Britain, Spain Should Share Gibraltar Rule

Recent Spanish proposals to solve the problem of Gibraltar have fallen on predictably deaf ears in Britain, but it could be that this time the British would do well to listen harder. For Spanish Foreign Minister Abel Matutes appears to be floating a new idea to end a dispute which is not far from entering its 300th year.


The British captured Gibraltar in 1704 during the War of the Spanish Succession, and in 1713 Spain ceded the territory to Britain for all time. Spain never lost hope, however, of recapturing the Rock, and it was much to Madrid's annoyance that Britain kept control of it even as it dismantled almost all the rest of its empire after World War II.


Successive British governments felt they had strong reasons for not returning Gibraltar to Spain. For one thing, it made no sense to abandon the Gibraltarians to General Francisco Franco, Spain's military dictator until 1975. Moreover, the peculiar feature of Gibraltar as a colony has remained that its 31,000 people actually want to stay connected with Britain and not be ruled by Spain.


When a referendum on this issue was held in 1967, the vote went in favor of continued association with Britain by the extraordinary margin of 12,138 to 44 out of 12,762 registered voters. The Rock remains obstinately British in culture, as anyone can tell from its pubs, British "bobby" police uniforms, schools and so on.


Yet with Spain now a flourishing democracy and the authorities in Madrid having proved their willingness to promote self-government in regions such as the Basque country, Catalonia and the Canary Islands, there is less excuse for Britain and Gibraltar not to explore new possibilities for a compromise.


This is what Matutes was trying to encourage last month when he suggested that Britain and Spain should share sovereignty over the Rock for a period of at least 50 years. Although it seemed clear that Matutes envisaged Gibraltar reverting to Spanish rule, it may be that he had something else in mind -- that is, the "Andorra solution."


For more than 700 years until 1993, Andorra was a principality co-ruled by France and Spain. Four years ago the tiny territory in the Pyrenees acquired a new constitution and held its first fully free elections. It is not quite a completely independent state, but it has a lot more self-rule than it used to.


What Spain agreed to on its northern border, it may also accept in the south. Fifty years or more of British and Spanish co-sovereignty over Gibraltar would give ample time for the Gibraltarians to develop a system of government that amounted to virtual independence while maintaining the Rock's close ties with Britain and Spain.


Gibraltar's former chief minister, Joe Bossano, used to advocate greater independence for the colony, but was always turned down by the British, who said the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht required Spain to be given the first option if there was to be a change of sovereignty. However, the British argument may not hold water anymore.


Matutes appears to be hinting that Spain would no longer exercise its option of full sovereignty. Instead, it would support greater independence for Gibraltar under a nominal system of Britain-Spain co-sovereignty. There have been Spanish proposals for co-sovereignty before, notably in 1985, but none that goes this far in appearing to take account of Gibraltarians' wishes. They deserve a more serious, imaginative response from Britain.