Gibraltar: The tiny British outpost pushed into the spotlight once more by Brexit dispute with Spain

Workers crossing the runway, with the Rock of Gibraltar in the background.
14,000 workers cross the frontier, walking across the airport runway, every day Credit: David Rose

“In the next room, you can smell the history”, says Luis Garcia, standing in a bunker beneath thirteen-hundred-feet of the hulking limestone Rock of Gibraltar. Behind him sits an oak desk, 1940s telephone and a vast map of the strait of Gibraltar on the wall. It was from here, in 1942, that General Dwight D. Eisenhower commanded the allied invasion of French North Africa.

In that next room, a former Cold War naval command centre reeking of damp, threat level indicators still loom high above – “BIKINI ALERT STATE RED”, “NATO ALERT STATE DELTA”.

The tiny slice of British territory – just 2.6 square miles in area and home to around 32,000 people – finds itself, once again, in the crosshairs of Madrid and at the centre of the Brexit story. Its vastly larger neighbour able to throw its weight around precisely because Gibraltar is leaving the EU, which had for decades kept Spain in check.

In response, Gibraltarians are falling back on their unique history, punctuated by siege and long-bouts of isolation and the looming presence of its neighbour, for reassurance. 

Mr Garcia, who manages a server farm in the tunnels, recalls how he was able only to leave Gibraltar “maybe three or four times” in his childhood thanks to the sealing of the border by General Franco in the late sixties.

It’s not surprising then, that a siege mentality pervades in “Gib” and it stems from that past, much of which can be traced through the tunnels which lace the Rock. Begun to resist the Great Siege of 1779-83, they reached their peak during the Second World War, when most of the civilian population was evacuated. It took some a decade to return, and the event is marked indelibly on the public memory.

This subterranean world also exemplifies Gibraltar’s economic transformation from dusty garrison town, to modern financial centre. The server farm which Mr Garcia manages is contained within the facility General Eisenhower once inhabited and helps make possible the territory’s existence as a hub for online gaming firms.

A typically British shop in Gibraltar
A typically British shop in Gibraltar Credit: David Rose

Yet Brexit and the opportunity it creates for Spanish intransigence threatens that transformation. 

While Northern Ireland, the EU’s other new external border, is 300 miles in length, the “frontier”, as it’s known locally, between Gibraltar and Spain is a mere three-quarters of a mile long and consists of a single official crossing.

Once Franco sealed it in 1969 it didn’t reopen until 1985. That meant those, such as Mr Garcia, wanting to visit relatives across the border in La Linea had to embark on a 12-hour odyssey involving a ferry to Morocco, then another back to Spain before a final bus to La Linea.

As Daniel Ghio, another local who works in server farms points out: “Spain strengthened the Gibraltarian identity by closing the frontier”. 

But in the past three decades, with the EU acting as a diplomatic buffer and an arbiter between Madrid and Gibraltar, the economic relationship has flourished, even if the old political antagonisms remain. 

Gibraltar is unique among the British Overseas Territories in having joined the EU alongside the UK. Inside the single market, it has flourished as a centre for insurance as well as online gaming. That newfound wealth, combined with freedom of movement, has seen it become the economic anchor for the surrounding Spanish region.

Every morning, approximately 14,000 frontier workers cross into the territory from Spain, mostly on foot. Some were driven out of Gibraltar by high property prices. A majority are escaping the crushing 30 per cent unemployment in Campo de Gibraltar.

The young are all too aware of how dependent Gibraltar has become on these workers, explains Mr Ghio. “We know that the local economy would explode if the frontier closed” he says, adding that his generation are not as “hardcore” as their elders for whom the siege mentality remains central.

Pedro, a middle-aged labourer enjoying a coffee break on Main Street, would seem to confirm that. He told The Telegraph “I hope they do close the frontier, I’ll lay the first brick myself!”

The modern, glass terminal building abuts a barbed wire and chain link fence
The airport halts abruptly, where Spain was meant to build an entrance Credit: David Rose

Nowhere is the capricious nature of that relationship more visible than at the airport. Gibraltar’s airbridge to the world is by far the most contentious element of the relationship with Madrid. The territory is locked out of EU aviation laws by Spain, and so flights only head to Britain and Morocco.

Yet in 2006 the two sides agreed that if Gibraltar built a new terminal, Madrid would provide an entrance from the Spanish side of the frontier. Instead, the £87m building ends abruptly at the border and looks out over an empty wasteland. Capable of being a significant regional hub, it handles only five commercial aircraft on a busy day.

It would be no surprise then if the locals were rather worried about Brexit. They know what membership has meant for them and voted accordingly: 96 per cent Remain. “Uncertainty” is frequently the reply when asking about it. But older certainties remain. “We’ve always survived everything,” says Pedro. 

Even less gung-ho residents are optimistic. “We’ll be better off… [because] we are small enough and legally nimble enough to adapt to any change” says Mr Garcia. That’s a sentiment shared by Bruno Callaghan, who runs an insurance broker in the territory. Having been deeply concerned on the day of the referendum result he says: “Today I’m not in any way, shape or form worried,” he says, explaining that there’s a lot of business that Gibraltar attracts “by virtue of being fleet of foot and being able to do things quickly yet adhering to best practice”.

Chief Minister Fabian Picardo
Chief Minister Fabian Picardo Credit: David Rose

Nowhere is that optimism more present than with Fabian Picardo, the territory’s Chief Minister. Although he is adamant that Brexit was a “historic mistake”, Mr Picardo tells The Telegraph that in the 25 years of the single market, Gibraltar has “barely made any inroads” into the European economy and that the path the UK and Gibraltar “share is very clearly in the Anglosphere.” In fact, Mr Picardo points out that attitudes to the EU here have hardened: “if there were a referendum today, the European Union have managed to p*ss off enough Gibraltarians that they wouldn’t get anywhere near 96 per cent of the vote”.

Yet Gibraltar is far from out of the woods. While the new, less jingoistic government in Madrid hasn’t kicked up too much of a fuss over Gibraltar in the Withdrawal Agreement negotiations, yesterday’s complaints in Brussels are a salient reminder that everything is still to play for in the future relationship, and the threat of no deal remains potent. The Gibraltarians may yet have to add another chapter to their story of siege.

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