I arrived in Gibraltar, the self-governing and perpetually contested British Overseas Territory on the southern tip of Spain’s Mediterranean coast, on a balmy Monday evening in mid-June. The sun had set by the time I’d unpacked at my Airbnb in the Old Town. Main Street, the jumbled arterial thoroughfare with its rows of duty-free tobacco kiosks and cheap electronics shops, was deserted save for a few tourists. At a nautical-themed British pub, three smartly dressed men in their early thirties were exchanging a mix of blokey patter and heartfelt lamentations at the next table. The most boyish-looking of the trio, an Englishman, complained that life was simple for the other two, with their Gibraltarian family and connections. They didn’t have to navigate the absurdities of the local rental market, he said.
Nor worry about what an unexpected redundancy might mean for their future in the territory, still ravaged by post-Brexit uncertainty. How could an outsider ever be expected to put down roots, he sighed, with everything that was going on?
In an area less than seven sq km, with a population of 32,000, there are more than 14,000 registered companies (of which some 12,600 are considered ‘active’). Gibraltar is home to most of the UK’s biggest gambling companies, from William Hill to Ladbrokes. Talk of “fintech” is ubiquitous. Housing is expensive and scarce, the rental market dire. Still, the vibe is of a prosperous, hard-won internationalism married to an undeniable strangeness. There aren’t many places that have a high-street Marks and Spencer and are an hour-and-a-half by boat from Tangier.
In an essay for The Spectator magazine in 1965, the novelist Anthony Burgess mused on the future of Gibraltar. Central to its plight, Burgess wrote, was an unresolved, and perhaps unresolvable, crisis of confidence. “They have never been taken seriously enough by the rest of the world . . . They have no sense of ethnic identity.” That final sentence is puzzling. The territory has its share of quirks — the total absence of VAT for one — but something the Gibraltarians have never lacked is a sense of self. They are multilingual, multicultural, sometimes insular, but never, ever Spanish.
Gibraltar was captured by the British during the War of Spanish Succession in 1704, with Spain formally ceding its claim nine years later. Over the following centuries, the Spanish periodically attempted to reclaim what they saw as their rightful land. When Franco demanded the “decolonisation” of Gibraltar, a referendum was called in 1967. The choice was binary: Spanish sovereignty or continuing close association with the UK. Votes for the latter won by 12,138 to 44.
A constitution was drawn up and published in May 1969. Franco responded by closing the Spanish side of the border, and, for the next 16 years, people on both sides were forced to suffer the economic fallout. Separated from each other, families also missed births, weddings and funerals.
The border was fully opened again in 1985, and a concerted effort made to reduce dependency on British military spending and to transform Gibraltar into a modern, heavily financialised, offshore economy. But a commitment to close links with the UK was reaffirmed in 2002, when a referendum called on joint Spanish-British sovereignty was rejected by 98.9 per cent of voters.
The UK’s decision to leave the EU in 2016, and end freedom of movement between the two, has again complicated daily life in Gibraltar, where thousands cross the border with Spain every day to work, shop or visit family.
“History [here] is often told just in terms of the military,” said Charles Sisarello, a retired Gibraltraian trade unionist and keen local historian, who I met for coffee in a bustling square. It was, he said, a bit disturbing that people didn’t know as much about the cultural and economic story. The situation had been the same throughout his lifetime, he explained. “The work in Gibraltar, the entertainment in Spain. If that collapses, if there are too many impediments for people coming in, then business won’t wait.”
On the first morning of my trip, I made my way to 6 Convent Place, headquarters of the Gibraltarian government, for an audience with Fabian Picardo, the long-serving chief minister and head of the Gibraltar Socialist Labour party. Sitting at the heavy wooden table in the cabinet room, Picardo opened with a poignant if well-rehearsed speech. “My grandmother was torn from her family during the [border closure]. Her brother died and she didn’t make it in time for the funeral. You cannot deal with a Gibraltarian without understanding what makes them up,” he said. “Gibraltar is a multifaceted democracy, but there is one issue which trumps them all: the relationship with Spain.” No one here ever needed a lecture as to why remaining in the EU was in the best interests of the territory, he continued. And no one needed a lesson now on strains caused by the subsequent years of uncertainty. If Franco’s closure of the border was the first major trauma in Gibraltar’s recent history, Brexit was the second. European integration had been key both to stabilising relations with Spain. Britain’s split from the EU reawakened old enmities and provoked fresh ones.
