MADRID – Spain’s Foreign Ministry called in Britain’s ambassador to demand explanations after crew members on a British patrol boat in Gibraltar waters were discovered using what appeared to be a Spanish flag for target practice.

Senior diplomat Luis Felipe Fernandez de la Peña met with Ambassador Giles Paxman to present a protest about Tuesday’s events, the Foreign Ministry said in a communique.

The incident, reported Friday in the Madrid daily El Mundo, occurred at some 7 miles from the southern tip of Gibraltar, a British colony.

A Spanish coastal patrol boat discovered a British Royal Navy vessel picking up a buoy with the Spanish flag that had been used for target practice.

But Ambassador Paxman said that the target shot at was a buoy with a yellow and red navy emblem, which despite the similarity, did not represent a Spanish flag,” according to a Foreign Ministry statement.

The British envoy offered his excuses “for the error in judgement and the lack of sensitivity shown.”

He also promised that an “in-depth” investigation would be opened, those responsible would be identified and opportune measures would be taken so that such an incident never happens again.

Spain’s foreign minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos, said that all was now “perfectly clear” since it was a “buoy with the colors of the national flag, but it wasn’t the flag.”

Gibraltar is a territory of 5.5 square kilometers (2.1 square miles) on the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula at the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea. It has been held by Britain since 1704 and became a British Crown Colony in 1713.

The Rock currently has some 30,000 residents, who overwhelmingly rejected a 2002 proposal for Britain to share sovereignty over the territory with Spain.

Spain ceded Gibraltar to Britain under the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, but Madrid continues to press its claim to sovereignty over the Rock, Europe’s last colony. EFE