Word: gibraltarism
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Secure with American military aid, dictator France is renewing Spanish agitation for control of Gibraltar by planned riots and diplomatic insults. Mindful of American eagerness to hold airfields on the Iberian peninsula, France has embarrassed the British by acting when the U.S. wants to please him. The United states is reluctant to take sides in the dispute, a policy which jeopardized the British position...
Unfettered by American protests, Spain insists that modern armaments have made British fortifications on the bastion useless. Yet NATO experts regard the underground defenses of the Rock as secure as man can devise, and consider Gibraltar a vital point in the regulation of trade and supply routes to the Mediterranean. Solely on the basis of defense policy, the British have good reason to keep a tight grip on Gibraltar...
...will ot prejudice her friendship with Britain for the sake of Spanish air bases: France must not use America as a lever for territorial claims. Firmness may not end the conflict, defense of Western Europe, and would assure the British that America respects her intention to remain at Gibraltar...
...terraced city of Tetuan, 10.000 Arabs and Berber tribesmen chanted Viva Espana! and begged Spain's help in throwing off 50 years of French authority in Morocco. In Madrid. Falangist hoodlums stoned the British embassy; in Seville, they screamed "Franco! Franco! We want Gibraltar." All last week, in an outburst of diplomatic orneriness, Spain set out to antagonize its neighbors...
British Scorn. Meanwhile, Spain sent its ambassador to call on Anthony Eden to protest Queen Elizabeth's scheduled visit on May 10 to Britain's fortress on Gibraltar, "Spanish territory unjustly retained by Britain" for 250 years now. Britain, reacting with lofty scorn, saw its feelings aptly expressed in a London Daily Herald headline: THE AMAZING FRANCO DARES TO WARN us. Undeterred by these headlines. 8,000 Madrid students this week stormed the British embassy and were finally driven away after a 2½-hour hassle with the police...