Spain clings to south Tillar of Hercules’

Press, 10 February 1983, Page 16

Spain clings to south Tillar of Hercules’

By Roderick Junior in the ‘Daily Telegraph,' London

Directly south of Gibraltar, of all places, is a rock the Spanish would rather not draw attention to. They refer to it privately as the "pearl of the Mediterranean." It is on the coast of Morocco, is garrisoned with 15.000 wellarmed Spanish troops, and it is held by Madrid to be "part of Spain." It is the town of Ceuta, one of a number of little-publicised Spanish possessions on Morocco’s northern shores. The Spanish like to dismiss out of hand any suggestion that

there is similarity between the British residents’ rights on Gibraltar and the five enclaves Spain occupies in Morocco. Spain likes to argue that the five are part of Spain while Gibraltar has its own administration and is thereby a "colonial relic." In Morocco that is not how the locals see it. One told me: "The arguments which Spain invokes in pursuit of her claim to Gibraltar are exactly the ones whose validity she refuses to countenance when we raise the question of the enclaves.”

While the Spanish Government refuses to allow anyone but a local resident to cross the frontier at Gibraltar — for 13 years, until last December. Spain had the gates sealed —

the Moroccan authorities impose no similar restrictions over entry to or exit from Ceuta, which King Hassan of Morocco claims to be sovereign Moroccan territory just as strenuously as Spain claims Gibraltar. Mindful of the fact that shortly after an international journalist went to Ceuta and

drew attention to the Spanish presence there — one of the few from any country to have done so — the Moroccan sweetvendor who had guided him round the enclave was shot dead. I have just visited northern Morocco to ask about attitudes to the Spanish presence. In addition to Ceuta, whose 650 ft Mt Hacho is the second Pillar of Hercules (Gibraltar is the other) of the ancient world. Spain occupies on Morocco’s coastline also the town of Melilla. near the Algerian frontier. This has some 20,000 Spanish troops, a large port, and a civilian population of around 80.000. The two towns comprise the only two harbours of any size on Morocco’s Mediterranean border and through them Spain effectively controls imports and exports by sea from this part of Morocco. There are also three other places in this region held by Spain - against Morocco's wishes. They are the Penon (or "rock") de Velez de la Gomera, the Penon d’Alhucemas, and the Chaffarine Islands, all of which are governed and supplied by Spain through Melilla. Spain took over Ceuta when Philip II annexed Portugal in 1580. Portugal captured Melilla in 1497. In Melilla the authorities have put up a placard which says “Melilla was Spanish 18 years before the kingdom of Navarre became so, 162 years before Le Roussillon became French, and 279 years before the birth of the United States.”

Ceuta is quite a size, with the Atlantic Ocean on one side

and the Mediterranean on the other. Some 25 merchant ships plus a Spanish submarine and a frigate were in port or at anchor when I visited it; it was teeming with tourists (it gets some three million a year), supports two daily newspapers of 36 and 40 pages, and the first hotel I tried was "fully booked" when I asked for a room. ’lt is serviced by 16 ferries a day with the Spanish mainland. .By contrast. Gibraltar is poorly serviced through Britain and Tangier, has a local paper of four pages, and is going through a difficult time with hotels and restaurants empty.

The attraction to tourists of both Ceuta and Melilla lies in their status as free ports with lots of duty-free videos, radios, cameras and other items. From the summit of Mount Hacho, where there is a monument to General Franco who despatched his nationalist forces from Ceuta at the start of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. and where his footprints are preserved in concrete. I looked north across the sea to Gibraltar, south across the 11 Spanish military fortresses on Ceuta to the frontier with Morocco, and down below into the streets where bombs exploded in 1975 as Morocco pressed its claims to the town. My Spanish taxi driver (the Moroccans in the town live in a separate area from the Spanish, with the poorest of them in a litter-strewn shanty town overlooked by a fortress of the Spanish Foreign Legion) told me to lock my door as we went

through the Moroccan sector. "There are lots of thieves here." he said. "You can't trust the Moroccans at all." He then went on to show me some of the security precautions in the enclave, with watchtowers and machine-gun posts all manned by seemingly vigilant Spanish troops. "No one can take Ceuta from Spain without a big fight, and were not going to hand it over to anyone." Judging by the number of Spanish troops armed with automatic weapons that I saw I reckoned he summed up the popular Spanish view. There are due to be talks about easing the restrictions Spain imposes at Gibraltar later this year. But experts are not over optimistic about the outcome. As one put it; "The hypocrisy needs exposing. When King Juan Carlos refused to come to Prince Charles’s wedding because of plans by the Prince and Lady Diana to stop at Gibraltar on their honeymoon, or when Spain abstained in the United Nations vote calling for Argentina to remove its invasion forces from the Falklands because of Britain’s "position" in Gibraltar, we were too decent to raise the issue of the Moroccan enclaves. It is time we played the Ceuta card." And the Prime Minister over the water in Madrid may care to reflect that in the unlikely event of all Gibraltarians emigrating. Britain would be free to consider returning its Rock. Djebel Tarik, to its previous owners — the Moors, or pre-sent-day Moroccans.