The Rock of Gibraltar is poised to receive Spain’s foreign minister Miguel Angel Moratinos for the first visit by a member of the Spanish government to this Crown property since it was transferred to the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1713 under the Treaty of Utrecht. Spain has never stopped contesting the situation. The minister “will be received with the flags of the United Kingdom and Gibraltar affixed to windows to show the rejection of Spanish claims to the colony,” specifies El País. But Gibraltar’s prime minister Peter Caruana does not see it as a “unfriendly gesture”, quotes the Madrid daily. The visit, within the framework of the “3rd Ministerial Meeting of the Trilateral Forum of Dialogue on Gibraltar”, has sparked keen controversy in Spain, and the People’s Party (centre-right opposition) has aired its disapproval, arguing that the foreign minister’s presence implies the Rock should be deemed a “sovereign country”.

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