In Spain, various rightwing politicians blustered about reclaiming the territory, while British imperial nostalgists reacted in kind. There has been much talk of “red lines”. For Gibraltar, these include the absence of Spanish military personnel on the border and at the airport; for Britain, the protection of its remaining military assets. “Our red lines are as crimson as the day we started,” Picardo said. Negotiations between Spain, the UK and the EU have been tortuous. The prospect of “no deal” has become increasingly plausible, particularly after a late June deadline came and went. It couldn’t be easy, I said to Picardo, being stuck in the middle of three much more powerful competing parties. Or dealing with recent gaffes from EU commissioners, such as Margaritis Schinas, who declared “Gibraltar is Spanish”, a slogan repeated by Spain’s football team at their post-Euros victory parade in July. “There’s no point in being in this office to do the easy stuff,” he said. “I think Gibraltarians expect their chief minister to be in here 16 hours a day, trying to square the circle. I’m not trying to ‘beat’ anyone. I don’t want to win. I want us all to win.”
My late father, Cristobal, was part of a large family in La Linea, the economically troubled city of 62,000 on the Spanish side of Gibraltar’s land border, which was decimated by the Franco-era closure. There, in his early twenties, he met my mother, a Londoner. Prospects were better in her home city, so they moved there in the late 1980s. I was born soon after. The next few years were not always happy. Cristobal worked a series of cash-in-hand jobs and drank heavily. When my parents’ relationship faltered, my father returned to Spain.
Not long after, my mother died of breast cancer. I visited La Linea a couple of years later, aged nine, spending a day in Gibraltar with my father. At the top of the Rock, one of the infamous Barbary macaque monkeys raided my lunch. That was the last time I saw Cristobal. In 2021, I reconnected with my family in La Linea by chance, and found out that he had died just a couple of years after my childhood trip. Since then, I’ve visited my family there often, a sprawling clan of aunts and uncles, cousins and grandparents.
Like many in this post-industrial city, their working lives are mostly spent in Gibraltar, either in healthcare or hospitality. If La Linea relies on easy access to the Rock, then the Rock is almost equally dependent on La Linea, as well the surrounding Campo De Gibraltar. More than 15,000 workers cross the border each day. With the territory not included in the permanent UK-EU Brexit deal approved in December 2020, ad-hoc agreements have allowed this movement to continue — for now.
Over dinner one night, I asked my uncle what he thought of their Gibraltarian neighbours. Dinero, the money, was good there, he replied, adding that everyday relations were close, as they’d pretty much always been in his lifetime.
The political is often personal in Gibraltar. Before I arrived several contacts repeatedly told me that everybody really does know everybody else here. The evening after my interview with the chief minister, I dressed for the annual dinner of the Gibraltar Federation of Small Businesses hosted at the Sunborn, which describes itself as “the world’s first super-yacht hotel”. In my couple of days in the territory, I’d heard much about strain and precarity, but here the mood was reasonably giddy, the bar queue healthily chaotic. My dinner invitation had arrived via Owen Smith, the federation’s chairperson and director at a prestigious local law firm. Smith was due to give a speech spotlighting some of the challenges and even “opportunities” in the unlikely event that treaty negotiations collapsed. Could Gibraltar become Singapore-on-Med, a low-tax, zero-tariff, anti-red-tape haven for intrepid entrepreneurs?
During my interview with Picardo, he’d mentioned a worst-case contingency plan. “The Gibraltar National Economic Plan [would see] a reduction in the workforce . . . but sufficient prosperity generated for Gibraltar to continue [as] one of the most prosperous places on the planet for its resident population,” he said. Exactly how was unclear, aside from reducing dependency on cheap Spanish labour and investing in unspecified “high-skill and high-wage” jobs.
At the dinner there was a slight sense of being presented with a collective brave face. Though maybe it’s simply hard for people here to find anything new to say about the Groundhog Day they’ve been living for the past eight years.
Throughout my trip the only subject everyone really wanted to talk about was the border. “Gibraltar is special. It’s its own little bubble,” said Trino Cruz, a banker-turned-poet who had invited me to his home. “You look at it sociologically and one understands why it is the way it is.”
At the border, I presented my passport and crossed into Spain on foot past a row of fast-food restaurants and mid-rise, pastel coloured apartment blocks. La Linea mayor Juan Franco’s office is in a neat, new-ish block on a bustling residential street. “The paralysis around the border question . . . is not [good],” he told me. “The idea of recession [is a] big worry.” He handed me an English-language leaflet, Urban Renewal Project of La Linea, an ambitious, long overdue plan. Investment was needed to realise the vision, but continued uncertainty would frighten investors. “Thousands of people, workers and tourists cross the border every day,” he said. “Gibraltar’s economy might be very strong, but it needs workers.”
Back in Gibraltar, I made my way to the airport for my return flight to London. In the departures lounge, I looked out over East Beach, where cranes loomed over a row of half finished high-rise housing developments. If recent Gibraltarian history could be told as a story of mostly sunny prosperity, few would bet on quite such a cloudless future.
This article has been amended since publication to show that more than 14,000 companies are registered in Gibraltar. The original figure of 90,000 registered companies referred to the total number of companies ever registered in Gibraltar.
Follow @FTMag to find out about our latest stories first and subscribe to our podcast Life and Art wherever you listen