Life on the Rock
It hits you as soon as you get off the plane. Gibraltar is Torquay, circa 1952, but with better weather. Much better weather. Gibraltar in February is more appealing than Torquay in June: it’s warm, sunny – the glare of the sun seeming to accentuate the whiteness of the looming rock – and the palm trees are swaying in a gentle breeze. Paradise – except for the mass paranoia, because beneath the relaxed facade, Gibraltar is having a collective nervous breakdown.
Take Brian Hardy, who drives the bus for the Rock Hotel, Gibraltar’s finest, which displays the signatures of a rich mix of celebrity guests on its lounge menu: Prince Andrew, Sean Connery, Errol Flynn, Jimmy Young (Jimmy is very big in Gib). Hardy is an undemonstrative man until you mention the Spanish question. Then I fear for the safety of the bus.
“This is the darkest time in the three centuries of British rule,” he says. “We’re being bullied by Spain and betrayed by Britain, a country we have been loyal to for almost 300 years. We are only 30,000 people and we stand quite alone. This is the ultimate siege – not a siege of war but of politics.”
Hardy is anxious because Britain is talking furiously to Spain about sharing sovereignty. Tony Blair has decided that he needs Spanish support in some Byzantine EU power play, and Gibraltar – this imperial relic at the foot of Spain – is the carrot. As a result, the locals are in a stew.
Hardy says he will use all legal means to block the joint Anglo-Spanish sovereignty deal likely to be announced in the summer. Others go further: one government official, who says he would lose his job if named, predicts violence if the wishes of Gibraltarians are ignored. “We are reasonable people,” he says, “but if you corner us that reason will disappear and we will react like any cornered animal. The only way out is attack and if I find myself in a situation where I see my fellow Gibraltarians fighting for what I know is ours, I will join them.” Life in Torquay may be about to become less sleepy.
Posters for Gibraltar in the UK emphasise the pleasures of an old-fashioned holiday, and the evidence on Main Street is that lots of middle-aged Brits are responding. It must be wonderfully nostalgic: crime is low, the uniformed schoolchildren courteous, and bobbies stroll around chatting to passers-by and posing for photographs. The only danger is that you may bump into one of the cannons on every street corner.
If Gibraltar is rooted in the 1950s, it’s a fair bet that it was happiest in the 1750s. It is the foundation of Britain’s maritime strength and draws its raison d’etre from its fortress status. The Battle of Trafalgar was fought 20 miles off the coast and Nelson’s rum-soaked body reputedly brought ashore here. He remains a vivid presence, commemorated by a dozen unappealing pubs and an imposing statue in the courtyard of the governor’s residence. The Trafalgar cemetery in the centre of town contains the graves of several British casualties of the battle, and wreaths of poppies adorn them. Memories in Gibraltar are long; tempers less so.
“The situation is terrible,” says Richard, a seventh-generation Gibraltarian, lecturing me over coffee in the Copacabana Cafe, which passes for cool in deeply unfashionable Gibraltar. “We are being given our baptism of fire in politics. Our view of Spain is different from that of the British. We speak the language and have imbibed their culture, and we see them as vindictive and still tainted by fascism. Joint sovereignty would be the thin end of the wedge, a step on the road to total takeover. We are like an unplanned baby: we never asked to come into the world but we’re here. The baby has been born; it is hungry; it is bawling; it is growing up. You can’t just kill it off and put in the wastepaper basket.”
Gibraltarians love flags. They hang from the windows of apartment blocks next to the washing: the Union Jack beside the red-brick fortress of the Gibraltar flag. To see a similar display of flag-waving, you would have to go to Belfast – another small, insular, neurotic society. Gibraltarians also love military memorabilia. The window of Benzaquen Antiques in Main Street is full of prints of famous naval battles, ornamental knives and miniature cannons. There is also a book whose title helped to explain the Gibraltarians’ psyche: The History of Gibraltar and an Account of the Fourteen Sieges of the Rock, by Captain Sayers. Fourteen and counting.
Spain has been the usual besieging power – the adjacent Spanish town, La Linea, means “the firing line” – but these days the locals feel they have a new enemy: the foreign office, a far more slippery opponent. A sharp young woman who specialises in “public diplomacy” has just arrived in Gibraltar – personally appointed by minister for Europe Peter Hain. The concept of public diplomacy is new to me but appears to mean selling the idea of joint sovereignty to the locals. In the last referendum on the issue, in 1967, they voted against a deal with Spain by 12,138 votes to 44. If she succeeds in persuading them to change their minds, she should be made an ambassador immediately.
I arrive in Gibraltar on the 50th anniversary of the Queen’s accession. The Queen is very popular here, probably just below Nelson in the pecking order. The governor, David Durie, is planting a tree in the garden of his official residence to mark the occasion. This is a great tradition in Gibraltar and almost every tree in the garden has a plaque marking the visit of a royal or the lifting of a siege. The oldest specimen is a flame tree from 1704, planted when Britain took Gibraltar from Spain. The locals, who are out in force today, love that tree.
The drinks party on the lawn following the tree-planting ceremony is fascinating for the tensions that simmer beneath the social niceties. “Britain once sent us soldiers; now they send us officials from the foreign office,” says Pepe Rosado, who used to run the tourist office and now conducts tours of the rock. The governor, too, is not above criticism, mainly because of his civil service background. “We used to get retired field marshals,” said opposition leader Joe Bossano, “military men who would stand up to the mandarins. Now they’ve sent us a mandarin!”
