Walter Finch
AT least two Spanish government ministries have been caught using maps on their website which show Gibraltar’s territorial waters.
Maps on the websites of the Interior Ministry and the Ministry for the Ecological Transition show a maritime boundary around the British territory that is not recognized by Spain.
The observation was first reported by Europa Sur, a Spanish newspaper headquartered across the bay from Gibraltar in Algeciras, Cadiz.
The Ministry for Ecological Transition’s website displays these disputed waters as part of its noise maps and a geoportal tracking fuel prices across the country.
Meanwhile, the Directorate General of Traffic (DGT), under the Ministry of the Interior, uses similar maps on its website to show road incidents.
Blame for this embarrassing oversight has been placed at the door of data from OpenStreetMap, a free collaborative mapping project, which the ministries used as their base layer.
OpenStreetMap, founded by British engineer Steve Coast, includes Gibraltar’s territorial waters as British, in line with the UK’s position.
Spain, however, has consistently rejected Gibraltar’s claims to these waters, asserting in parliamentary responses that the waters adjacent to the Rock are Spanish as they were not mentioned in the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713.
According to the treaty, only Gibraltar’s city, castle, and port were ceded to Britain.
However, Spain also claims the airspace over the Rock since it was not mentioned in the treaty either.
It highlights the root of the dispute: that concepts such as international waters or airspace did not properly exist in international law 310 years ago.
The OpenStreetMap dataset correctly indicates that there is disputed territorial claims to the body of water. See https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/345004359