GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

MEPs, we have addressed the Friends of Gibraltar in the House of Commons,

we have even been to the Andalusian Parliament and we have met with

Susana Diaz, the President of the Andalusian Government. Who is missing?

Madrid. We have suffered so much from this intransigence and this bullying

attitude. Personally, I remember when I was a 20 year old student I studied in

Madrid for a year. I was placed in the mainstream, because obviously we were

fluent Spanish speakers. I remember going into my criminology class and

being singled out by my tutor. He pulled me out in front of the class and he

said, “I don’t know why we should bother teaching you, you know all about

criminals given that you just get criminals in Gibraltar”. That was 20 years ago,

but that attitude still prevails. It is not across the border where we have good

relationships, because there are family relationships, friendships, working

relationships. It is from Madrid, this really difficult attitude that basically says,

“Either we have sovereignty and we are only happy with sovereignty and

nothing else”. The difficulty with that is that in the whole Gibraltar and the

Campo area there is so much potential. If you think of Marbella, Estepona and

all that lovely Costa del Sol, it is the same coast we have got, so why aren’t we

maximising on this area for economic growth for the wellbeing of both

communities, because they just cannot put politics aside.

Especially now that Brexit has come along and has complicated the issue for

us so much, for us to think that in order to thrive economically we have to give

up our birth right, our culture, our national identity, it is just too much, from the

perspective of a community where we have suffered so much in the hands of

Spain really, because throughout the closure of the frontier it was families that

were torn apart for many, many years. We have suffered too much at the

hands of Spain and for us to think that we would have to make any

concessions of sovereignty for economic wellbeing is just too much. It is a little

bit like the speech we had earlier on domestic violence. When we are told that

the obvious solution to the Gibraltar problem is full sovereignty, for us it is a bit

like somebody telling a woman, “The obvious solution to your problem with

your abusive ex-partner is just marry him, give him the keys to your home and

co-ownership to the family property”. That is how it feels to us.

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