Spain nixes North Korean boycott
According to the London Financial Times Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s idiosyncratic leader, may be dispensing Hennessy cognac and Cartier watches to his cronies for a little while longer, thanks to a 300-year-old territorial dispute between the UK and Spain.
The FT reports that the ban was agreed by the United Nations last October as one of a number of sanctions against North Korea, following its testing of a nuclear device.
The aim was to deprive Mr Kim and his supporters of some of the finer things in life, including thoroughbred horses, luxury vehicles, watches, pearls and musical instruments.
If Mr Kim is wondering why, he need look no further than the War of the Spanish Succession and the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht that ended it – handing Gibraltar to Britain.
Problems arose when Madrid spotted that the EU regulation needed to implement the sanctions contained a reference to the “competent authorities” responsible for enforcing them: listed in the small print was Gibraltar.
So .. Let’s educate the world about Spain’s continuing Hypocrisy … unbeknownst to many people the Spanish have also had a Colonial foot in the world of Africa for a century or more than the British have been in Gibraltar.
The cities of Ceuta and Melilla in North Africa have been under Spanish rule for many centuries on much the same terms as Gibraltar. The main difference being that of course Spain, who until the death of Fascist dictator General Franco as recently as 1975, is somehow vested different set of codes from the United Kingdom (free from its last dictator Cromwell in 1658).
We live in a world where deplorable actions go free, where hypocrisy is rife. Surely, a young, newly democratic, proud member of the European union should be able to shake off it’s ex-colonial fascist shackles and move forward – Spain needs to focus on freeing it’s own colonies before it’s ridiculous attacks on other countries.
For the Spanish people it’s time to face up to the reality of being a democracy and not live in the shadow of Franco’s pathetic legacy of hypocrisy.