A Spanish proposal to extend its continental platform at Portugal’s expense – particularly as it is believed to contain substantial hydrocarbon reserves – has been delivered to the United Nations in a month “traditionally used to push things through when no one is looking”.
Needless to say, Portugal has clocked the move and is now preparing to contest Spain’s claim to an area of 10,000 sq kilometres around Madeira’s Ilhas Selvagens.
As Diário de Notícias reports, the waters Spain is so keen to appropriate run to depths of 5,000 metres “where it is thought exist reserves of natural gas and petroleum”.
This is not a new issue. Spain has been rattling sabres over the Ilhas Selvagens for some time. Its beef lies with the classification of the remote outcrops, which it claims are not islands at all, but rocks. If they were considered rocks, then Portugal would not be entitled to extend its territory to include them.
It is a wrangle set to continue, with neither side prepared to see the other’s point of view.
As Portugal’s Observador remarks in an article today, if Spain wins the battle, it will be in possession of a new tranche of 296,500 sq kms of the Atlantic Ocean – equivalent to the area of Italy.
