Just thought you might like to know that the mayor in the spanish town of La Linea on the Gibraltar frontier has gone rogue. The town is all but bankrupt and can’t pay there staff wages. He has come up with the idea of charging cars and trucks to either enter or leave gib. He’s proposing to charge cars 5 euro and trucks 30 euro. The british and spanish governments seem to be fighting him but he seems determined to go ahead around october. Just thought you should be aware if you are heading that way in the future.
The idea will have to be abandoned (or seriously re-worked). or it’ll go to court that will rule it illegal.
He could erect toll booths all around the city to charge everybody entering the city but doing that on one end only targeting only one group of people is discrimination. If there was a tunnel or bridge maintained by the council he might have gone away with it. But not like this.
Popular Party Mayor of La Linea, Alejandro Sanchez is somewhat of an agent provocateur and is trying to hide his and his councils severe shortcomings by waging a war of words with Gibraltar on all sorts of issues.
His current brainwave to “tax” vehicles by means of a road toll either entering or leaving Gib would seem to be yet another of his attempts to distract attention from more pressing matters.
Apart from the fact that the economy of La Linea benefits greatly from Gibraltar in finacial terms - many La Lineans work in Gib, and many Gibraltarians spend their money in and around La Linea seems to have escaped his notice.
That aside, where will he raise the capital to radically alter the access road from la Linea to Gibraltar? The infrastructure required will be neither simple nor cheap given the current layout of the roads, buildings and public beaches in the immediate vicinty of the current border crossings.