Portugal–Spain relations

(PortugalTwitter)-Portugal–Spain relations describes relations between the governments of the Portuguese Republic and the Kingdom of Spain. The two states make up the vast majority of the Iberian Peninsula and as such, the relationship between the two is sometimes known as Iberian relations.

In recent years, both countries enjoyed a much friendlier relationship. In 1986, they entered the European Union together, as well as both being Schengen countries.

Present

Current relations between Portugal and Spain are healthy. They cooperate in the fight against drug trafficking and forest fires (common in the Iberian Peninsula in summers), for example. These close relations are facilitated by similar governments: the government of conservative Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar coincided with the government of also conservative José Manuel Durão Barroso in Portugal; today, both countries prime-ministers, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of Spain and José Sócrates of Portugal are socialists. José Sócrates even claims that he has one of the best personal relations with José Zapatero among international political relation. These two countries had a bid to jointly host the 2018 World Cup, but it was lost to Russia.

Later disputes

There is an unsettled territorial dispute regarding the municipality of Olivenza/Olivença and the smaller town and municipality of Táliga, both administered as a part of the province of Badajoz, in the Spanish autonomous community of Extremadura. Portugal does not recognize Spanish sovereignty over this territory, which was acquired by Spain during the War of the Oranges in 1801. This matter is not pressed by the Portuguese government, which, however, never draws the frontier line in this area in official maps.

There is also some diffuse dispute regarding Portugal's Exclusive Economic Zone in the territorial waters of the Savage Islands (a small archipelago north of the Canary Islands), under Portuguese sovereignty. Spain objects on the basis that the Savage Islands do not have a separate continental shelf, according to the article 121 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The status of the Savage Islands as islands or rocks is thus at the core of the current dispute. Today the Savage Islands constitute a natural reserve whose only year-round inhabitants are two wardens of Madeira's Natural Park. Over the years the Portuguese authorities have seized some Spanish fishing boats around the area for illegal fishing.