain ranges) to the list of "clean" borders. They're not straight lines, but they're a natural place to site a border.
- rmunn 4mo agoThere are many, MANY islands scattered around Earth's oceans. Not all of them have the resources to be self-sufficient, so any inhabitants have to import goods from somewhere. There are two options: either each island is its own country, or some islands belong to some other country. Given how easy it is to navigate to most islands (some of them are in harder-to-navigate straits), it doesn't make much practical difference whether the owning country is close or far away. So no, as a general rule I can't agree. I can certainly agree that there are some rather silly cases, but it's just not practical for all islands to be self-governing, so I can't agree with the general rule you propose.
- amunozo 4mo ago(I am Spanish, so I might be biased) I think the twp main problems are not who Gibraltar belongs to, but 1. Gibraltar is that it is kind of a tax haven next to one of th areas of Spain with more poverty and unemployment, which is also one of the main drug entrances of the country. This combibation is explosive and really problematic for the people in the Campo de Gibraltar, especially the youth. 2. The people of Gibraltar must also be sovereign and don't want to belong to Spain, so I think we should respect that. I think this kind of agreement make a compromise, integrating better Gibraltar with the area, making it possible for the people around to benefit from the Gibraltar's economy, bridging Gibraltar and Spain closer, while respecting the sovereignity of the people of Gibraltar. However, I must say, a similar agreement could be done with Gibraltat belonging to Spain, which I would consider fairer, but still not the most important point.
- iso1631 4mo agoI assume you're also in favour of Ceuta and Melilla being given to Morocco over the wishes of the people whos ancestors have lived there for centuries?
- martin8412 4mo agoThe difference of course being that Gibraltar used to be Spanish, while Ceuta and Melilla never have been parts of Morocco. Portugal has more claim to those two enclaves than Morocco ever did.
- amunozo 4mo agoCeuta and Melilla are part of Spain since the fifteenth century, same as Granada and way older than the Moroccan state. I am telling that Gibraltar people should decide which country they want to belong to, same thing with Ceuta and Melilla.
- iso1631 4mo agoTime and time again the Gibraltar people tell Spain they don't want to be part of Spain Time and time again Spain complains Time and time again hypocrites I don't mind if you believe that "land makes right" or if you believe that "people have rights", but be consistent
- pjc50 4mo agoWe should just overturn the Treaty of Utrecht, that will go well. Why not return the Netherlands to Spain while we're at it?
- ChocolateGod 4mo agoSpain ceded Gibraltar under the Treaty of Utrecht.
- thih9 4mo agoThere are many more places like this, e.g. Point Roberts[1]. > Questions about ceding the territory to the United Kingdom and later to Canada have been raised since its creation; however, its status has remained unchanged. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Roberts,_Washington https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Roberts,_Washington
- iso1631 4mo agoIt belongs to the people who live there. While you may think places like Point Roberts should be forcibly moved to Canada, or Ceuta should be forcibly moved to Morocco, I'm of the opinion of self determination, as is the global view based on the United Nations, who recognizes self-determination as the right of all peoples to freely determine their political status and pursue their economic, social, and cultural development That's the same, whether it's Gibraltar, Scotland, Cornwall, the Canary Islands, Ceuta, Taiwan, Falklands, Cyprus, Texas, Point Roberts, Crimea, Canada, Greenland, etc etc. We can argue about the thresholds needed, the length of time of residence ("squatters rights" etc), the minimum size of a given area, but the principal remains.
- unkeen 4mo agoIf it belongs to the people who live there, why does Britain have any say in their matters?
- rmunn 4mo agoWhy does Britain have any say in the people who live in, say, Liverpool? Because that's historically been British territory. So what's the difference? Only real difference I can see is length of history (a few hundred years vs. nearly a thousand years). But as far as I'm concerned, a few hundred years vs. nearly a thousand years doesn't make much difference. I'd argue that any territory that has belonged to country X for longer than all of its inhabitants have been alive has a pretty fair claim to be historical territory of country X, and should continue being part of country X unless there's a very good reason otherwise. (Such as a valid treaty, a clear referendum, and so on). It gets all complicated and messy when war is involved, of course. I'm talking about peaceful transfers of ownership here.
- unkeen 4mo agoSo you’re suggesting amnesia and ignoring the fact that Gibraltar wasn’t a blank spot on the map before it was annexed by the British. I think that’s a very one-sided view.
