Despite treaty criticism, PP remains silent on stance ahead of ratification 

Spain’s main opposition party, the Partido Popular, left no doubt last week in the Spanish parliament that it was not happy with the UK/EU treaty on Gibraltar. But despite being pressed multiple times, the party held back from explicitly stating how its MEPs would vote when the agreement comes before the European Parliament for ratification. 

The treaty was discussed over two days in the Spanish parliament, first in the Congress, then in the Senate, as Spain’s Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares briefed the foreign affairs committees of both houses. 

In both sessions, Mr Albares challenged opposition MPs and senators to state clearly how their European parliamentarians would vote when the treaty comes before the European parliament for ratification once it is signed and enters provisional application from July 15. 

The far-right party Vox had already made clear it would reject it but the PP, despite clear criticism of its contents, was more circumspect and avoided any explicit positioning. 

In the Senate on Friday, the PP spokesperson Jose Antonio Monago repeated criticism made a day earlier in the Congress that the treaty would not be voted on in the Spanish parliament. 

When the European Council gave a green light to the agreement earlier this month, it accepted the European Commission’s recommendation that this should be an EU-only agreement rather than a mixed one. 

That means it will only be voted on in the European parliament and not in the national parliaments of the EU’s 27 member states, something that has riled the Spanish opposition. 

“The question is not how we are going to vote [in the European Parliament], the question is why you are gagging this parliament,” Mr Monago told Mr Albares, describing it as a “democratic anomaly”. 

“You are asking for blind faith on something that has already been negotiated.” 

Socialist senator Rafael Lemus, who attended the session wearing a House of Lords tie for the occasion, said it was clear to him what approach the PP would take. 

“I think we all know what you are going to vote,” he told Mr Monago. 

“The problem is you don’t know how to tell Spanish society that you are going to reject this historic agreement.” 

He was echoing sentiments expressed a day earlier in the Congress by Juan Carlos Ruiz Boix, a Socialist MP for Cadiz and mayor of San Roque, who accused the PP of “cowardly ambiguity”. 

“The PP knows this is a good agreement but doesn’t have the courage to say so” for fear of upsetting the far right.  

He challenged the party to make clear what it would do in the European Parliament ahead of the Andalusian regional election on May 17. 

That last point is important because there are different views within the PP on the treaty, a point underscored by Mr Albares in both sessions. 

Addressing the PP’s interventions, he quoted Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, the PP president of the Junta de Andalucia, who had welcomed the agreement when it was announced and said it was a better alternative to no deal. 

With the regional Andalusian election set for May 17, the Socialists were keen to pin down the PP on its stance in respect of the treaty, highlighting the discrepancy between its statements in Madrid and those of the Junta president. 

“Andalusian citizens have a right to know if the PP of Moreno Bonilla backs the Gibraltar agreement [because] staying silent now is duplicity,” Mr Ruiz Boix said. 

On Friday in the Senate, Mr Monago stuck to his script, repeating multiple times his party’s view that the treaty represented a missed opportunity for Spain that handed gains to both Gibraltar and the UK, but little in return for Spain. 

That was reinforced too by Jose Ignacio Landaluce, the mayor of Algeciras who until recently was a PP senator but currently sits as an independent. 

“This agreement secures the present and the future for Gibraltar, but not for the Campo de Gibraltar,” Mr Landaluce said. 

“Gibraltarians are happy and if they are happy, we should start worrying.” 

As for how the PP will vote in the European Parliament, the jury remains out for now. 

Mr Albares reminded both houses of parliament that the process that ultimately led to the treaty was started years earlier by a PP Foreign Minister, Alfonso Dastis, who despite being critical last week of an agreement he felt weakened Spain’s hand, had adopted a more pragmatic position while in office, including ensuring a row over the Rock’s sovereignty would not derail agreements between the UK and the EU in the wake of the 2016 Brexit vote. 

Mr Albares reminded Mr Monago that it was not just lawyers at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Madrid who had concluded this was an EU-only agreement, but also the European Commission and the 27 EU member states. 

He dismissed too the suggestion that there was a democratic deficit because the Spanish parliament would not have a vote on the deal, adding that MEPs from all parties would have a chance to express their views in the European Parliament ratification process. 

“There is no unanimity in your party,” he told Mr Monago. 

“So I still have hope.”