The development follows a Royal Navy vessel firing a warning shot towards a Spanish coast guard vessel last month, after it was deemed to be moving too close to the British submarine. The sub was reportedly departing Gibraltar after having its Tomahawk missile stores replenished.
A Royal Navy boat has been scrambled to intercept a Spanish vessel which tried to shadow HMS Talent as the nuclear submarine was leaving Gibraltar, in what The Sundescribed as an apparent violation of maritime rules.
Gibraltar, a small peninsula extending past the southern coast of Spain, has been a British Overseas Territory since 1713, when Spain ceded it to Britain under the Utrecht Treaty. The region’s residents rejected the idea of Spanish sovereignty in 1967 and joint UK-Spanish authority in 2002.Gibraltar is due to leave the EU, together with the rest of the UK, in March 2019. The Brexit agreement between London and Brussels includes a special protocol for the territory. Amid Brexit talks, the Spanish government, for its part, expressed its discontent with the current arrangement.