The waters around Gibraltar are indisputably British under international law and no amount of political posturing on the Spanish side will ever change that.

The designation at the request of Spain of an EU Site of Community interest inside British Gibraltar Territorial Waters, although a totally unacceptable and aggressive act when it happened, has no bearing whatsoever on the sovereignty of the waters. 

This sovereignty is set out in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) which provides for a three mile territorial sea generated by every coastal state, with the possibility to claim up to twelve miles where the geography allows. In the case of Gibraltar, in international law, this means three miles to the east and the south and the median line in the Bay, although the UK is entitled to claim those twelve miles where possible.

The Spanish Declaration entered in UNCLOS simply records the traditional political view of Madrid and it has no binding legal effect of any kind.

In this context, it is worth recalling that a top legal adviser to the Spanish Foreign Ministry itself, Jose Antonio de Yturriaga, published a paper on retirement which indicated that Madrid’s claim to Gibraltar’s territorial sea was weak had no legal basis.

All this means that the Eastside project is without question in British Gibraltar Territorial Waters, despite the ill-informed bluster on the Spanish side. Indeed, Madrid should understand that this development will generate millions, if not billions, of euros in Spain and in Andalucia in particular, through the purchase of goods and materials as well as in the employment of hundreds of people both while the project is under construction and when it is finally built. More than one person should understand that this is part of the positive economic contribution which Gibraltar continues to make to the Spanish economy.

It goes without saying that Gibraltar will always continue to act in its waters in keeping with the highest international standards of environmental protection, which are higher than those applicable in Spain itself, and in keeping with the rules on the transboundary effects of land reclamation projects, as we have always done. This is not the same on the Spanish side, where the lack of consultation of land reclamation on that part of the Bay has had a negative impact on the coast of both Gibraltar and La Linea during winter storms.

Additionally, it will be recalled that during our period of EU membership, on Spanish complaints, the EU Commission investigated the Eastside project on more than once occasion. Each time the EU found that Gibraltar had done everything properly and by the book, in full compliance with the law.

It is also very odd that Madrid should seek to resurrect this matter at this particular moment in time, when it was long done and dusted from an EU perspective, and when it has been clear for over twenty years that the land use on that site was precisely for a mixed project of this nature.