The Dust-up Over Gibraltar: What's The Big Deal About The Little Peninsula?
Anger, frustration, even an unsubtle suggestion of war — there's been some heated talk lately between the U.K. and Spain about a single rock. Here's a primer on what all the fuss is about.
Let's get something straight up front: Spain and the U.K. are not going to war over Gibraltar.
That, at least, is what politicians from both countries have been carefully asserting since Michael Howard, a former British Conservative party leader, made a not-so-subtle suggestion Sunday that force would be on the table in some recent unpleasantness over the long-disputed peninsula.
"Thirty-five years ago this week, another woman prime minister sent a task force halfway across the world to defend the freedom of another small group of British people against another Spanish-speaking country," Howard told an interviewer, referring to the brief between the U.K. and Argentina, "and I'm absolutely certain that our current prime
