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Within hours of UK voters decided to leave the European Union, Spain renewed his country’s claim to Gibraltar, a British Overseas Territory under the jurisdiction and sovereignty of the United Kingdom.
“Our formula… is British-Spanish co-sovereignty for a determined period of time, which after that time has elapsed, will head towards the restitution of Gibraltar to Spanish sovereignty,” Spain’s acting Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo told Spanish radio on Friday. “The Spanish flag is much closer to the Rock.”
His comments come in the wake of the UK decision to leave the EU, and ahead of Spain’s repeat parliamentary elections on Sunday.
‘The Rock,’ as it is known, juts out of the southern tip of Spain, across the sea from Morocco. Spain ceded the white limestone slab to Britain in 1713 and has sought to get it back ever since.
People at Gibraltar University react to the vote on the Rock, before finding out the full result
Britain’s Minister for Europe, David Lidington, sought to ease concerns in the 33,000-strong territory. “I want to be absolutely clear. The United Kingdom will continue to stand beside Gibraltar,” he said in a statement. “We will never enter into arrangements under which the people of Gibraltar would pass under the sovereignty of another state against your wishes.”
Gibraltar is a British Overseas Territory on the south coast of Spain known for the Rock of Gibraltar, a 426m limestone ridge at its centre. Gibraltar occupies 7 sq. km of a peninsula bordered to the north by the region of Andalusia. First settled by Moors in the Middle Ages and later ruled by Spain, the outpost was joined to Britain in 1713.
Photo: Government of Gibraltar