Now even the king of Spain has joined in the Spanish chorus begging for control of Gibraltar.
Using his speech at the United Nations General Assembly as his platform, King Felipe VI said that Britain should “end the colonial anachronism of Gibraltar”.
After referring to Britain’s decision to leave the EU, the king called for a negotiated handover of the enclave which has been a British territory since 1713.
"I invite the UK, on this first occasion at the UN after Brexit, to end the colonial anachronism of Gibraltar with an agreed solution between both countries to restore the territorial integrity of Spain and bring benefits to the people of Gibraltar and the Spanish area of Campo de Gibraltar."
Alert officials in the Gibraltar government responded immediately, chiding Spain for being stuck in the past.
"The days when territories could be handed over from one monarch to another regardless of the wishes of the people who live there ended a very long time ago," a spokesman for Gibraltar’s administration said.
"This is not 1704, when Britain conquered Gibraltar, or 1713 when Spain ceded it by Treaty for ever."
"This is 2016 when what matters most is the right of a people, however small, to determine their own future."
"It is regrettable that the mentality in official circles in Spain remains stuck in the eighteenth century."
"Madrid has still not come to terms with having lost Gibraltar over three hundred years ago and it’s time they realised that they are never going to get it back."
Within moments of the Brexit outcome being announced in June, Spain's acting Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo called for joint sovereignty over Gibraltar "to solve the situation of Gibraltar and allow it to keep its access to the EU's single market."
Co-sovereignty, he reminded his listeners meant “the Spanish flat on the Rock”.
In what the UN New Center called a “wide-ranging address”, the king referred to the troubling period that Spain was going through but did not expand on the on-going failure to elect a government. He did not tackle the issue of Catalonian independence, but indicated that Spain works best through a democratic framework.
