Brexit challenge offers complex opportunity not to be wasted

I start every morning with the news. Radio 4’s Today from 7am, alternating with Cadena Ser’s Hoy Por Hoy until 10am while I work through the overnight emails and dive into the papers, skimming for articles that grab me and, it’s my golden rule, at least one that doesn’t interest me at all. I read in English and Spanish, left, right, centre. I want all the takes on the day’s news.

It’s a joy and a luxury to start each day like this, consuming information from multiple viewpoints to counter the algorithm-powered echo chambers of social media. It’s good to challenge one’s own views and be open to change.

Which is why, when thinking about the tortuous treaty talks and the uncomfortable spot we find ourselves in, I very often try to put myself in Spanish shoes to try and understand the landscape from their viewpoint.

I get that whatever solutions are agreed must protect the integrity of the European project, particularly on fundamental matters like border control and the Single Market. The treaty, if it is achieved, will be a bespoke product designed specifically for Gibraltar, but it cannot undermine in any way the foundations of the wider EU framework. If it is seen to do that, it will be stillborn even before the metaphorical ink has dried on its pages. Brexit wasn’t an EU choice, after all.

I understand too that, to establish a common travel area between Gibraltar and the Schengen zone, a Schengen member state must have a direct role in ensuring the integrity of immigration controls into the EU on behalf of other member states. For Gibraltar, that means our neighbour Spain. This is as much about geography as it is about politics and Spain’s EU veto on anything Gib-related.

To put that into effect, Gibraltar will have to accept change. Then again, change is coming our way with or without a deal. It is, as Sir Peter Caruana said a while back, a question of weighing price against prize.

But this is where I start to struggle with Spain’s stance, more so as it ups the ante in the final stages of this negotiation, pushing for what it wants from this treaty while laying foundations for a future blame game should it be needed.

If this whole thing goes pear-shaped, Spain will paint itself as the wounded party whose generous offer was rebuffed by petulant Gibraltarians who want their toast buttered both sides. But on the central issue of Schengen and Spanish boots on the ground, that caricature doesn’t stand up to closer scrutiny.

No one is disputing that Spain will be the one that has to account to its Schengen partners for the proper application of Schengen immigration controls in Gibraltar.

To facilitate that, the New Year’s Eve framework agreement envisaged the creation of a joint facility straddling both sides of the border, let’s call it ‘the Schengen shack’, inside which both Gibraltarian and Spanish officers would work side by side. Spain would be ultimately responsible for Schengen controls inside Gibraltar but the hands-on checks, for four years at least, would be conducted by officers from Frontex, the EU borders and immigration force.

But Madrid has hardened its position in the final stages of the negotiation, insisting its officers must be physically inside Gibraltar uniformed and armed, and have the freedom to move about between the airport and the port.

That, clearly, isn’t going to wash with either Gibraltar or the UK. Even if the politicians were to agree to it – and they won’t – Spain must surely understand that it’s difficult, if not impossible, to conceive of a mechanism through which people in Gibraltar would give democratic consent to any arrangements involving overt Spanish law enforcement presence inside Gibraltar, with policing powers to boot. There’s too much murky water under the bridge of recent history for that. Trust must be earned.

One might ask why Spain is now insisting on boots on the ground, given it had already agreed to an alternative arrangement.

Jose Manuel Albares, the Spanish Foreign Minister, has said in the past that this is not a “capricious” demand but an EU obligation. Maros Sefcovic, the European Commission’s chief negotiator, has similarly said any solution must be “technically feasible” within the Schengen framework.

But the whole point of the Frontex proposal and the Schengen shack was to defuse the issue of Spanish boots on the ground, at least for an initial four years, while enabling Spain to meet its obligations to EU partners.

Back in 2021 the European Commission, at Spain’s request, included the Frontex element in its negotiating mandate for the talks, so one might reasonably assume that both Madrid and Brussels thought it was do-able or, to use Mr Sefcovic’s words, ‘technically feasible’.

That makes it harder to understand Spain’s last-minute insistence on the presence of its armed officers inside Gibraltar, a position it set out in a parliamentary response just before the summer.

Or does it? Many here will say ‘I told you so’, fielding cliches about leopards and spots. They would be right to an extent.

But that is also to ignore the reality created by Brexit, which is precisely what negotiators have been trying to mitigate since day one. At the heart of this negotiation is finding ways to protect the interests of people on both sides of the border whose lives would be upended by a hard Brexit.

Let’s not forget either that only a very small minority of people here voted for Brexit, and that the UK’s new Labour government, while not quite returning to the bloc, is committed to rebuilding and strengthening its relations with EU partners.

What would a row over Gibraltar do to that wider aim? Nothing good, we can probably assume that at least.

Negotiating this treaty was never going to be easy. It’s not just about finding a way for Gibraltar laws to dovetail with EU laws. It’s about leap-frogging over decades of mistrust and cross-border suspicion, to replace it with cooperation and common goals at a time of global crises when the UK and the EU have bigger things to focus on. Brexit may be an existential challenge for Gibraltar, as has been said in the past. But it is also an opportunity that should not be wasted, and that is the risk we now face.

Viewed coldly, it’s probably easier for Spain and the UK to continue having an eternal mini row over Gibraltar and manage it day-to-day, while working as partners on challenges like Ukraine, Gaza, migration, global warming and the impact of technological change. The UK would still have its military base without having to factor in a wider cooperation deal, and Spanish politicians would get to carry on wringing their hands in dismay while waxing lyrical about territorial integrity.

But that doesn’t help us as a community faced with the prospect of a hard border. Neither does it help the many thousands of EU citizens in the Campo who come into Gibraltar daily for work.

If the talks fall apart, communities on both side of the border will have been badly let down.

And for what? To assuage a warped sense of national pride still bruised over the loss of a small peninsula conquered more than three centuries ago, riding roughshod over the wishes of its inhabitants in the process? Even the left-leaning El Pais newspaper, reporting this week on the treaty negotiation, said the issue of uniforms and guns was “more symbolic than real”. Why tie yourself to that post then?

Gibraltar has to cede in some areas if it wants a deal, but it’s quite another thing to have a power-play rammed down our collective throat in the process.

Beneath it all, of course, is Spain’s age-old aspiration to recover Gibraltar’s sovereignty. But there’s zero chance of a ‘Gibraltar español’ given the track record, and Madrid knows this even if it won’t acknowledge it.

And even if, in some parallel universe, Spain one day somehow achieved what it wants against our will, what would it gain, if not a poisoned prize for a modern European democracy?