Gibraltar and the Spaniards

Sir, It is with great surprise and disappointment that I have read Mr. Hugh Kay's letter about Gibraltar in your issue of March 19. I am not going to reply to or refute all the points raised by Mr. Kay as in this part of the world we are subjected almost daily to the same sort of arguments as those used by your correspondent from tile very capable hands of the Spanish information services.
But before doubting the word of Gibraltarians, including that of a Catholic priest, who wrote to you on March 5. Mr. Kay should have come to Gibraltar to see for himself rather than give what I consider to be a one-sided picture, In fact, I challenge Mr. Kay to do so now and I myself would give him more details of very sick people being treated in a manner unworthy of a Catholic country and delayed at the Spanish side of the Frontier.
He would then verify whether the much abused red herring of contraband justifies the delaying of cars for hours coming Oil! from Spain, as well as cars going into that country — cars which are not even searched after having to wait six hours to get inl As regards the supply of oxygen from Spain to Gibraltar I can assure Mr. Kay that as far back as November, 1964, we were told by the suppliers that they were finding difficulties in renewing the export licence for oxygen from the Spanish authorities in Madrid.
At the end of January, we were told by the agents of the suppliers in Spain that they had made several attempts at renewing the licence, which expired on February 10, und that all these attempts had failed. It was only after the Spanish authorities were exposed in the United Kingdom Press that they offered to renew the export licence for three months.
By this time arrangements had already been made to rush — yes, Mr. Kay, to rush — supplies from Britain. It was only thanks to the Admiralty, who were able to give us 100 cylinders from local dockyard supplies, that we were able to pull through.
Please Mr. Kay. do not believe
that everything that yoti. are told in Spain is the truth. Instead of wasting all your time making "extensive inquires in Spain" you should have taken a little trouble and made inquiries in Gibraltar.
Minister for Medical Services. Gibraltar.
Sir, Your Gibraltarian correspondents' reply (March 26) to my letter contains many errors which a little homework might have corrected.
1. Spain did not argue that parts of U.N. Resolution 1514 (XV) were irrelevant. On the contrary. she herself demanded that the whole Resolution should be deemed to apply. and the Committee of 24's Consensus agreed eith her. What Spain and Britain disputed was the interpretation of Paragraph 6, which precludes any disruption of any country's territorial integrity. Spain holds that her territorial integrity is very much disrupted, one of the few points on which Spaniards of all shades agree (cf. the Republican Professor Salvador de Madariaga: "That Spain %%ants Gibraltar cannot even be discussed . . . she cannot even he without wanting
it"). • She therefore sees Paragraph 6, as well as the Treaty of Utrecht, as a bar to self-determination by the Gibraltarians. The Consensus did not pronounce on this but called for negotiations. The Committee of 24 always likes to plump for self-deterenination where it can. In this case it did not. This is surely significant.
2. Your correspondents say that there is no question of transferring sovereignty from Britain to the local community. But the Gibraltarians, in last year's elections following the Lansdowne Conference, purported to exercise a right to sovereignty, \Olen they opted for association with Britain and might have chosen outright independence. By allowing them thus to determine the Rock's future, Blitain, in the Spanish view, was in breach of the Treaty
of Utrecht. Moreover, in British practice. the granting of selfgovernment in all but defence and foreign affairs, always implies an ultimate escalation to outright independence should the local community desire it in the future.
3. To repeat gratuitous and unsubstantiated assertions about the holding up of oxygen and sick persons serves no purpose. if, as your correspondents assert. there is evidence, they could easily have said what it was. If anyone in Gibraltar has in fact been looking beyond Spain for hospital oxygen, I am satisfied there was never any need to do so, and that the motives for so doing would be open to question.
4. Your correspondents ale quite wrong about Professor Ruiz Ciimenez, who walked out of a debate. but did not resign from the Cortes. I fully sympathise with Spanish Catholics who call for full implementation of the social encyclicals, but many of them recognise the need for gradual evolution, and the noisiest are often far from being the most representative. A minority of Basque priests and the lay apostolic groups sometimes get their genuine religious zeal a trifle entangled with separatist and other politics. Let us not be naive about this, either, when dealing with Montserrat and Catalonia.
5. The one substantial point of the letter under reply is the Gibraltraians• feeling that they ought not to be incorporated into Spain against their st ill. As a Briton, 1 would like to leave it to them to choose. As one with a legal cast of mind, I cannot see how you over-ride the Spanish claim in its juridical aspects. As a realist, I must ask: if once you admit the principle that the wishes of a local group can over-ride the legality of a territorial claim, where is it going to end? A settlement could be easily reached in which the British base, way of life, democracy and living standards could all he preserved — even if technical sovereignty were granted to Spain.
As Madariaga also said. "an allied Spain is more valuable to this country (Britain) than the Rock".
Hugh Kay.
London, W.R.