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Spain’s PM Says Gibraltar Border Removal Closes ‘open Wound’
AFP – news@thelocal.es
Published: 15 Jul, 2026 CET. Updated: Wed 15 Jul 2026 14:23 CET
The lifting of border controls between Spain and Gibraltar has closed “an open wound”, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said Wednesday as an agreement allowing free movement across the frontier came into force.
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Tuesday, June 23. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio lands in Abu Dhabi with a clear message: the Strait of Hormuz, he says, is an “international waterway” and, as such, “no country is allowed to charge tolls or fees” there. “That’s existing international law. That’s the way it is in international waterways all over the world, and that’s the way we expect it’ll be here.” His words were directed at several addressees: the United Arab Emirates, the friendly country he is visiting, and the other hydrocarbon exporters of the Persian Gulf, which should be able to export without hindrance. And, of course, Iran, which — in his words — will not be able to cash in on the ships transiting the crucial artery for the transport of oil, gas, and their derivatives.
Monday, July 13. All the hopes raised by the ceasefire agreement evaporate. Donald Trump has just notified Congress that his country is back at war, and his rhetoric on Hormuz takes a radical turn: “The U.S.A… will be reimbursed, at the rate of 20% on all cargo shipped, for any and all costs necessary to do the job of providing safety and security to this very volatile section of the World.” Shortly before, in an interview with Fox News, his favored network, he had called the U.S. the “guardian angel” of the strait.
Tuesday, July 14. As the clock ticks down toward the entry into force of a new U.S. blockade of Hormuz, effective only for Iranian ships, Trump doubles down… and then retreats in his own way: “I have decided to replace the 20% United States Reimbursement Fee with Trade and Investment Deals that the various Gulf States will be making into the United States,” he wrote on his social network, Truth, only to say later at a White House appearance that he does not believe “anyone should be able to charge a fee for the use of the strait.”
The damage, however, has already been done.
Despite how far-fetched the idea is — and despite the fact that the Republican magnate has made a habit of not keeping his word, his promises, or his threats — an administration source had assured on Monday that Trump’s position on this point was “very serious.” “This is what he’s always wanted to do, but people tried to talk him out of it. To him, this was his instinctual decision always, and he’s sort of just come back around to it,” the source told the news site Semafor.
Among those who publicly opposed that “instinctual decision” were Rubio, the vice president of the United States, J. D. Vance, and the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth. A review of the archive turns up several statements against the idea of charging a toll… when it was supposed to come from Tehran.
Iran — which has been discussing the matter with its neighbor Oman for weeks — has repeatedly tabled an option that this Monday changed sides. It is Trump —who, together with Benjamin Netanyahu, launched the war that led to the closure of Hormuz — who now sees a possibility to charge for transiting those waters.
On either side, the mere idea wipes out any hint of security in an area critical to the global economy. It lends legitimacy to tolls that have “no legal basis,” as the International Maritime Organization (IMO, part of the United Nations) pointed out on Tuesday, but which increasingly seem closer to reality.
With this U-turn, yet another by Trump, the Republican also hands his opponents a powerful argument: Tehran can only see its proposal to charge for crossing Hormuz vindicated. “The president of the United States is completely right. Whoever guarantees the safe passage of merchant ships through the strait must be compensated for this service,” Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, wrote after the Republican’s proposal. He added his own interpretation immediately after: “Iran has always been the guardian of the strait and will remain so forever. Twenty percent is, of course, excessive. We will be fair.”
Trump’s outburst and subsequent backtrack in fact bring Iran and Oman even closer. This Monday, hours after listening to the White House, Omani authorities reaffirmed that their “priority” remained reaching an agreement “with Iran to guarantee freedom of navigation.” Even countries that initially wavered between the two contenders seem to be drifting further from Washington. No Middle Eastern capital was consulted by the Trump administration before it launched its proposal, according to reports by the Qatari outlet Al Jazeera and the U.S. site Axios.
From Trump’s Truth post on Tuesday, it is also unclear whether the “Trade and Investment Deals that the various Gulf States will be making into the United States,” announced ostensibly to mask his latest reeling in of threats and, according to Washington analysts, to avoid their unwanted effect on gasoline prices in an election year, are new pacts. Or whether the Republican was simply referring to deals sealed after his visit to the region last year, from which he returned with, among other gifts for him and his family, a plane donated by Qatar that the president hopes to use as Air Force One and that has already raised initial security concerns.
