The existing fence between the British colony and the Spanish city of La Línea de la Concepción will cease to exist. The historic agreement "opens a new era" between Europe and Gibraltar.
The agreement, reached this year, ten years after the referendum that approved Brexit (the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union), was signed in the early afternoon in Brussels.
At that moment, the fence separating the British territory of Gibraltar from the Spanish city of La Línea de la Concepción, in southern Spain, considered "the last wall of continental Europe," will formally disappear, 117 years after it was erected , and the current border control post, through which 15,000 people who work in the British colony but do not live in the city cross daily, will cease to exist.
The agreement regulating Gibraltar's relationship with the European Union (EU) was signed this Tuesday by the European Commissioner for Trade and Economic Security, Maros Sefcovic, and the British Secretary of State for Europe, Stephen Doughty, in a ceremony lasting only a few minutes and without any statements at the end.
Also in attendance were the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, and the head of the Gibraltar government, Fabian Picardo, who also participated in the negotiations.
In statements to Spanish media this morning, José Manuel Albares considered it an "absolutely historic" agreement that "opens a new era" for both Gibraltar and the neighboring Spanish region, Campo de Gibraltar, which "three centuries later will once again be hand in hand."
Gibraltar was ceded by Spain to the British Crown in 1713, as part of the Treaty of Utrecht . However, Spanish authorities continued to claim sovereignty over the territory, invoking the improper occupation of land and water, as well as the status given to it by the UN—a colony or " autonomous territory pending decolonization ," whose fate should be decided under the principle of self-determination of peoples.
In a 1967 referendum, almost the entire population of Gibraltar rejected losing British sovereignty, and in another in 2002 they rejected sovereignty shared by Spain and the United Kingdom.