Bossano, head of the Socialist Labour party, was chief minister from 1988 to 96 and is implacably opposed to any deal with Spain – “that bloody place,” as he affectionately calls it. “No talks under duress and no concessions to Spain” is his mantra when I meet him in his spartan office near the quay the following day. A 62-year-old former trade union negotiator whose nicotine-stained moustache is just visible from behind a desk covered with 30 years’ correspondence, Bossano reveals an animosity to Spain that is endearing in its battiness.
“I don’t go to Spain for pleasure,” he says (bear in mind that the border is half a mile from his office). “I feel at home here and in the UK. Spain is a country with a different culture, different customs, a different way of life. That’s fine: I have nothing against them. I respect their way of life; I want them to respect mine. I would go to Spain if I was in a cold, northern climate and I wanted a holiday in the sun. But I don’t need to go to Spain for a holiday in the sun; I have the sun here.”
“Ideal,” I suggest. “Spanish sun and British customs.” “No, they have Gibraltarian sun,” he counters. “I am not even prepared to share the sovereignty of the sun with them.” His moustache shakes with laughter.
After the 1967 referendum and the declaration in 1969 of a new constitution for Gibraltar, Spain closed the border, and it only reopened in 1985, when Britain made it a condition for accepting Spanish entry into the EU. Paco Oliva, chief reporter on the Gibraltar Chronicle, recalls the period well. His grandmother lived in La Linea, a five-minute walk across the border from his parents’ house. When the border was closed, that journey took more than 12 hours: a boat to Tangier in Morocco, another boat to Algeciras in Spain and a bus to La Linea.
Oliva is a dove (or, as the bilingual Gibraltarians prefer, a paloma) on the subject of a deal – not an easy thing to be here. In 1967, the names of the 44 in favour of accommodating Spain leaked out; one politician had his yacht sunk; others felt obliged to leave. But Oliva believes Gibraltar must recognise that Spain, its mighty neighbour, exists and has rights. History must eventually give way to geography.
“We have to come to some form of beneficial deal with Spain,” he says. “We are in a completely new world, in a new Europe, and the way that sovereignty is viewed in Gibraltar is an obsolete concept – it belongs more to the days of Richard III than 21st-century Europe. We have monetary union and European federalism, and we should get into the fast track of this new Europe. That would be a good way of decolonising Gibraltar.”
Oliva says there are plenty of supporters of a deal, but that they are too frightened to speak out. A Bossano-orchestrated demonstration against the Anglo-Spanish talks earlier in the week mustered 3,000, he says. What about the other 27,000 – what do they want?
The letters in the Chronicle following the demo reflect both views: Eric Rowbottom writes as “a loyal 100% British subject” and mentions his MBE to prove it; Alexie Dalmedo calls for “a political revolution to eliminate colonialism”. Just watch your yachts, guys.
I go to a chamber of commerce dinner at the casino in the evening to hear the chief minister, Peter Caruana, make an interminable speech about the things that really matter to Gibraltar’s business people – protection of its tax advantages, provision of extra telephone lines (in the past Spain has restricted them as a bargaining ploy), and fewer hassles at the border. Caruana, a social democrat, is a 45-year-old lawyer, a technocrat, a rationaliser. But he is not prepared to rationalise Gibraltar out of existence. Passionate oratory is not his strong suit, but afterwards he spells out for me his dismay at the current process.
“The position that we’re trying to defend,” he explains, “is that we should not be expected to participate in a process of dialogue in circumstances where there will emerge a done deal on principles.” Caruana, who has excluded himself from the negotiation, expects an Anglo-Spanish agreement in the summer and a subsequent rejection in a referendum. But rejection – and this is his principle objection – will not mean that the proposals will be withdrawn or the principle of joint sovereignty abandoned. The deal will remain in place, Gibraltar’s advantageous, VAT-less tax regime will be eroded, its prosperity undermined (Hain has been hinting darkly that it will be “left behind” if it refuses to negotiate on sovereignty), and the question repeatedly put until Britain and Spain get the answer they want. “Spain’s milestone is our millstone,” is the closest Caruana comes to a soundbite in his speech to what may be the world’s most rebellious chamber of commerce – this could be the first time the barricades have been manned by men in dinner jackets armed with fat cigars.
Back at the governor’s garden party, an article in that day’s Independent by the former diplomat and Tory minister George Walden has put the cat among the seagulls. “Gibraltar is a seedy, poky enclave, rife with money-laundering, mafia activities, you name it… This is not even Little England, it is microscopic England. Gibraltar is the perfect Lilliputian issue, a chance for all true micro-Brits to hang out plastic union jacks, made in Taiwan or South Korea.” The Lilliputians are furious – “Has Walden ever been here?” they cry. If he were here today, he would be buried along with the tree.
Smuggling, mostly of tobacco, is the Gibraltarians’ bugbear. It used to be rife but was to a large extent cleaned up in the mid-90s. The locals say the Spanish paint them as pirates to rubbish the colony, and that the foreign office has sometimes used dirty tricks and disinformation to blacken the reputations of less tractable members of the government. There is paranoia on a grand scale. Gibraltar is so small: a village with global pretensions, a neurotic family whose members pore over each other’s business. Chris Pugh, the media man for British forces in Gibraltar, puts it neatly when we meet: “Fart now and it’ll be on the front page by tomorrow.” Agoraphobic goldfish would find a haven in Gibraltar.
Brian Hardy drives me to a restaurant on the other side of the rock. The colony is less than three square miles in size and the journey takes no more than 10 minutes. It is late evening and the pockmarked edifice, almost 1,300ft high, is bathed in an eerie light. I had assumed the rock was granite, but he tells me it is limestone, and so will erode. “Which will disappear first – the rock or British sovereignty?” I ask him. “The rock, of course,” he replies. For all their bravado, however, it is not a confidence that many of his countrymen share. Politics is more corrosive than war.
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