The Schrödinger strait
In recent days Hormuz has again been the Schrödinger strait: open according to the United States, closed according to Iran. On the ground, the reality is much more nuanced: some ships are still crossing, yes, but in dribs and drabs compared both with prewar transit volumes and with the weeks immediately after the memorandum of understanding was signed. Those who dare do so under cover, with their transponders switched off, to go as unnoticed as possible and avoid being attacked.
Transits have collapsed especially on the southern route, a lane that runs in Omani waters and which, on paper, is under the protection of the U.S. Navy. That, according to the specialist outlet Lloyd’s List, indicates that “shipowners’ confidence in that protection is eroding.”
In the last week alone, at least seven vessels have been attacked by Iran, mostly large tankers linked to Emirati, Saudi, and Qatari hydrocarbon companies that participate in a scheme in which these vessels, escorted by U.S. warships or monitored by aircraft, assume the risk of transiting Hormuz to then transfer their cargo to smaller ships off the port of Fujairah (United Arab Emirates).
“It is unlikely that ships will steam ahead full speed to assume the same risks while also paying a high tax,” warns Paul Donovan, chief economist at Swiss investment bank UBS, in an analysis published on Tuesday. “A 20% fee would be about 15 times higher than the levy Iran had considered and, as a proportional tax, would amplify fluctuations in the price of oil,” he notes.
The Baltic and International Maritime Council (Bimco), the largest shipowners’ association by membership, estimates that supertankers — which carry between one and two million barrels of crude — would have to pay about $27 million per voyage, while container ships would owe between $65 million and $260 million, depending on their cargo capacity. “While some cargo owners and operators might decide to absorb these additional costs, in most cases this expense will be passed along the supply chain and reflected in higher costs for consumers,” the analysis sent to this newspaper explains.
The shipping industry, which had already opposed the possibility of an Iranian fee or toll, is furious at Trump’s notion. “Charging tolls for passage through international waters would be fundamentally wrong,” Hapag-Lloyd told EL PAÍS in a comment sent by email. “Tolls for infrastructures like the Suez or Panama canals are different because they reflect significant investments in infrastructure. That is not the case in Hormuz.”
The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the foundational text for governing global relations in this key area, prohibits imposing “tolls” in exchange for the passage of merchant ships through natural straits, although some, like the Turkish straits, do levy pilotage fees due to their greater navigational difficulty (the Bosphorus has a minimum width of 700 meters compared with Hormuz’s 30 kilometers).
Even harsher was Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who compared Trump to privateers: “He says he will clear the strait, but for every ship the oil owner must pay him 20%. This used to be called piracy. An important country like the U.S., which long fought against piracy, cannot now become a pirate.”
Price increases
Joining the toll proposal was the decision to reimpose the U.S. blockade in the Gulf of Oman to prevent trade to and from Iranian ports, a move that also raises tensions in the area and which, according to Jakob Larsen, Bimco’s head of security, will lead Iran to “increase its threats” against maritime traffic. Trump’s proposal, which raises transport costs and represents an “additional disincentive” for transiting the strait, would only make sense if it contributed to a “significant reduction of the Iranian threat,” something Larsen says “is unclear how it is intended to be achieved.” For that reason, he believes all this entails “a grave risk of escalation” in Hormuz which, combined with the restriction of Iranian crude exports that the U.S. naval blockade seeks, “will put further upward pressure on oil prices.”
The fragile peace promised by the June agreement “has come to an end,” declare Gregory Brew, Clayton Allen, and Firas Maksad of the risk consultancy Eurasia Group. It has happened, moreover, more than a month earlier than planned: the original agreement had been a cessation of hostilities until August 17, with Hormuz open throughout that period and the world finally getting a breather after the sequence of convulsions. “Although for now it is unlikely that the U.S. will resume large-scale bombings against Iran similar to those in the March war, the volume transported through the strait will fall from between 30% and 50% [of prewar levels, in recent weeks] to between 5% and 15% until both sides reduce tensions.” In plain terms: oil, gas, and fertilizers will be more expensive, until further notice.
Bridges and power plants
“Next week it gets really bad for them,” Trump declared. “We’re going to knock out all their power plants. We’re going to knock out all their bridges unless they get to the table and negotiate,” he added, repeating earlier threats that were at the time condemned by UN officials.
