Interesting comment. noname2 Today 06:21 AM A nicely written and reasoned article, but to me there a ‘bigger issue’, and that is that all these various claims ultimately rely on a selective winding-back of the clock. At at some point in history a border was in a place more to the liking of the claimant and so they come up with any justification they can to try and support their claim. So for example… In the case of Olivença, Spain ‘likes’ the current border and so the justification is that the inhabitants want it that way. Any other ‘inconvenient truths’ are brushed away. In the case of Gibraltar, because the inhabitants do not support the Spanish claim, this justification doesn’t work, and so is brushed away in favour of ‘territorial integrity’. In the case of the Falklands, that for a period of a few months in 1832/33, the United Provinces of the River Plate had laid claim to the islands (Argentina did not exist at the time and did not extend down the eastern seaboard of South America), and again because the inhabitants do not support the Argentinian claim, that is discounted in favour of; ‘territorial integrity’…for islands 300 miles off the current coast and more like 1,200 miles from the original United Provinces of the River Plate and ignoring ‘inconvenient details’ such as prior British colonies and no indigenous inhabitants other than penguins (the islands were uninhabited when discovered). Now ‘territorial integrity’ seems a very dangerous principle and I wonder what well-meaning person in the UN came up with something so dangerous, as quite what does it mean? That’s maybe easy in the case of Gibraltar, but what of Andorra say? Does that not violate the ‘territorial integrity’ of Spain…or is it France? Or does Spain violate the ‘territorial integrity’ of Andorra? Come to that, why is the current Spanish-French or Spanish-Portuguese border ‘right’ and what says the line shouldn’t be so many miles one way or the other? How do you define ‘territorial integrity’ between two adjoining territories? So in the case of Gibraltar, Spain wants to wind-back the clock 300 years, because that is then a border they ‘like’ (it didn’t exist). But what is magic about 300 years? What if the clock were to be wound back 522 years (pre-1492)? Then the whole area would have been under Moorish (pseudo Moroccan) control. But why stop there? Why not go back 1225 years (pre 790) and the entire Iberian peninsula was under Moorish control? You mention that in Spanish eyes; “Ceuta can’t be compared to Gibraltar because Morocco used to be Spanish”, but then depending on where you’d like to stop the clock, most of Spain used to be Moorish and so the entire area should be Moroccan. You could even elect to go back a couple of thousand years and say the whole used to be Roman! Quite where do you stop? Another part of the Spanish claim you mention is that Gibraltar and Ceuta are different because; “Spain been in Ceuta longer than the British have been in Gibraltar”. Now this too is a dangerous game; let us look at the maths. The Moors were finally pushed out of the southern Iberian peninsula in 1492 (and remaining Jews forced to leave Spain, convert to Roman Catholic Christianity or be killed…reference your point about the breech of the Treaty of Utrecht by Jewish and Muslim settlement on the Rock having been permitted. The British have clearly been more tolerant that the Spaniards). The Rock was conquered in 1704 and later ceded to Britain in the Treaty of Utrecht. So some maths… Gibraltar was Spanish from 1492 before which it was Moorish, until 1704 = 212 years Gibraltar has been British since 1704 to present = 309 years …meaning Gibraltar has been British longer than it was ever Spanish (or do we count time pre 700AD when there was no such thing as a Spanish state?) The conclusion then based on the; “has been [insert nationality of your choice] longer” argument, is in the case of Gibraltar, that is must be British. But let’s not stop there. The Iberian peninsula was conquered by the Moors in 711. The Moorish empire then slowly fell back until 1492. That’s a period of 781 years, and so depending on quite which bit of Spain your interest lies in and the date you ‘like’, it could well be argued that the Moors cum Moroccans have been in Spain longer that the people that now call themselves Spanish. The “longer than” argument is clearly futile. And the point of all the history is precisely to stress the point that it’s worthless. The idea of ‘liking’ a border in one particular position because you think it suits you is ridiculous and really the UN should kill this idea off once and for all. As you so rightly say; “in a democratic age, [the wishes of the local people] is the trump card, the argument that knocks down all the others”. Quite why does the UN not state this and instead allow these kinds of disagreements to continue? @britbob makes the very good point that; “de-colonisation does not mean re-colonisation by Spain”, although in fact Gibraltar is decolonised. It is a self-Governing state, recognised by the EU, including I might add, signature by Spain to Gibraltar’s independent existence through ratification of EU treaty. So my point about the ‘bigger picture’ is that if the UN is going to ‘sponsor’ one nation attempting to usurp part of another by selective winding-back of the clock, we are in for a rocky times as just within the 300 year window that Spain is wishing to use to justify a claim on Gibraltar, most of the borders of the current world have moved back and forth significantly in that time period, so is there to be a wholesale ‘land grab’ based on arbitrary times in history by nations worldwide? 15 Likes Liked Report
Posted on: Sat, 28 Sep 2013 13:01:51 +0000
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