Forget joint sovereignty, Picardo tells Spain

Gibraltar will never accept any joint sovereignty proposal  between the UK and Spain, Chief Minister Fabian Picardo said in an interview published this weekend.

He told Spanish newspaper El Mundo that the Rock would never be Spanish and that the Queen “will always rule over Gibraltar.”

Mr Picardo was asked whether Gibraltar would sign up to join sovereignty as a means of remaining in the EU in the event of a Brexit, something suggested by Spain’s acting Foreign Minister José Manuel García-Margallo.

“We will absolutely never accept that,” he said in an interview published on Sunday.

“If in 2002 there were very few people willing to accept [joint sovereignty], then after the way Margallo has behaved over the past years, there will be even less.”

As if on cue, Sr García-Margallo took to Spanish state broadcaster TVE1 yesterday to repeat his position on joint sovereignty.

“If Gibraltar wants to remain part of the European Union and have access to the single market in the way it does now, it would have to accept a formula that has been on the table for some time, joint sovereignty between Spain and the UK, a Spanish flag on the Rock, while of respecting the personal status of the Gibraltarians with the same conditions as they now have,” he said.