Two of Donald Trump’s keenest critics in Scotland have hoisted Mexican flags next to his Aberdeenshire golf course to show “solidarity” with the Mexican people during his visit later this week.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee flies into Scotland on Thursday to officially unveil his lavishly revamped hotel and championship golf course at Turnberry in Ayrshire. Trump says he has spent £200m ($293m) refurbishing the resort.

Trump will then fly north to Aberdeenshire on Saturday to visit the far smaller course he opened there in 2012, after winning a bitterly fought battle to bulldoze coastal dunes which were legally protected because of their ecological value and rarity.



Two of his neighbours, David Milne and Michael Forbes – the man Trump once branded a “disgrace” and his home a slum – have erected Mexican flags on their homes in plain view of Trump’s clubhouse and golf course.



“It’s just to show solidarity with the Mexican people,” Milne said, “and everyone else that Trump has derided, insulted and intimidated.”



Trump has infuriated Mexicans with his comments about immigrants and proposal to build a wall along the United States’ southern border.

In Scotland, meanwhile, he is in the midst of a planning battle with Aberdeenshire council over his decision to erect a 25-metre high flag pole without getting planning permission on the course.



Complete with “gold anodised ball” on its top, the flagpole now flies a huge saltire, which is nine metres higher than the clubhouse roof, and is very similar to the very large Scottish flag flying at Turnberry.



Michael Forbes beside the Mexican flag he erected alongside Donald Trump’s International Golf Links course, north of Aberdeen on the east coast of Scotland. Photograph: Michal Wachucik/AFP/Getty Images

The council gave him retrospective permission for an identical 25-metre high flagpole erected at the Victorian lodge on his Aberdeenshire estate because it was screened from view by high trees. But in April, it refused to grant him permission for the pole next to the clubhouse, which sits in open view, close to the coast. Trump is now appealing against that decision.



The council’s planning committee told Trump the flag “was overbearing and out of proportion in its setting”.



Milne and his wife Moira live in a former coastguard’s station on the highest point overlooking Trump’s course, which now has the Mexican flag fluttering alongside his Scottish saltire flag.







Forbes, who lives with his wife Sheila and mother Mary in a ramshackle old fishing station in the middle of Trump’s estate, has the Mexican tricolor flying from an area of land near his home known as “the bunker”, which was sold in small plots to protestors to prevent Trump from getting a compulsory purchase order, in clear view of the back end of the 18-hole course.

Milne said that Trump’s threat to build a wall along the US-Mexico border had special resonance in Aberdeenshire; Trump’s staff surrounded his home with a six-metre high earthen wall and then rows of trees, blocking his house from being seen from the course.



Susie and John Munro, who live in cottages beside the golf course car park, at the foot of the same hill which Milne’s house sits on, have complained about an earth wall or berm built by Trump’s staff which now entirely blocks their view across the old dunes and out to sea.

The Munros also have a Mexican flag but no flagpole, so plan to drape it from a window or wall when Trump arrives later this week.



“We want to draw the comparison between his claims that he’s going to build a wall next to Mexico and that fact that he did in fact put one around my property,” Milne said.

