SPAIN and Gibraltar put on a rare display of unity yesterday in condemning the unscheduled arrival of an ailing Royal Navy nuclear submarine at the disputed British colony.

Peter Caruana, Gibraltar’s First Minister, claimed that he had been misinformed over the extent of the repairs required by HMS Sceptre, which limped into port on Thursday and is expected to remain in Gibraltar for at least a week.

Mr Caruana also complained that he had been informed of the true extent of the submarine’s mechanical problems from Spanish sources and not by London.

While the administration in Gibraltar was told by Ministry of Defence officials that the repairs were all external, with work required on the sub’s casing, fin and periscope, Mr Caruana said that he learnt later that the British Government had told Spain about a damaged cooling system.

The Government claims that repairs concern only the submarine’s diesel turbo generator. “There is no question of a nuclear repair being carried out,” a spokesman at the British Embassy in Madrid said.

The spat revived memories of a dispute in 2000, when another British nuclear submarine, HMS Tireless, docked in Gibraltar for nearly a year to undergo repairs for a leak in the cooling system of its nuclear reactor.

Spain, which possesses no nuclear submarines, objects to Britain using naval facilities in Gibraltar to repair its nuclear-powered submarines.

Yesterday Miguel Moratinos, the Spanish Foreign Minister, demanded assurances from London that HMS Sceptre would leave Gibraltar as soon as possible. Stephen Wright, the British Ambassador in Madrid, was called in by the Spanish Foreign Ministry to receive a “firm protest”, Señor Moratinos said.

He said that he had also spoken to Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, who gave assurances that the submarine would remain in Gibraltar for no more than a week.

The incident has caused embarrassment to the Socialist Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Prime Minister, whose members protested fiercely over Britain’s nuclear submarines when they were the Opposition. When HMS Tireless docked in Gibraltar, the Socialists accused the conservative Popular Party Government of José María Aznar of “incompetence” and of endangering the lives of those living in the area.

Yesterday the Popular Party did not miss the opportunity to throw the accusation back at the Socialists, claiming that the Government had tried to smother the news of HMS Sceptre’s problems, while insinuating that it was all a consequence of the new, softer Spanish policy direction on Gibraltar, to which it is opposed.

Señor Zapatero has tried to woo Gibraltarians into a new relationship by according them equal status in talks on the colony’s future. The new diplomatic departure will bear its first fruit next week with a high-ranking ministerial meeting between the three governments in the Spanish port of Málaga.

Britain has held Gibraltar since 1704, when a combined Anglo-Dutch fleet captured it from Spain, which then ceded the Rock in perpetuity under the terms of the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht. Ever since it has been fighting for its return to “the national territory”.

Gibraltar’s 30,000 inhabitants are in favour of remaining British. In a referendum in 2002 they overwhelmingly rejected a British-Spanish plan to share sovereignty over the colony. Mr Wright was summoned repeatedly by the Spanish Foreign Ministry last year, during the tercentenary year of British rule in Gibraltar, to receive censures for perceived slights to Spanish sensibilities.

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