There has been growing tension between Spain and Britain over the sovereignty of island Gibraltar
. It is a strategic position at the western entrance to the Mediterranean for most of the time and has long been of military interest. Britain claims a strip measuring three nautical miles (5.5 kilometers) surrounding Gibraltar as their territorial waters and on the other hand Spain does not recognize any waters off Gibraltar as belonging to the British territory, apart from its ports.
Madrid ceded Gibraltar in 1713 under the Treaty of Utrecht. Although the treaty makes no mention of the territorial waters around Gibraltar, Britain argues that the notion of territorial waters did not exist when it was signed. At the end of 2008 Spain pursued and convinced the European Commission to include most of the territorial waters that surround Gibraltar claimed by Britain under a new marine conservation area known as the "Estrecho Oriental" and that will be maintained by Madrid.
Britain sees this decision to create the marine conservation area as tacit recognition of Spain's possession of the territory. In the recent past Spanish police had always entered the waters around the territory to stop drug trafficking and control maritime traffic and British forces have sought to block Spanish patrols of the waters around the territory.
Now a haven for tourism, shipping and offshore banking because of its favorable tax laws, its people overwhelmingly rejected an Anglo-Spanish proposal for co-sovereignty in a referendum in 2002. The co-existence of English and Spanish forces in and around Gibraltar looks like a distance dream for the Marines.