PRINCE William and Kate Middleton were told yesterday to find a seat at their wedding for an extra guest to settle a diplomatic row between Britain and Gibraltar.
In an extraordinary oversight, they had failed to invite a representative from Gibraltar, a British overseas territory captured from Spain in 1704, to the ceremony in Westminster Abbey on April 29.
They were forced into an embarrassing U-turn to calm a simmering row over Foreign Secretary William Hague’s decision to send Prince Charles and Camilla on an official tour to Spain – but not Gibraltar – at the end of this month.
Gibraltarians were up in arms after it emerged that during the 10-day tour of Portugal, Spain and Morocco, Charles and Camilla will be on official business in Seville, an hour-and-a-half’s drive from the British territory, and are expected to spend a private weekend in the millionaires’ playground of Sotogrande, 20 minutes from Gibraltar.
Dominique Searle, editor of the Gibraltar Chronicle newspaper, said: “Gibraltarians will always be upset by a British royal going to Spain and not to Gibraltar but even more so when they are only 20 minutes away.”
Official sources said Peter Caruana, chief minister of the fervently royalist colony, had been lobbying for Charles and Camilla to include the Rock on their tour but had been rejected.
Instead, Mr Caruana, who was in London yesterday, is to be invited belatedly to the royal wedding as a sop to the 30,000 people who live in Gibraltar, which has declared a national holiday on April 29.
A senior official source in Gibraltar said yesterday: “There hasn’t been a formal announcement yet but this is what we’re hearing.”
It is not the first time that the Royal Family has been caught up in the tension between Britain and Spain over Gibraltar, which is claimed by both countries.
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