Having made such positive efforts to win back a long eroded relationship between La Linea and Gibraltar it seems almost inexplicable – except perhaps a symptom of caving in to pressure against better judgement - that Alejandro Sanchez the Mayor should have chosen to take out the town’s frustrations on Gibraltar.

It’s not just the abuse of peoples’ EU and democratic rights that is alarming.

Comparisons will be made with the late Cesar Braña but at least he was ostensibly pressuring the Rock over the launches and eased when that issue was resolved.

No, here the Mayor, who knows Gibraltar well and like most PP mayors of La Linea has family connections, has chosen to dig out that old tap on fluidity so as to take innocent hostages simply because neither his party’s government when in power nor its successor have ever really given La Linea the support it needed to move on from its old frontier town economy.

Sr Sanchez, it is true, inherited some rough accounts – the fruit of his party’s flirtation with the GIL lot. The challenge he faces does not lie with the Spanish Foreign Ministry surely so much as the Spanish state. Whilst Gibraltar’s economy, as the Chamber survey shows, can provide many different forms of opportunities for frontier workers and businesses, it is high time that La Linea politicians understand - as much of the Campo already does - that the solution to their woes cannot depend on the Rock nor can all economic ills be blamed on us either.

Worse still Sr Sanchez will now find it difficult to win back the trust of Gibraltarians who have, nonetheless, always wanted good relations with La Linea because of very close bonds that remain and which were wounded by the border closure of 1969-1985.

La Linea’s Town Hall must fight its corner but a policy of isolation will go nowhere.

In the worst years of the border Gibraltarians, however frustrated with Spain and its leaders, have never wished La Linea anything but success.

Let the blame and the pressure fall where it should.

Stop these abusive checks now before La Linea, far from being like a suburb of Monaco resembles more the wrong side of the old Check Point Charlie.