Cancelling the UK’s membership in the European Union has proved far more difficult than was expected by the majority of Britons who voted for Brexit in June 2016. The then-new Prime Minister Theresa May added what could prove to be a catastrophic complication by calling a snap election a year later. Designed to consolidate her Conservative Party’s hold on power, it actually saw her lose her absolute majority and be forced into coalition with Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionists.

The 27 member states who will remain have not made the UK’s departure negotiations in the least bit easy. The EU commission in Brussels understandably takes the view that London must be penalized for quitting. This does not simply involve a bill of around $65 billion ostensibly to honor financial commitments entered into for ongoing EU-wide projects. It also comprises what look to be harsh political terms and what are likely to be tough trading rules, which will only start to be negotiated when the UK has ceased to be an EU member next March.

Brussels simply has to play its cards this way. The EU is already beleaguered with other disputes that could endanger its existence. Italy is in open defiance with its budget which busts EU financial rules. Hungary and Poland are challenging the EU courts and the rights of Brussels to dictate their political behavior. Moreover, nationalist and often racist and Islamophobic parties are strengthening their electoral appeal, not least in France and Germany, by pushing back against centralizing control from Brussels and even against the EU itself.

In the face of this existential threat, Brussels has played hardball with London and, with Premier May and her party in disarray, appears to be winning, by forcing through a series of compromises. These may well keep the UK to a significant degree within the EU’s orbit but without its former power as a member, to influence these links. Thus one German politician wondered at the weekend if, upon reflection, the British might decide to abandon Brexit completely and stay in the EU.

Spain has now sought to pile the pressure on London by once again raising the issue of Gibraltar, the rocky promontory ceded to the British over 300 years ago. Premier Pedro Sanchez has warned the status of Gibraltar cannot be included in the UK’s secession agreement with Brussels, or he will reject the whole Brexit deal. Madrid wants direct talks with London on Gibraltar. It may even be thinking of making its Brexit acceptance conditional on a talks framework that envisages the return of Gibraltar to Spanish rule at a fixed date, albeit in the distant future.

Spain’s claim to a piece of land that is so obviously its territory has considerable merit, even if the Gibraltarians have voted to stay British. With the UK and Spain both in the EU, the border which Spain blockaded for 18 years till 1985, the year before it joined the EU, seemed irrelevant. But Madrid understandably feels that Brexit ends this 33-year accommodation. Unfortunately, it also has its own territorial circle to square. The Spanish government could clearly reinforce its moral and political claim to Gibraltar by returning to Morocco the sovereignty of its own two North African enclaves, Ceuta and Melilla, which Spain has occupied since 1668 and 1497 respectively and has refused to give up.