In a wide-ranging interview on the foreign policy of the UCD Government published in El País on 15 June 1980, Spain's Foreign Minister, Marcelino Oreja, announced that it was the intention of the Government to apply to join NATO some time in 1981. He made an explicit link with Gibraltar by indicating that the only conditions of Spain's application were guarantees that negotiations on Spain's membership of the EC would continue and that those on the transfer of the sovereignty of Gibraltar would be under way.

In fact negotiations on Gibraltar were not yet under way, although technical talks on practical matters such as setting up customs posts had started. But the start of negotiations on the text of the Lisbon Agreement had been delayed because Spain wanted reciprocal treatment of Spaniards in Gibraltar and Gibraltarians in Spain (referred to in Paragraph 3 of the Agreement) to begin at the same time as communications were restored, whereas as far as reciprocity was concerned Britain (and Gibraltar) put that in the context of the words ‘future cooperation’ in the text. The timetable, starting with the deadline of 1 June for negotiations to get under way, had fallen at the first hurdle.

The negotiations had still not started by the time that Sir Ian Gilmour, Commons Spokesman on Foreign Affairs, went to Madrid on 7 January 1981 for two days of talks with the new Spanish Foreign Minister, José Pedro Pérez-Llorca, on bilateral and international matters, including Gibraltar.