ABSTRACT
It appeared to have become mandatory that in the first few weeks of each new year a statement would emanate from Madrid reiterating the Spanish claim to sovereignty over Gibraltar. The year 1983 was not to prove to be an exception to that pattern when on 26 January the Spanish Foreign Minister, Señor Fernando Moran, ruled out any further Anglo-Spanish talks on the future of Gibraltar unless the question of the Rock’s sovereignty was on the agenda. He boldly asserted that ‘no Spanish foreign minister can sit down to negotiate if sovereignty is not discussed’ and by so doing he immediately threw into doubt the talks which had provisionally been set for the spring.1 In London, the response to Señor Moran’s declaration was decidedly low key with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office citing the Lisbon Agreement as affording both the British and Spanish Governments the opportunity to raise any proposals they wished, including the question of Gibraltar’s future sovereignty. Gibraltarians were troubled by the preparedness of the British Government to enter into talks with Madrid on the question of the Rock’s sovereignty, just as they had been since the signing of the Lisbon Agreement, and they drew a parallel between their own situation and that of the Falkland Islands. In the case of the Falklands the British Government had refused to negotiate with the Argentine Government and had claimed that there was no scope for talks aimed at resolving their disagreements because any talks that did take place would be used by the Argentinians as a means of achieving a direct transference of sovereignty over the Islands from Britain to Argentina against the expressed wishes of the islanders.2
