LONDON: Gibraltar’s leader on Monday cast EU Council President Donald Tusk as a “cuckolded husband taking it out on the kids” for explicitly proposing that Spain be given a veto over the ties between the British enclave and the European Union after Brexit.

The future of Gibraltar, a British Overseas Territory of just over 2-square miles (6.7 sq km) of rock on Spain’s southern tip, has become the first big dispute of Brexit since Prime Minister Theresa May filed formal divorce papers on March 29.

In the EU’s draft position on the exit talks distributed by Tusk, Gibraltar was given explicit mention. Spain was specifically named as having a veto on the application of any future EU trade deal with Britain.

“Mr Tusk, who has been given to using the analogies of the divorce and divorce petition, is behaving like a cuckolded husband who is taking it out on the children,” Gibraltar’s chief minister, Fabian Picardo, told Reuters in an interview.

“This is clear Spanish bullying.”

Picardo said the EU should remove the reference to Gibraltar, which voted overwhelmingly to stay in the EU, from the draft guidelines.

While years of tortuous negotiations await on issues that could affect trillions of dollars in trade, the Brexit debate in Britain has for three days focused on the future of the “Rock”.—Reuters