Almost 30 years after losing a war over the Falkland Islands, Argentina is once again warning Britain that it still wants back what it calls the Malvinas.

Argentina is now angry over a British company's oil exploration off the windswept islands in what it considers its own South Atlantic backyard.

Although nominally democratic, the unpopular Kirchner government in Buenos Aires has claimed that the sparsely settled islands are a symbolic matter of Spanish-speaking pride throughout Latin America -- and is theirs because the islands once belonged to Spain in the 19th century.