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Driving on Atlixcáyotl Avenue, Puebla’s main thoroughfare, became a risky activity. There, from time to time, Rafael Zabalza, a 65-year-old Spanish pharmacist, would appear in a pickup truck and fire indiscriminately at drivers. Over three months he attacked at least 11 motorists and one motorcyclist at various points in Angelópolis, the city’s most exclusive neighborhood, spreading a sense of terror among Puebla residents. In the early hours of Tuesday the prosecutor’s office identified him and located him, and he greeted officers with gunfire at one of his properties. He was arrested along with an arsenal.
According to the prosecutor’s office, Zabalza left his home in the Santa Fe area armed, got into a white GMC Denali pickup with no license plates and drove to different points along Atlixcáyotl Avenue to attack drivers. The assaults occurred at different times and on different stretches of the avenue, with no pattern, which hampered the investigation for weeks. The first attacks took place in April, but for several weeks the victims did not file formal complaints and the prosecutor’s office learned about them through social media, where videos circulated showing cars with bullet holes. Residents of Puebla began warning about a suspected sniper and fear spread rapidly.
José Luis Hernández González, metropolitan investigations prosecutor, explained that it was not until June that a young man injured by a firearm came forward to file a complaint. Since then 10 investigative files have been opened: one for attempted homicide and the rest for damage to others’ property and dangerous attacks. Two more people did not file complaints. “We thought they were isolated incidents, but when we reconstructed the events and carried out technical and scientific investigations, we noticed coincidences,” Hernández said during the case presentation on Tuesday.
Using the case information the prosecutor’s office mapped a criminal polygon where they reviewed private cameras and the C5 surveillance system. Among the tools used was El Faro, a three-dimensional technology that allowed them to trace bullet trajectories and calculate shooting distances. Some victims also managed to identify the alleged attacker. State Attorney General Idamis Pastor and state Secretary of Public Security Francisco Sánchez González said the identification of the businessman was made possible “thanks to the analysis of behavioral patterns and the tracking of a plateless pickup that appeared repeatedly in the different attacks.” Sánchez acknowledged it “was a tough, complicated task” because anonymity and surprise were key, since the person “had no defined pattern, no fixed stretch or schedule.” Authorities say the attacks “caused terror and panic” among the population. “Thank God we only have one injured person,” Sánchez said.
A pickup with no plates and an arsenal
Shortly after 4.00 a.m. on Tuesday, agents went to the first of two homes they were able to link to Zabalza. They knocked on the door and he fired on the police and a patrol car, “endangering the integrity of public servants,” the statement says. However, he was detained and the prosecutor’s office has added that attack to his file for aggravated attempted homicide and damage to others’ property. In that first raid authorities seized a semiautomatic handgun, a rifle, a shotgun, live ammunition and the white GMC Denali pickup with no license plates that he used to shoot at his victims.
At a second property in the Anzures neighborhood they found two .22-caliber firearms, 536 .22-caliber live rounds, 23 9mm live rounds, computers, tablets and nearly 800,000 pesos in cash. Some of those weapons allegedly had permits and registration, while others were for exclusive military use. Attorney General Pastor described the investigation as “surgical” and rejected criticism from citizens who had questioned the prosecutor’s office for months.
Although the prosecutor’s office has not commented on it, on social media citizens have recalled similar events that have taken place in the same area since the summer of 2023. They mention the cases of two men — one riding a motorcycle and another on a bicycle — who were shot in the chest and arm. Months later, in November, two truck drivers also died in that sector of Angelópolis. Local press then documented that one died after being shot in the chest and the other died days later from a stray bullet. At the time the prosecutor’s office said it would try to trace the bullets, although no arrests were made.
💥🚨 Operativo en Santa Fe termina con la captura del presunto “tirador de la Atlixcáyotl”
Aseguraron a Rafael N. luego de un despliegue policiaco en La Vista Country Club. El detenido habría intentado repeler la acción disparando contra los elementos de seguridad. pic.twitter.com/6qVl1NOsxl
— Todo Puebla (@TodoPuebla) July 14, 2026
After the arrest, a prior interview with Zabalza circulated on social media in which he promoted a domino tournament. “It’s a way to make friends, to foster camaraderie, to transmit values and principles like camaraderie, loyalty, and fair play,” he said in the recording.
Rafael Zabalza was identified as a businessman in the pharmaceutical sector, originally from Spain, with no criminal record. He has also been linked to the civil association ITEBIO, where he allegedly signed an agreement with a university to develop academic and technological projects.
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