There was much grumpiness on this blog a fortnight ago about the Spanish knee-jerk reaction against the visit of Princess Anne to Gibraltar. They weren’t happy.

She touched down today on an RAF Bae146 jet operated by No 32 (The Royal) Squadron. Within a few hours the least-worst politician on The Rock, Chief Minister Peter Caruana started the predictable 3 day guided tour and much ribbon-cutting and smiling will occur.

Here in 2004 for the 300th anniversary of British Gibraltar, she was also due to visit in Feburaury 2007 but the shouting match between Madrid and the spine-of-a-jellyfish Foreign Office resulted in it being cancelled.

TheEye will be cheering in the crowd in appreciation of the Monarchy’s solid support for the liberty of Gibraltar and the right of self-determination despite the efforts of Labour to hand Gib to Spain in exchange for a crate of 10Euro red wine.

The Princess is staying at The Convent (basically Gib’s No.10 Downing Street) but a small snag has been hit because the weather is currently appalling and outside visits are going to be tricky. Her husband, Vice Admiral Timothy Laurence, who as chief executive of Defence Estates at the Ministry of Defence knows Gibraltar well. There are many issues with MoD cutbacks which are impacting locally, and much ex-military land…whether needed by the Forces or not…is being sold off to developers for a quick and undervalued return. Expect his ear to be bent.

Princess Anne is known to dislike media attention and prefers a low profile. The Spanish media, however, were stacked up in a queue of cars half a mile long at the border yesterday. The reasons are covered in my previous post but she certainly isn’t going to get the same number of foreign journalists shouting questions at her in a wierd language when she flies out of here and heads for the Falkland Islands. She is patron of the South Georgia Heritage Trust.

The Argies will doubtless kick up a huge political storm-in-a-teacup though.