Tensions around Gibraltar heating up

Source: Tanjug

Gibraltar - Drivers who want to get into Gibraltar from Spain have to wait in long lines, while the tensions between official Madrid and London are increasing.

Beta - AP

The Royal Gibraltar Police has written on their Twitter account: "We are at the border and passengers are waiting for more than three hours. They are checking all the documents," the AFP Agency reports.
Many cars are parked on the Spanish side of the border as people decided to cross the border on foot, carrying bags in their hands, in order to avoid the long lines of cars waiting to pass a stringent control of Spanish border police.

"This has happened to me at least six or seven times so far," said 30-year-old unemployed construction worker, Francis Perez, who is still waiting for an hour and a half to cross the border with Gibraltar with his family.

Perez is from the Spanish city of Madina Sidonie, about 50 km from Gibraltar, and as many of his neighbors, he goes to the British territory to fill the car with fuel and buy cigarettes, which are cheaper there due to lower taxes.

The Anglo-Spanish dispute over Gibraltar to the day heats up - London announced that it is "seriously considering" launching lawsuits against Spain because of stricter controls on the border with Gibraltar, as well as sending warships to the Mediterranean, while Madrid has said it will not give up the stricter border control.

"The controls are not our right, but an obligation," said to Reuters an unnamed spokesman for the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, adding that the Spanish government would not give up control aimed at preventing money laundering and smuggling of tobacco and other products.

The British Prime Minister David Cameron previously, however, said that the government in London, believed that stricter control on the border with Spain, Gibraltar was "politically motivated and totally disproportionate."

The Spanish newspaper "El Pais" published two days ago, citing diplomatic sources, that the government in Madrid could "present" to the United Nations its dispute with Britain over Gibraltar.

The dispute over Gibraltar has intensified since the government and the British overseas territory, the rights on which are also claimed by Spain, announced the plans to build an artificial reef.

Official Madrid claims, however, that this reef would prevent the passage of Spanish fishing boats.

Gibraltar has previously accused Spain of deliberately keeping cars when entering on the small British overseas territory by checking each vehicle in detail, thus at the last weekend in July they waited for six hours on the border.