What exactly *is* Gibraltar?
People call it a country, but is it a constituent country of the UK, is it a British colony,
is it a territory like Guam and American Samoa to the US?
Is it like how Hong Kong is to China?
Gibraltar is not part of the United Kingdom, but it is British, as is clear from the double-decker
buses to the Gibraltar Pound to the hard border with Spain.
And naturally they use the British type G plug outlet.
No, flip this switch, stupid American!
[Plugs it in successfully] There we go.
However do note which side of the road they drive on.
Gibraltar is
a British territory hemmed in by mountains, the sea, and a hard border, and which has
become insanely wealthy, in part thanks to its position.
Sebastian, do you think it would be fair to call this place the Hong Kong of the Mediterranean?
(Sebastian) I would say that’s the best comparison I could come up with.
So how did Gibraltar even end up in this position?
How do things in this tiny territory work?
And what could a post-Brexit world look like for a British territory so reliant on Spain?
Gibraltar is a bit of a contradiction at times.
It sits in one of the poorest regions in Western Europe, and yet it has one of the highest
GDPs per capita of any territory in the world.
It has strong ties to Britain yet thousands regularly cross the Spanish border to work
on either side..
Gibraltar is a British territory that in a lot of ways acts like an independent country
in almost all but name.
And the flags you see in the tourist shops, of course.
For hundreds of years Britain has fought to try to protect this rock and this little peninsula
from Spain, and this little territory has been a thorn in the relations between the
two countries ever since.
There was a referendum on whether or not Gibraltar should join Spain, and of the 18,000 people
who voted, 187 people voted yes.
But in 2016, Gibraltarians again took to the polls– this time with their British counterparts–
on whether or not to leave the European Union, which 96% of Gibraltarians also voted to remain,
which made things a little…
awkward.
Now first we need to understand the history behind this place for context, because it’s
not just “Britain really wanted it”.
Although at the same time, Britain really wanted it.
Now, it doesn’t exactly take a geography expert to see how important ownership of a
territory in this general area is, in fact Spain owns a couple territories on the other
side.
This is the Strait of Gibraltar, the so-called Pillars of Hercules where the world to the
Ancient Greeks supposedly ended.
As the riches of the Americas drew Spain’s attention westward by the 16th century, Gibraltar’s
defenses had been badly neglected, presumably as Spanish leaders mothballed the fortress
here to save on revenue.
But to understand the true catalyst for Gibraltar falling into British hands, you have to meet
one guy, Charles II of Spain.
Oh crap he’s dead.
And that was the problem, since Charles II died without an heir to his name, and the
closest heirs were either of the French Bourbons or the Austrian Habsburgs.
But there was a balance of power in play amongst the European monarchies, and with Spain being
this giant empire encompassing huge swathes of the world– and Europe itself– this
meant that if one dynasty were to control the Spanish Empire, it was basically game
over for the rest of Europe.
So basically Europe just exploded and in 1704 Britain, siding with the Habsburgs, captured
the town of Gibraltar for their guy, Charles VI of Austria.
In the Treaty of Utrecht that ended the war, the Bourbon guy, Philip V, ended up on the
Spanish throne, but Gibraltar would be ceded to the British.
Ever since this little scrap of land has been British territory, though not because Spain
was happy to let them have it, as evidenced by them trying to besiege the city in 1727,
and then again from 1779-83, and then Franco’s blockade of Gibraltar throughout the 70’s
and 80’s, and then Spain talking about jointly governing the territory with Britain after
the Brexit referendum, which naturally the Gibraltarian hive mind strongly voted against.
But here’s the somewhat mind blowing thing about Gibraltar: it only has around 33,000
people, barely half that of La Línea, their neighboring city on the Spanish side.
Though that doesn’t mean only 30,000 people are in Gibraltar at any given time, as millions
of tourists visit the tiny territory every non-pandemic year, often to make dumb YouTube
videos.
Gibraltar is a tiny place, only 5km from north-to-south and 2.5km from east-to-west, one can drive
around the territory in barely half an hour.
It’s so small you can see the runway of its airport in its flag map (and yes this
is the runway they let people drive across when a plane isn’t landing).
In fact throughout much of its history until the mid-20th century, Gibraltar was little
more than a British military outpost.
In addition, hemmed in by the sea, the Spanish border, the airport, and of course the Rock
(no really, that’s what it’s called.
Creative name, I know), Gibraltar is the fifth densest territory on Earth, behind only Hong
Kong, Singapore, Monaco, and… oh no, Macau.
And like Hong Kong, these geographic constraints mean that much of modern Gibraltar’s land
has been reclaimed from the sea.
This ongoing £300 million project has already reclaimed new neighborhoods from the sea,
however even this has ruffled Spanish feathers as Spain believes the waters surrounding Gibraltar
to be Spanish waters, or sorry, águas.
Britain’s relationship with Spain has always been somewhat…
rocky.
(Get it?)
And whenever diplomatic tensions between the two flare up, for some mysterious reason Gibraltar’s
always caught in the crossfires.
But despite the drama, Gibraltar still remains close to Spain in many ways.
The border is porous enough to allow people to live and work on different sides of the
border, and there are currently plans to absorb Gibraltar into the Schengen Area, which wouldn’t
be the first time a non-EU area joined the bloc.
In addition the Spanish and British governments signed a treaty in 2006 to cooperate on affairs
involving Gibraltar.
While London and Madrid agreed in the end of 2020 not to make the border checks any
stronger, this territory still remains one of the most important still in the British
realm.
And even then, Gibraltar still acts very much like a pseudo-independent country.