Spanish warships ordered British boats out of Gibraltar’s waters (video-photo)

Royal Navy boats were deployed in response to the incident

A Spanish warship with its guns manned ordered commercial ships to leave Gibraltar’s British waters on Sunday, it has emerged. The warship’s crew can be heard in an audio recording of a radio exchange telling vessels anchored at the Rock to ‘leave Spanish territorial waters’. Royal Navy boats were deployed in response to the incident.

Boats which had been told to move were subsequently ordered to stay put by the Gibraltar Port Authority.

A spokesman for Her Majesty’s Government of Gibraltar branded the actions of the Spanish navy ‘foolish’. ‘There is only nuisance value to these foolish games being played by those who don’t accept unimpeachable British sovereignty over the waters around Gibraltar as recognized by the whole world in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea,’ the spokesman said.

(A Spanish warship “with its weapons uncovered and manned”)

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