British Ambassador to Spain: 'If you look at the world we're in, countries like UK and Spain have to get closer together'

Alex Ellis has been British Ambassador to Spain now for just over a year and from his enthusiastic tone in this telephone interview it appears that the novelty has not yet worn off.

However, as he goes on to sum up his first 12 months in the job, this satisfaction appears more than justified.

"Firstly, it's a wonderful place to live; I'm no different to anyone else in really enjoying living in Spain for lots of different reasons," says the 58-year-old diplomat. That, however, is where the similarities with your average Brit in Spain end.

"Secondly, it has been a good year for trying to achieve our main aim," he explains, adding that this was none other than "to bring the political strategic relationship closer to the human and economic relationship" between the UK and Spain.

The agreement in June with the EU on the post-Brexit relationship with Gibraltar and Pedro Sánchez standing on the doorstep of 10 Downing Street with Keir Starmer last month are proof of the achievement.

The effects of Brexit are still piling up though, as British travellers to Spain will find out over the next few months with the new EES Entry/Exit System for non-EU nationals that is being gradually brought in at air and sea borders from this 12 October.

The ambassador stresses a message the British consulates have been repeating for months: "It's really important that every eligible British resident in Spain gets a TIE," he says, to be able to be recognised as resident by the new system.

While some borders may potentially get more complicated, others are due to get simpler, or in fact disappear. The ambassador speaks of the Gibraltar agreement, which involves the removal of all checks and controls at the border, as one of the major achievements of the year. That much-published image of the four-way handshake between Lammy, Šefčovič, Albares and Picardo was in June. How much longer will we have to wait for this to be implemented?

"Behind every ministerial handshake is a vast amount of work. Now you've got to turn that agreement into legal text, then you've got to publish it, then you've got to sign it, then you've got to ratify it and ratification is done by the UK and the EU. And then you've got to implement it. This implies quite a significant change on the frontier between Gibraltar and Spain, where you would remove much of the infrastructure and you would have controls within the airport," explains the ambassador. "What there is, I think, is a very strong desire, on both the UK and the Spanish sides and also the Gibraltar side to get on with this and to move as quickly as we can."

So are we talking about weeks or months?

"I hope that the text, the legal text, will be completed in the coming weeks. But that requires publication, signature and ratification. Ratification is a standard procedure in the UK, which is 21 working days, if I remember rightly. It's maybe a bit longer in the EU. So it'll take a bit of time."

"This was a painstaking negotiation which lasted more than three years," he adds. "So people are really keen to get on with turning it into reality."

With the Gibraltar agreement signed in June, this paved the way for another of the ambassador's highlights of the year: the visit of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to his UK counterpart, Keir Starmer.

"It's again a product of a lot of work by a lot of people," he explains. "It's been too long since the last proper meeting between the two prime ministers.

"If you look at the world we're in, what's going on with Russia, the rise of China, the different kind of administration in the US, I think countries like the UK and Spain have to get closer together.

"In a way we have this great human relationship. We have this great economic relationship. We're amongst the biggest investors in each other's countries. But we didn't have that political relationship. And so I'm very pleased we have that now and we also have a framework which sits underneath it to guide our work."

The UK, in effect, is resetting its relationship with Spain, indicates the ambassador, just as the UK-EU reset was launched in May this year.

Defence is also an area where the two countries are working together, the ambassador explains.

"We just had a Spanish frigate, which has been part of the carrier group that has been going out to the Indo-Pacific.

"We have the defence investment by [Spanish shipbuilders] Navantia in buying Harland & Wolff, the British shipyard, to help it deliver on its contract for building three new ships for the British navy. We've just had the head of our armed forces out in Spain," says Ellis, adding that he expects defence collaboration to "grow a lot more in the next few years".

Being British ambassador to Spain has a side to it that not all diplomatic heads around the world have. Spain, especially areas like the Costa del Sol, has a huge, well-established British population. Does that make an ambassador's job easier?

"It makes it both easier and harder at the same time. It makes it more fun and more interesting.

"You have very long-established communities and some amazing people who we've tried to recognise, for example, through the awards that we give."

The ambassador lists some of the sources of information and help available to British residents in Spain: the Living in Spain website, which is part of gov.uk; Support in Spain; Age Concern; Adintre; the Royal British Legion...

"There are lots of Brits all around the world and I think more in Spain than any other European country," he says, flagging up the "excellent consulate in Malaga".

"And obviously, occasionally there's some folk who you probably don't want to have around, so we have excellent police cooperation as well and that stretches all over Spain," adds the ambassador.