Spain Seeks To ‘Criminalise’ Gibraltar And The Campo With Tobacco Claims

The Gibraltar Government has called on Spain to stop trying to ‘criminalise’ Gibraltar and the Campo de Gibraltar with ‘sensationalist’ data about tobacco smuggling. In a statement, it said data provided by the Spanish government’s representative in the province of Cádiz, Javier de Torre, ‘contradicted’ statistics from the Spanish Tax Agency in a bid to make the problem look worse than it is. Sr de Torre was quoted saying that 60% of all tobacco seizures in Spain came from the Campo de Gibraltar, a figure that had been used earlier in the week in a statement from the Treasury Ministry in Madrid. According to the Gibraltar Government, Spain’s own official statistics show the figure of tobacco seizures at the border between Gibraltar and La Línea account for 9% of total seizures in Spain, while those in the Campo de Gibraltar area – which also includes the port of Algeciras – make up 21% of the total.