VERBATIM REPORT OF SPEECH MADE BY MARIE LOU GUERRERO Chairman, Gibraltar Federation of Small Businesses to the SEVENTH CONGRESS FOR DEMOCRACY held in London on Friday 1 March 2002

GIBRALTAR

First of all I would like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to address you this morning. I am not a politician, I am only a normal Gibraltarian and the head of the Gibraltar Federation of Small Businesses, so I would like just briefly see if I can get you to see the picture as an ordinary Gibraltarian.

I am sure you have all been following the press and all the political arguments. As you all know, Gibraltar has had the frontier closed by Spain for nearly 20 years. Our frontier was closed overnight and Gibraltar became an island, but an island that had no links whatsoever to our nearest mainland. Our labour force was withdrawn, our food supply was withdrawn, even the oxygen supply to our hospitals was withdrawn. But we managed. Gibraltar rallied together and for the next 16 years we lived under those conditions, being a total island.

In 1983 Spain had become a democracy and opened its frontier with Gibraltar so we were told that this was the light at the end of the tunnel. A democratic country can no longer behave towards another member of the EU like Spain had been behaving towards us. So we looked forward with optimism to be able to start living in a normal city like every other European. That was not to be. Democratic Spain decided that they were now going to pursue the Gibraltar claim even more vigorously than the Franco regime had done before that . In 1987 Britain and Spain signed an airport agreement which gave Spain dual control of Gibraltar airport. The people of Gibraltar rejected that. We had no problem whatsoever with Spain or any of the others using our airport but we could not relinquish control of our airport to a neighbour who wanted to gobble it up. Unfortunately Spain did not take that very kindly and that is when the economic sanctions against Gibraltar began.

Today those sanctions are still in force and as the head of a business federation you will realise how this affects my members as well. Our telephone system is totally in a stranglehold as Spain will not recognise our 350 international dialling code, which was given to us years before. This results in only 30,000 of our numbers being accessible from Spain. Additionally now, with the advance of technology where the calls from overseas are re-routed via different areas, Spain manages very effectively to block any telephone calls that are routed via Spain into Gibraltar, so thousands of calls are lost. Our mobile telephones will work everywhere in the world except Spain. The Spanish government actually forces the mobile telephone operators not to recognise our numbers, so we have no GSM facilities in Spain.

Air traffic and ferry services are still no longer permitted. Any aircraft that is coming to Gibraltar and for some reason cannot land and has to get diverted to Spain, is not allowed to go straight there. Only last week we had a group of MPs who came over to Gibraltar. The weather was bad, they could not land, so the aircraft had to be re-routed to Tangier where they all sat for an hour and then had to take off to go to Malaga because they cannot go straight. Additionally one thing that struck them them was the fact that a young man had died here in London, a young Gibraltarian man, 25 years old. His body was actually on the aircraft and was being returned to Gibraltar for burial. When it got to Malaga the authorities refused to allow the coffin to be unloaded so they sent it all the way back to England. That is the sort of thing that we see on a daily basis but it was very apt that the MPs were actually there and saw it for themselves.

If a liner has Gibraltar in its itinerary then it has to go to Morocco before it can proceed to Spain. They are not allowed to move from Gibraltar into Spain. Our border is open, but our border is like no other border that I have ever known. There is no green channel or red channel: every car is systematically searched and the time it takes to cross the border depends on the whim of the people there on a daily basis. Normal situation for us is an hour, an hour and a half. Even if there are only three cars, it does not matter: that’s the time that the instructions are laid out for it to cross. If we do something to upset them, such as the MPs coming to Gibraltar, it takes something like four or five hours to cross the border. That is again on a normal basis.

The Spanish government will also veto our participation in any international event. It does not matter whether it is just a football match: if Spain is playing, Gibraltar is not allowed to play. In fact, Spain has now threatened to pull out of UEFA if they accept Gibraltar, so they are actually going to change the statutes to be able to block us out. I have had personal experience of that with my own Federation when we tried to join European ones. Spain will veto. Even adoption is not allowed to happen because we do not exist.

