Following a weekend of intense frontier queues and questionable treatment of Gibraltarians and Spanish residents alike, the Foreign Secretary William Hague has insisted that he has spoken to Spanish Foreign Minister Margallo ‘to raise [their] concerns about restrictions at [the] Spanish-Gibraltar border.’

The BBC today relays Chief Minister Fabian Picardo’s message that Spain was using bullying tactics in response to work carried out in the bay last week, to lay an artificial reef that will not allow Spanish fishing trawlers to rake the seabed.

Fabian Picardo yesterday evening visited demonstrators at the frontier. This morning, speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today show, he noted that it was right for William Hague to have taken the issue up directly with Sr. Margallo.

During the weekend Mr. Picardo urged Gibraltarians to ‘stay calm and keep the moral high ground. On his Twitter account he noted, ‘in the face of the worst provocations, we must always act responsibly.’

In response to a Radio 4 question on whether it is the UK’s duty to assist Gibraltar during this time of need, Mr Picardo highlighted the fact that the matter had become international news with publications such as The Guardian, the Telegraph, the Belfast Telegraph and Yahoo News reporting on the long frontier queues.