Spanish mayor rocks the boat over Gibraltar border

IT SEEMED for a while that the British territory of Gibraltar was settling in for a period of detente with its Spanish neighbours to the north.

In the summer of 2009, the Spanish foreign minister visited Gibraltar, the first time such a high-ranking official had made the trip since Spain ceded the territory to Britain under the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.

Of course, Spain has not given up its claim to the territory - less than three square miles on the tip of the Iberian Peninsula. But several old disputes have been thrashed out in recent years, and a deal signed giving Spain access to Gibraltar's airport.

Lately, however, things have not been going so well.

Alejandro Snchez, mayor of La Lnea de la Concepcin, the financially troubled town on the Spanish side of the border, has been making a fuss on several fronts.

He is not happy with the airport deal because he says La Lnea has not been paid by the Spanish government for the land required to build Spanish access to the airport terminal.

And he is threatening to charge a toll in La Lnea, looking for revenue from the owners of the ten million vehicles that cross his town each year, mostly with people going to shop in the dense streets of Gibraltar.

Mr Snchez says the income would begin to make up for the environmental impact of all that car exhaust fumes from the long lines of vehicles waiting to get into Gibraltar, where shoppers can get deals on cigarettes, alcohol, perfume and chocolates.

"We have the most polluted village in all of Andalusia," he said. "The shoreline is lost for tourism because of all those cars going into Gibraltar."

Gibraltar's chief minister, Peter Caruana, calls the proposal "absurd" and Mr Snchez an "irrelevant pinprick".

At one point, Mr Snchez ordered the police to check all cars travelling from Gibraltar, causing traffic to back up on the other side for once. Mr Caruana issued a statement saying that the action was an abuse of police power and "not acceptable in a democracy".

Gibraltar, an offshore tax haven, is booming - its economy grew by 5 per cent last year. Mr Caruana smiles when asked about the unemployment in Gibraltar. There are, he said, maybe 300 unemployed people in Gibraltar, which has a population of about 30,000.

But in La Lnea, a town of 65,000 people, one in six residents is unemployed. Swept into the excesses of Spain's construction boom, it is more than $135 million (about 85m) in debt and began falling behind on paying its workers last summer.

Mr Snchez inherited the mess when his predecessor was forced to step down last year.At first, he championed the airport deal, which the Spanish government and Gibraltar signed in 2006, as a boon to the local economy. But these days he just wants to see the town get paid for its land.

"This is one of our most valuable assets," he said. "And we have other possibilities for the use of that land." He is waiting for Spain to make him a reasonable offer.

Mr Caruana says Gibraltar will soon be finished with its side of the airport. Now, he says, it is up to the Spanish government to figure out how to deal with Mr Snchez.

Mr Snchez had hoped to have his toll in place by now. But he is still struggling for a legal strategy. On the face of it, European Union countries cannot charge tolls at their borders. But Mr Snchez says he has hired lawyers in Brussels who believe there are ways.

"We are developing a plan," he said. "You will see."