- PaulRobinson 4mo agoThe British government have a strong, well-established (since ~1950), and arguably inflexible attitude towards "right to self-determination". Meaning: the people who live in a place get to decide who governs them and their society. People in Gibraltar, The Falklands, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland all have different wants, needs and asks of the UK, and the UK honours all of them. There are other overseas territories with different relationships, plus the Commonwealth too. If that ask changes (and in Northern Ireland it likely will in our lifetimes, the others less so), the governance will change. Sometimes there is an ask for a closer relationship through the British Commonwealth (such as South Africa). Sometimes there is an ask for the UK to go away, thanks but no thanks (such as Malta). Each relationship is handled individually, but through a lens of self-determination. That's the priority in the FCO, in Parliament, in UK media. If a tiny nation wants to be British, the UK will go to war over it despite it making little sense (Falklands). If a tiny nation wants independence despite tactical advantage for UK to keep it, independence will be fought for (Malta happened, Diego Garcia is a WIP - watch this space). Where there is division (Northern Ireland), the majority view is observed, but with democratic and cultural structures created to try and make sure minority views have a voice in that governance. That said, there is a caveat: observance of treaties tend to over-ride local preference in some cases, so if there is a legal argument to ignore the wishes of the locals, those wishes may be ignored: Hong Kong is the most prominent example of this in recent times (locals seemed to want to stay British, China said the 100-year agreement was up and there'd be no renewal, end of, so China it became). Diego Garcia is another example, which has got messy because of the Whitehouse not understanding the UK's perverse inclination towards local democracy and the right to self-determination (see also non-UK entities the Whitehouse has not understood well: Greenland, absurd noises about Canada, and so on). When able, the UK has consistently been committed to restoring governance to a local population's preferred model peacefully since ~1950 (India being the last real mess), and if the people of Gibraltar want to be governed by the Spanish, they'd be governed by the Spanish within ~2-3 years. The idea that local people should have no say in this because "it's obvious" who "they belong to", is the colonialist notion here. A land isn't about geography. It's about people. It took a long time for the UK to understand this. Eventually they did. Most European colonial powers did. Others are still trying to catch up, it seems.
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- tim333 4mo agoGeography is not generally the most important factor. There are legal ownership precedents and then the will of the people who live there first. You can't just say Greenland or Canada are United States because the happen to be close. Or at least you shouldn't.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- Laurel1234 4mo agoIt'd be even easier if Gibraltar is returned to Spain to whom it belongs.
- ChocolateGod 4mo agoRussia says the same thing about Ukraine.
- obayesshelton 4mo agoIn that context America should be given back, Alaska should be given back, Australia should be given back... the list goes on.
- unkeen 4mo agoWell, in theory, they should! :) Imagine a world where expansionist acts of violent injustice could be undone.
- obayesshelton 4mo agoI do not disagree, where does it stop though. We would have to go back to when Homo sapiens and Neanderthals killed each other.
- pmnelson 4mo agoWhat about Ceuta and Melilla?
- piokoch 4mo ago[flagged]
- Anduia 4mo agoIt wasn't millions, it was half a million. And what they're getting is permission to work in Spain, so it's unrelated to the article.
- phoronixrly 4mo ago> After years of negotiation involving Spain, the EU and the UK, the solution has been to align Gibraltar with the European customs union and the Schengen European free travel zone. > Travellers arriving from countries outside Schengen, such as the UK, will have to show their passports to Gibraltarian and Spanish officials at the territory's airport and port. So an L for the UK as Gibraltar has again freedom of movement to the EU (that edit: half the British hated so much), and lack thereof to the UK...
- iainmerrick 4mo agoIt's really ridiculous how little discussion there was about places like Gibraltar and Northern Ireland before the Brexit vote. Looks like NI voted ~55% remain and Gibraltar ~95% remain, but too bad, England voted ~53% leave, so screw all you little overseas territories with actual land borders who are most directly impacted.
- iso1631 4mo agoAnd places like London, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, York, Warwick voted 60% to remain but still got taken out. Places like Oxford and Cambridge were over 70% remain. What should have happened was the ability for any person to retain their European citizenship, or if under 18 choose on their 18th birthday. Then the remainers would not have had their rights stripped away. The catch being if more than 50% of adults took this up, then the UK would not leave.
- nephihaha 4mo agoScotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain. Wales was more mixed. Northern Ireland got the best deal of the three. Thanks to the Good Friday Agreement, people there can get Irish (and therefore EU) passports. This is a perennial issue in Scottish politics, but Scotland, unlike Northern Ireland, and maybe Kent, does not have a land border with the EU. My personal hope was that the UK would remain in the EU, but both the EU and UK would take a look at themselves. Instead both are heading more and more towards censorship and heavy control of their citizens.