As I told you before in 1987 the airport agreement was signed buy rejected by the people of Gibraltar. Now, despite that rejection, the agreement it is still there and Spain has now managed to convince the British government to exclude us from all directives and all regulations that apply to airports and air traffic. So we were excluded from the Air Liberalisation and only planes from the UK are allowed to come into Gibraltar. Recently we were excluded from the Open Skies. Now we have even been excluded from the Anti-Terrorism security regulations, so that while we are looking at all-important security following 11 September Gibraltar for political reasons cannot even participate in that.

Spain will not recognise any of our institutions or our authorities or our judiciary, even though the Royal Gibraltar Police is part of the British police – it does not come under Gibraltar, it comes under the British government. Our judiciary is the same, following the British government. Spain will not recognise any of this. Gibraltarians go over to Spain but do not know whether they are going to be stopped and fined because their driving licence is not valid on that particular day. They could be valid one day, but not another. When my children were here at university I used to dread the fact that it was raining when they were coming back because if they could not land in Gibraltar they would be sent over to Malaga. We did not know whether their passports were going to be accepted on that day or not. In fact one student was actually put in jail overnight because he was accused of trying to enter Spain illegally because they would not recognise his passport. They put him in jail overnight and then sent him back to the UK. You can imagine mothers praying to every God in existence that the weather behaved so that their children could actually land in Gibraltar.

Although we went into the EU with Britain we do not have an MEP responsible for us at all, in fact we do not have a vote. We took the case to the Court of Human Rights, and we got the decision in our favour. To date we still do not have it and Spain is still blocking our vote. Not only are they not allowing us to do it, but they are not even allowing the British government to comply with the Court’s decision, because it is a decision that we should do it.

Spain will, however, recognise that we do exist on specific occasions. She will make sure that we comply with every regulation that emanates from the EU whether it applies to us or not. Gibraltar is a very small jurisdiction. We have to transpose every single directive, so it takes time and a lot of money. Not long ago we were accused of not actually transposing some. The Directives that we had not transposed – which we have done now, of course – related to the pollution of rivers and everything to do with rivers. Well, ladies and gentlemen, Gibraltar does not have any rivers and is not likely to change geographically. But never mind, we have to transpose them because we are members of the EU and we have to do it. Fair enough, we transpose them, and we carry on.

But unfortunately we are a member of the EU to comply with obligations but we do not exist when it comes to reaping any benefits. All this is happening in EU territory between democratic governments and we are all members of a democratic union. But where are Gibraltar’s democratic rights? Unfortunately the British government has failed to take any remedial action to safeguard our interests and the EU just looks the other way.

To me the situation is very much like a mother with a child. Now that child is being abused by an outcast to the community so the mother will protect her child because that is her responsibility and the community is shocked at the behaviour. But then that outcast of the community becomes a respected member of the community and becomes a friend of the mother. The abuse of the child is worse than ever but now we have a dilemma. Does the mother protect her child and upset the friend or is the friendship with the neighbour more important than the child itself? This is Gibraltar’s situation, as we feel that we are Britain’s child and it is the duty of the British government to protect us, but we are abused on a constant basis. Britain is not in our minds doing what she should do to make sure our rights are observed and the EU, of course, does not want to know. All they want is, as the community would say, "Mother and friend, for goodness sake sort it out between you. We are tired of hearing the child cry ‘abuse’". So it is not the child that matters, it’s "please don’t be a nuisance", and unfortunately this is it.

So what is on offer for us today? We are being asked to trade our sovereignty for good neighbourly relations and to have our EU rights respected. Surely we are entitled to that. We are entitled to have good relations with our neighbours, we are entitled to have our EU rights respected. Why should we give up half our sovereignty in exchange for what should be ours anyway? Although we are small, we are a people. We are British people. As British people we have always been loyal to the crown of Britain and still are, very much so. And I think that we have a right to freely determine our own future. We will not accept that we have to share our British sovereignty because we are told that we do not have any other choice or that the status quo is no longer acceptable either. We will not have our democratic, political and human rights trampled upon for political expediency between Britain and Spain because of diplomatic relations or, frankly, because Spain makes Gibraltar a problem for the smooth running of the EU. We are always told "Gibraltar is a problem".

