Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos will become the first government minister to visit Gibraltar since the rocky outcrop was ceded to Britain in 1713 when he meets his British counterpart there today.

Moratinos meets U.K. Foreign Secretary David Miliband and Gibraltar’s Chief Minister Peter Caruana to discuss issues including taxes, security and the environment, said a Foreign Ministry spokesman who declined to be named, citing policy. The three sides previously met in Cordoba, Spain in 2006 and London in 2008 for similar talks that didn’t discuss sovereignty.

The territory on the Iberian peninsula’s southern tip was ceded to Britain by the Spanish in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht after its capture in 1704, and its sovereignty has been a source of friction between the two countries ever since. Gibraltar’s government wants the area and its population of 28,000 to remain British, and the U.K. has said it won’t hand over the 6.5 square-kilometer territory against Gibraltarians’ wishes.

In a 2002 referendum, 99 percent of Gibraltar’s 20,683 registered voters rejected any plan of shared Anglo-Spanish sovereignty. The Spanish and British governments said the referendum had no legal merit.

The limestone rock stands about 20 kilometers from the north of Africa, perched over the Strait of Gibraltar that connects the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The Rock, as it is known, attracts a flood of Spanish workers that move back and forth across the border each day.

The opposition People’s Party opposes Moratinos visit, calling it a “terrible mistake” that could set a precedent for treating Gibraltar as a sovereign state, the party’s secretary general, Maria Dolores de Cospedal, said yesterday.

Relations between Spain and the U.K. over Gibraltar have been strained in the past over the docking of a damaged nuclear submarine, HMS Tireless, there in 2000, and by the visit of former Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon in 2004 to mark the 300th anniversary of British rule.

To contact the reporter on this story: Emma Ross-Thomas in Madrid at erossthomas@bloomberg.net

via Moratinos Visits Gibraltar in First Spanish Visit Since 1713 – Bloomberg.com.