SPANISH DIPLOMAT WRITES FROM MADRID

Peter Caruana's accomplice in establishing the Tripartite Forum, Jose Pons, who until very recently was Director General for Europe and North America at the Spanish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, has taken issue at comments made by this newspaper over a statement he gave to the media to the effect that the Tripartite Process had put money in the pockets of citizens on both sides of the frontier, although he prefers to call it "verja". In an article entitled "Goodbye Jose Pons" this newspaper took the view that the only people with money in their pockets were the Spanish pensioners and no one else. Jose Pons, who during the last four years has totally ignored us and everything we have said about the Tripartite Forum, seems to have taken courage to write in to us now that he is no longer at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and possibly as a parting gesture to his Tripartite pal. The letter, which we reproduce on page 2, is signed by the new Ambassador for Spain in Austria.

Pons puts three questions to us which we are happy to reply to fully. He nonetheless colours his request by suggesting that we have not been totally sincere in the past and that we seem to be prejudiced, in some way, against Spain. He is either totally ignorant of the issues that surround the "Gibraltar question" [as Spain prefers to refer to their campaign against us], or else he is trying to rewrite history in the expectation that we are not aware of the true facts.

This newspaper has not complained about any level of benefit accruing from the process as Pons suggests when he says;" se quejan ustedes". The only thing we have done is express a view over his contention that benefits ? have flowed two ways and into the pockets of ordinary citizens.

The first and overall point to remind Jose Pons is that this newspaper believes that cooperation and friendship between neighbours is about granting facilities to each other beyond what is required by law, which has to be provided whether there is friendship or not. We apologise in having to delve into a bit of history to put things into their true perspective.

Fascist Spain defended the restrictions imposed on Gibraltar by stating that they were complying with the limits they were required to under the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713. We in Gibraltar took the view that this was a normal fascist reaction to our demand to decide our own future, something Franco was denying his own citizens in Spain, including Jose Pons.

After Franco's death in 1975 it was legitimate to expect a democratic Spain to have swept away all the trappings of the Franco era including those affecting Gibraltar. What we found to our amazement was that the democratic Governments that followed continued with the same policy. The re-opening of the border in 1985 was driven by Spain wanting to gain membership of the EU in 1986 and was done in exchange for a commitment to negotiate the "issues" of sovereignty under the terms of the Brussels Declaration of 1984. That is, the only reason why some of the restrictions against Gibraltar were removed was because what was denied to Franco which led to the restrictions in the first place, talks on sovereignty, was now being agreed by Britain [not Gibraltar] with the Spanish Government.

From a Gibraltar perspective, and taking into account the above, we are sure Jose Pon will understand that the Tripartite Forum has, so far only dealt with the removal of anti-Gibraltar restrictions in respect of which there should have been no need to give any concessions to Spain which had an obligation to normalise an abnormal situation.

We therefore cannot understand why Pons believes us to be prejudiced against Spain in any way when all we are doing is defending our rights and our homeland against illegal and inhumane measures imposed by a Fascist Regime and continued by successive democratic Governments in Madrid.

We now come to the three famous questions posed by the Spanish Ambassador to Austria.

Does Gibraltar benefit from a 25% increase in frontier visitors?

Visitors over the land frontier have been steadily increasing since the frontier opened, so to attribute the latest statistics to the Tripartite Process is misleading. In the supposition, however, that this was indeed the case, the answer is that it does not necessarily mean increases in sales in shops, proof of it being that the retail trade is complaining at a drop in business, not an upsurge, and the flow across the frontier is two-way with those residents returning from spending their money in Spain being included, statistically, in the 25%. In any case this does not put more money in the pockets of the ordinary citizen even if the reverse were true, it would only help small traders in their struggle to keep afloat.

Do direct flights to Madrid reduce the cost of travelling to the Spanish capital for those that need to go?

In some instances yes, but certainly not always given that Malaga offers more choice and more competition and the AVE is now highly competitive in price and leaves one in the centre of the Spanish capital without the hassle of the waiting time for departure at airports. In any case, the two flights a week can, by no stretch of the imagination be considered to be the economic boom that Jose Pons painted to an unsuspecting public at the time he and Caruana were trying to sell us the measures agreed over the airport. In fact, it was Pons himself who, in an article in the media used this huge demand that never materialised to justify Spanish involvement in the running of our air terminal.

Has it been of benefit to Gibraltar pensioners to have their pensions re-valued to the same level as that of pre-1969 Spanish pensioners?

This presumption is the most cynical question of the lot. The pre-1969 Spanish workers paid a miserly £38 into the pension fund in their entire working life in Gibraltar before the closure of the frontier, that is, those who paid the maximum, others paid even less. For every pound they paid in, they have received in return in excess of £1000. No other pension scheme in Spain, or anywhere else in the world, has ever produced this level of return, Gibraltar residents have paid for every penny they have received and are receiving today, and owe nothing to neither the Spanish pensioners, nor Jose Pons's negotiating skills, nor the generosity of the UK Government. Having had their pensions frozen at the insistence of the British Government and through no fault of their own, to facilitate the continued payment of pensions to former Spanish workers by the British Treasury, they have received no compensation for that loss of income over 18 years whilst the Spanish pensioner has received it if he is resident in Spain.

Finally, whereas before the freezing of these pensions the annual increases were based on the increase in wages in any given year, now the increases are based on the movement of prices and our pensioners again lose out on this deal, so please, don't talk to pensioners in Gibraltar about money in their pocket because they are still missing out on a lot of loose change that should have gone their way but hasn't.

Finally, we would like to remind Jose Pons that he need not deprive himself of continuing to read what we publish only because he is now in Austria, he can either access us through the web for the main stories, or subscribe to us by post, we would be only too happy to send him regularly a copy of The New People to Vienna in exchange for the appropriate fee, given that, much as we would like to send him a free copy every week, our budget is limited and our financial position has certainly not improved as a result of the Cordoba Understanding, although we must admit it has given us much to write about.

We both respect the position of Jose Pons and have no problem in understanding it, it's just that we cannot share it and this seems to lead him to believe that there is a need for even more confidence building. It's not a question of confidence, it is a question of substance and of a deeper understanding, by Spain, that the Gibraltarians will never give up their homeland.