They have also been complicated by the fact that the United Kingdom and Spain were both imperial powers, often after the same land, an occurrence which is being played out to this day with the disputed ownership and status of Gibraltar.

However, the struggle of Elizabeth I of England against Philip II of Spain in the sixteenth century led to renewed English support of the Portuguese independence movement that started in 1640 with the crowning of King João IV of Portugal.

During the 16th century (1500–1599) there were complex political, commercial, and cultural connections that linked the large powerful Spanish Empire under the Habsburgs with a small but ambitious England.

[4] However neither side wanted war, so in 1573 at the Convention of Nymegen England promised to end support for raids on Spanish shipping by English privateers such as Francis Drake and John Hawkins.

Elizabeth once again authorized Francis Drake to disrupt Spanish shipping - he sacked Santo Domingo and Cartagena, which became the opening salvo of the Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604).

Further disruption then took place at Cadiz in 1587; Drake singed the King of Spain’s beard and over 100 Spanish ships were destroyed, delaying the launch of the Armada by a year.

The plan was for the Spanish Armada to sail up the English Channel in a crescent formation to clear a path for the entry of army troops stationed in the Netherlands.

The ships of the Armada cut their cables thus losing their anchors and scattered throughout the Channel breaking the crescent formation the fleet needed to maintain until troops arrived from the Netherlands.

At the same time another Spanish attempt took place hoping to intercept the returning English fleet as well as invade the West of the British isles but this failed due to storms and bad luck.

Peace between England and Spain was finally signed in 1604 when King James I, son of Mary, Queen of Scots, succeeded the childless Elizabeth to the throne.

In addition tensions in the Caribbean centred on England's hold of Jamaica - privateers, notably Henry Morgan led devastating raids on the Spanish Main.

As aftermath of this war, that featured both an international dimension and a domestic civil conflict, the Bourbons held the Crown while Spain lost Menorca and Gibraltar to the British.

Things came to a head when news of an illegal trader, Captain Robert Jenkins, had his ear cut off as a punishment in 1731 which later caused outrage in Britain when he testified at a hearing in the house of commons seven years later.

[16] For eight years, these privateers infested North Carolina's waters, captured merchant vessels, ravaged the coast, plundered towns, and levied tribute on the inhabitants almost at will.

The Seven Years' War lasted between 1756–1763, arraying Prussia, Great Britain and Hanover (with the British king as its prince-elector) against Austria, France, Russia, Sweden, and most smaller German states.

Unlike their French allies (for whom the war proved largely to be a disaster, financially and militarily) the Spanish made a number of territorial gains, recovering Florida and Menorca.

The outcome was a victory for mercantile interests of Britain[20] and opened the way to British expansion in the Pacific,[21][22] whilst in turn it was an international humiliation for Spain.

British attempts to capture parts of the Spanish colonial empire were unsuccessful and included failures at Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Puerto Rico, and the Canary Islands.

The unsuccessful attempts after September 1868 to find a successor to Queen Isabella who would satisfy the French, Germans, Portuguese, Austrians, Italians, and Spanish kept British diplomats busy with peacemaking moves in many capitals.

[27] After the Spanish disaster of 1898 in the Spanish–American War, the relations deteriorated: the British press included Spain within the group of decaying nations the Lord Salisbury hinted in a May 1898 speech.

[30] Accordingly, the British Cabinet adopted a policy of benevolent neutrality towards the military insurgents, with the covert aim of avoiding any direct or indirect help to the Popular Front Government.

[36] Wars between the British and the Spanish include: In the present day, Spain and the United Kingdom maintain civil relations, both being members of NATO, and the OECD.

Captured by Dutch and British troops in 1704, king Philip V of Spain transferred the territory to Great Britain in 1713 under the terms of Article X of the Treaty of Utrecht.

[37] On the other hand, Gibraltar's authorities consider Gibraltarian people the legitimate inhabitants of the territory, and therefore entitled to the self-determination right in compliance of the same United Nations' resolutions.

Gibraltar's 2006 Constitution Order endorsed and approved by Her Majesty's Government states: In 2008, the UN 4th Committee rejected the claim that a dispute over sovereignty affected self-determination, which was a basic human right.

[48] In December 2008, the European Commission approved a Spanish request designating most of the waters around Gibraltar as one of Spain's protected nature sites under EU law.

[56] Many such incidents occur, with a more recent event being the arresting of Gibraltarian fisherman inside the waters of Gibraltar, confiscation of equipment and transfer of the individuals to Spain.

Due to fishing's importance to some of the regional economies of Spain, the Spanish government protested vehemently, but had no power to prevent the UK determining its own domestic policies.

In November 2013 the Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy had stated that an independent Scotland would have to reapply for membership of the European Union, causing considerable irritation to the Scottish Government.

[65] Rajoy was one of the few European heads of government to explicitly voice opposition to Scottish independence, primarily due to his fears that it would encourage the separatist drive in Catalonia.