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Freeze hits mystery project for Spanish side of the new air terminal
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The Spanish Government may not be able to keep its word about completing the mystery structure it is obliged to build on the Spanish side of the airport, so it is possible that the Gibraltar Government will complete its new air terminal - but the Spanish appendage will not be there.
The problem stems from the economic squeeze that is afflicting Spain and which it is thought can only get worse.
The Spanish 'Fomento' ministry - which hands out public works contracts - is facing a freeze and many projects are being shelved. Informed sources in Madrid, who have economic interests in Gibraltar, are convinced that the building due to be erected on the Spanish side of the new air terminal will not see the light of day for quite some time.
And the expectations of the mayor of La Linea to have a bigger and better building than what was originally foreseen may not leave the drawing board. If 'Fomento' finds its hands tied by the financial freeze, the mayor has just realised that the option of a municipal salvage plan is now affected by the Zapatero initiative of halting the grant of further cash to municipalities across Spain.
Nobody knows what exactly was planned for the other side of the new air terminal, which is why it is something of a mystery project.
Initially, it was said that Gibraltar would build a new terminal against the frontier fence and that the Spanish would add to it what can best be described as an 'overhang', which would allow access to Spanish police to check passports while standing on Spanish soil and looking through a glass partition into the arrivals area in the Gibraltar terminal.
All this was concocted to assuage the possibility of a row over sovereignty, but the situation is far from clear.
MORIBUND TRIPARTITE
What is also far from clear is the future of the Tripartite Process. The process is going through moribund times. The ministerial meeting due in July has been postponed till the end of the year in the hope of gaining time to allow for some agreement to emerge.
This process, if they are not careful, could end in total disarray for the simple reason that it is being fed by artificial problems requiring solutions of the kind where solutions are not possible.
It is one thing to have a trilateral forum to raise genuine issues of mutual interest that may require attention, and it is something else to bring out one issue after another to try and find solutions to intractable problems, which require political concessions which each side expects the other to make.
Of course, none of the three sides wants the trilateral process to collapse for different reasons, so it is expected they will try to keep the talking alive in the knowledge that if the process hits rock-bottom it would be particularly difficult to resuscitate.
28-05-10
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