TILTING AT WINDMILLS: HISTORIC HANDSHAKE

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

HISTORIC HANDSHAKE

Ok it might not rival the anniversary of man or men first landing on the moon or Freddie Flintoff’s heroics at Lords where England beat Australia for the first time in 75 years at cricket but in relations between Spain and Gibraltar it is historic.

Today Gibraltar’s Chief Minister, Peter Caruana, welcomed Spain’s Foreign Minister, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, to the Rock Hotel where they were joined at the Tripartite Ministerial talks by Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Miliband. It was historic because it was the first official visit by a Spanish minister to Gibraltar since it became a British colony.

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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."”