No one with any sense would use a work of fiction as a reference scource.
Simple facts. the Spanish revolt was in 1808, Wellington did not arrive in Portugal until 1811.
One of the first and largest defeats inflicted on Napoleans armies was in Spain by a Spanish arrmy long before there were any British troops in Portugal.
But those who like to rewrite History because is denigrates Spain will carry on doing so no matter what the facts are/

Cigarette smuggling is a smoke screen


What we have today is a price differential between what cigarettes are sold at in Gibraltar and what they are bought for legally in Spain. Despite the price hike imposed by our Government that difference is seemingly still sufficient for the organised criminal gangs to send waves of people across to bring back large scale contraband.

However Gibraltar is free to charge whatever price it likes: there is nothing illegal in that. The illegality starts when the smugglers try to take the cigarettes into La Línea.

Every week day on the Spanish side of the border are men and women waiting for the cigarette traffickers to come through Customs with their booty. The National Police and Guardia Civil can see them and know who they are. It is not unusual to see groups of Spanish women standing in the door of the Customs post calling to the Guardia Civil on duty as other women with cigarettes come through. This is the Spanish cigarette trafficking trade and it is in Spain's power to stop it.

The Chief Minister was correct, if the Spanish media reports are to be believed, when he said that tobacco smuggling across the La Línea border is minor compared with the trafficking in Spain. He is 100 per cent right: it might impact on the Campo de Gibraltar but the major supply coming into Spain enters not via La Línea but Algeciras. In to that port, and others, sail ships with containers packed full of illegal cigarettes. Some are discovered by the Customs and when they are the resulting number of packs puts cigarette smuggling cross our borders into perspective. These illicit cargos are huge

Spain does have a problem at the Gibraltar border with smuggling but it is a Spanish problem and does not justify the draconian queues out and nobody has yet smuggled any cigarettes in! So Madrid's complaints to the EU about tobacco smuggling are just a smoke screen for its politically inspired actions.

I have been pounding the Gibraltar journalistic beat long enough to remember the days when the black launches landed cigarettes on the beaches of the Campo de Gibraltar. That was a Gibraltar problem and Gibraltar solved it.

http://www.panorama.gi/localnews/hea...11448&offset=0

So NO expats living in Spain who drive to Gib and after they have been to M&S and Morrisons also fill their boots with cheap fags.
Are you saying that it is only the Spanish who do this !!!

Nope sorry, dont see how you managed to infer that in what was written.

Read the paragraph that says that Spain has a problem with smuggling etc.
Where are the cheap fags bought and where is the profit from selling them to the smugglers retained ??. Not in Spain !!

A partnership between Gib and Spain that seems to be working well!
http://nats.aero/blog/2014/02/tower-tours-gibraltar/
Some nice photos.

I think the article says that it's a Spanish problem not that the sole perps are Spanish (although the vast majority are statistically likely to be Spanish given the proportions of expats to locals crossing the border - and bearing in mind that Gibraltarians are not expats)

As the BBC reported in a feature this year, those who sell the cigarettes in Gibraltar to the Expats and Spanish are local shops and outlets.
Gib could solve the probelm and remove this excuse used by the Spanish by simply raising the prices to Spanish levels.

Are you implying that all countries that sell cigarettes cheaper than Spain (eg Andorra, Morocco etc) should raise their prices to parity with Spain?
Are you, therefore implying that all trade should be at the same prices across the whole world? Just think again about your absurd statement and realise how economically illiterate it is just to make a dubious debating point.

As far as I recall (from the TV program just finished) Gibraltar has laws about the number of cigarettes that can be sold and exported for personal use and the Gib Police do enforce this. This is much stricter than we have in the UK where we only restrict imports and then to considerably more than 20 cartons. They have also created a cig-free zone near the border to discourage the smugglers who nip in and out. i.e. they are doing more than required in an attempt to placate the Spanish, but the Spaniards will not let any excuse go no matter how tenuous.

Expats aren't going into Spain with bootloads of Cigs. They know the score. The stopping of cars is so rigorous that it's not worth the risk. Some days they look in EVERY boot. We used to go at least once a month and have seen it happen. As mentioned the locals from La Linea are the worst smugglers who seem to cross backwards and forwards under the eye of the GC. Even an untrained eye can spot them. Probably the same as that happens as at Málaga airport where today several GC Officers have been convicted of taking bribes.

It is quite obvious that EMR hasn't visited Gibraltar yet he has to have his two pennorth!

So the BBC today prog was mistaken then ? but you still miss the point it is the outlets in Gib that are supplying the smugglers ( who ever they are ) and giving the Spanish an excuse to behave as they do.
Raise the price although I suspect that the vested interests in Gib are more interested in their profits than the long queues at the border.

He obviously hasn't the faintest clue, hasn't bothered to find out for himself although he lives on the doorstep, yet continues to spout endless garbage.

Probably just trying to run up his post count in the desperate hope that one day someone will take notice of him IMHO.

Obviously you are trying to rewrite it yourself and imply that the Spanish could have dealt with Nappy.

Next you'll be telling us they won the battle of trafalgar and didn't make a total cock-up with the armada.

Now we know why you spout so much poppycock.

You rewrite your own history books to match your own imaginary preferred outcome and then read them back to yourself so many times that you actually believe them.

I prefer the information provided by the BBC than the Gibraltar propoganda department and its followers.
If I was in charge of Gib and wanted to win the moral arguement I would raise the prices to Spanish levels after all cheap fags are not exactly good for the health of the inhabitants of Gib.
Spain would then have no reason to stop and search anyone, but then as I supect too much mney is being made by some in Gib for this to happen.
What needs to happen is for Gib to really be part of the UK and pay UK prices then the smuggling would be from Spain into Gib and it would be the Gib police causing the delays, what a laugh that would be.

If you remove your head from where ever it is and actually read a decent informative book on the Peninsula war, the Spanish revolt, the insurgent uprising the 100,000s of French troops that were needed in Spain from 1808 -1814 you might learn something.
Trafalgar predated the Spanish revolt so has nothing to do with it or what happened later.
If you are an expat actually living in Spain your knowledge of the history of your adopted country is abyssmal and is sadly typical of a certain type of expat.