TILTING AT WINDMILLS: DON’T TALK ABOUT ME WHEN I’M GONE

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

DON’T TALK ABOUT ME WHEN I’M GONE

We should know later today whether the Tripartite Talks between Britain, Gibraltar and Spain will take place on the Rock on July 20 – 21. If they do it will be an historic occasion. The talks will be attended by Spain’s Foreign Minister, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, the first Spanish government minister to visit Gibraltar in an official capacity.

However the scheduled pow-wow has already caused ructions. Whilst Britain has assured Gibraltar that any talks about the Rock will be held on a strictly tripartite basis there have been suggestions that Moratinos and his British counterpart David Miliband could also meet bilaterally.

A spokesperson for Gibraltar’s Chief Minister, Peter Caruana, immediately stamped on that suggestion: “There is no question of a Miliband - Moratinos bilateral in Gibraltar or about Gibraltar.”

One can understand Gibraltar’s sensitivities on this issue. If there are talks in Gibraltar or about Gibraltar then they want to be there. Equally Spain would welcome a bilateral if only to demonstrate that in the end the issue of Gibraltar’s sovereignty is from a Madrid viewpoint a matter for the two governments.

However it could be also argued that as Miliband and Moratinos are meeting face to face it is only natural that they want to slip off and discuss the many other issues that concern the two EU nations. Logical maybe but not from the Gibraltarian standpoint – so any such chinwag will have to take place in a hotel bedroom wardrobe or across the border in a La Línea bar.

1 comment:

Mary said...: What a hoot - that wardrobe scenario would make a brilliant cartoon. I know quite a few Gibraltarians and they are all absolutely lovely people and I perfectly understand their qualms and rights regarding their future,
but their chief minister is in danger of converting them in outsiders eyes into Lilliputians.; July 7, 2009 at 3:28 PM

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TILTING AT WINDMILLS

Sancho Panza is much less learned but a good deal saner than his master.

"At this point they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that are on that plain.

"Fortune," said Don Quixote to his squire, as soon as he had seen them, "is arranging matters for us better than we could have hoped. Look there, friend Sancho Panza, where thirty or more monstrous giants rise up, all of whom I mean to engage in battle and slay, and with whose spoils we shall begin to make our fortunes. For this is righteous warfare, and it is God's good service to sweep so evil a breed from off the face of the earth."

"What giants?" said Sancho Panza.

"Those you see there," answered his master, "with the long arms, and some have them nearly two leagues long."

"Look, your worship,'' said Sancho. "What we see there are not giants but windmills, and what seem to be their arms are the vanes that turned by the wind make the millstone go."

"It is easy to see," replied Don Quixote, "that you are not used to this business of adventures. Those are giants, and if you are afraid, away with you out of here and betake yourself to prayer, while I engage them in fierce and unequal combat."”