Saving Gibraltar
Sir: I am glad to have seen Mr Bossano's letter (10 March) since I had missed Mr Courtauld's piece about Gibraltar. UN resolutions which place the ownership of real estate above the wishes of the inhabitants or the right to self- determination are a flawed foundation on which to base opinions about the future of human beings. Why pick on Gibraltar? Why not Ceuta and Melilla?
The French Department of Pyrenees Orientales (where I have spent much of each year for the past 12 years) comprised far more territory with far more people of Spanish blood when, as the county of Roussillon, it was ceded by Spain under the Treaty of the Pyrenees to satisfy the French quest for 'natural frontiers'. Despite French settlement, the population still largely speak Spanish and Catalan as well as French, but today would hardly welcome return to Spanish rule. Gibraltar has been British longer than it was ever Spanish.
A by-product of the treaty was the peculiar status of Andorra — self-rule under a dual titular sovereignty. Perhaps this might serve as a model for an honourable solution — 'sovereignty' being shared by the sovereigns of Spain and Great Britain, without detriment to the status of the inhabitants and the naval base.
To transfer loyal citizens like cattle to a state to which they have never belonged would be sickeningly shabby. To throw away, at the same time, the key to the Mediterranean would be needlessly silly. The French would never be so daft.
Patrick Martin-Smith
28 Vicar's Close, Victoria Park, London E9
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