No, ladies and gentlemen, Gibraltar is not a problem. Gibraltar was there before Spain and we had ten years when we were not a problem. Spain makes it a problem because she will veto anything at all that comes out from the EU if Gibraltar is included. But we get the blame and we are the ones who have to give up and suffer. It is, again, like a situation where I have my house with my garden but if I want to get into my house I have to give my neighbour the garden, otherwise I will not be able to walk through. Well, I’m sorry ladies and gentlemen, the house and garden are mine – why should I give up my garden to be able to enter my house? Why should we give up our sovereignty to gain the EU rights which should be ours as members?

We are told that now Spain, as a democracy, has a different attitude towards Gibraltar. But where is it? We cannot see it. As far as we are concerned democracy stops at the frontier. In fact, it is even worse than it was before in Franco’s time. So can you blame us for not trusting the Spanish government? It is not the Spanish people we have a problem with. In fact, we employ over 5,000 Spanish people. It is the Spanish government. And the Spanish people who work in Gibraltar are suffering at the hands of their own government as much as we are, because they have to suffer all the queues, they have to suffer all the inconveniences as well. But Spain doesn’t care about that either, so long as they get what they want, which is Gibraltar.

We have suffered far more than is widely known and obviously I do not have time here to tell you everything but I am just trying to paint a picture. What is sad, though, is that through all the years – and it is over twenty years that this harassment has been going on - we have never trusted the Spanish government but we have implicitly trusted the British government to stand by us. But can we do so now? Because now, for the first time ever, there is a doubt in the minds of Gibraltarians that the Foreign Office are not standing by us and are going to stitch us up.

We have been told by the Foreign Office, and we have learned from the press, that before June the Spanish and British governments are going to sign an agreement, or a declaration of principles, which will include some kind of shared sovereignty concessions with Spain. We are told that we can either accept or reject that agreement. However, if we reject it we will be "left behind" – I quote Mr Hain. And we are also told that the status quo is not acceptable. So this is a free democratic choice which is now available to us, the people of Gibraltar. We either go down the way of Spanish sovereignty or there does not seem to be any other choice for us.

We believe the British government should not enter into agreements or declarations with the Spanish government giving them concessions on our sovereignty which, if we reject them, will still stay on the table. This is what has been happening with the airport agreement. We rejected it and we are suffering the consequences today, twenty years later. If the agreement is signed and we reject it you cannot un-sign it, as Mr Hain very rightly said. Once the agreement is signed you cannot un-sign it, so once the British government signs the agreement to give Spain half our sovereignty it cannot be taken back and we feel very strongly that that is wrong. It is one thing to put proposals to the people of Gibraltar to see whether we will accept them or not. We do not have a problem with that – we have had a referendum before when 44 people voted to go with Spain and 12,138 voted against it. And I am sure that if there was a referendum now, the result would be very much the same.

But it is one thing to put proposals and ask the people and another thing to sign the agreement before those proposals are put and if they are rejected then we suffer the consequences and the agreement will still hang over our heads like the sword of Damocles for ever more. We will be totally ignored and abandoned because whenever we say this is happening the answer is "Oh you have the agreement – implement it".

We will put up with whatever harassment comes our way again because we are not going to give up half our sovereignty and we will do whatever it takes in Gibraltar to maintain that. The Spanish government itself said in the press a couple of days ago that even if the people reject it, the agreement will still be valid as far as the British government and the Spanish government are concerned. So it is a victory for them either way. We do not believe that any agreement or any proposal should survive the rejection at a referendum in Gibraltar. If we say no, that should be the end of that.

As I said before the people of Gibraltar do not, unfortunately, now trust the Foreign Office. We do, however, still believe that we have the British people on our side and a majority of Members of Parliament, who will not sell our homeland against our wishes. So we will need the support of the British people, we need your support to make sure that Gibraltar remains solely British. We don’t want it given away either in half or any other form and we need your support for the British government not to enter into any agreements or declarations which will then survive a referendum against the wishes of the people of Gibraltar. Ladies and gentlemen, if there was ever a time when the British Gibraltarians needed your help that time is now.

 

Austin Mitchell MP, Co-Chairman, Congress for Democracy, then proposed the following motion:

that Gibraltar should remain British and the decision of its people should be binding.

This was carried unanimously by participants in the Seventh Congress for Democracy.