maeussermann

The British overseas territory Gibraltar and the Spanish town of La Línea de la Concepción have a common history and the people have close relations. But a border divides them and depending on the political moods in Madrid and London, that border threatens the community and poses questions about local identity. 

Published in August 2021 in Point.51 – Issue 04

When Eve Miseikyte arrived in La Línea de la Concepción six years ago, the first thing she saw when she stepped out of the taxi was dog shit. Even today, La Línea, as the city of about 62,000 people is known for short, does not seem inviting. The faded, Andalusian buildings show signs of deterioration, and the city’s main boulevard is littered with the metal skeletons of market stalls, full of rubbish instead of wares. Weeds grow wild in La Línea’s biggest park, yet another sign of neglect. As the eighteen-year-old knows now, La Línea is one of Spain’s poorest cities. 

Eve’s family, originally from Lithuania, had just returned to Europe after six years living in Canada. They chose to reside in La Línea, on the southern coast of Spain, because of its proximity to English-speaking Gibraltar – the British overseas territory of about 32,000 people. The British town is just a stone’s throw from La Línea; the territory’s iconic limestone landmass, which gives Gibraltar its nickname of “the Rock”, looms large over its Spanish neighbour. Eve’s family thought they could work in Gibraltar, where salaries are significantly higher, and live in Spain, where they could take advantage of affordable housing as many others do. But soon, they learned, this arrangement is not so easy. 

The family spent their first three days in Spain searching for a flat, to no avail. “They all sounded so promising but when we looked at the apartments, they were all mouldy,” Eve remembers. Then, an important element of their plan fell through. Eve’s parents had intended for their two children to attend school in Gibraltar, but a local law had recently made it more difficult for Spanish residents to study there. To make matters worse, Eve’s parents spent months searching for work; her mother finally landed a job at a hotel in Gibraltar half a year after they arrived. “It is impossible to enter this society without knowing anyone,” Eve recalls. 

As the family struggled to find their footing in the area, life went on for their new neighbours. In the mornings, workers from the Spanish side of the border would approach the two checkpoints that mark the entrance to Gibraltar, showing their passports as vehicles whizzed around them. In the evenings, the workers would return to Spain, along with Gibraltarians, who would cross to have dinner at a late hour, speaking in a curious mixture of English and Spanish.

Gibraltar and La Línea, Eve came to realise, are in a curious way one community. For decades – if not centuries – family trees have grown over the border, as have all other relationships. The Spanish, she learned, had worked in Gibraltar for as long as anyone could remember, and the Gibraltarians had often spent their free time in Spain. The Gibraltarians, whose per capita GDP as of 2018 was around £79,000, have the economic power, while the Spanish have the livestock, vegetables, and fruits. People on both sides of the border are tied together by proximity and necessity, a symbiotic relationship.

But there are forces in their respective governments in Madrid and London that repeatedly disturb their friendly coexistence. Conservative Spanish politicians make a historical argument that Gibraltar should be a part of Spain, though they rarely take into account the economic pressure such an arrangement would put on their own people in La Línea. The United Kingdom has no intention of handing over its governance of Gibraltarians, who have been British longer than Americans have been Americans. The British did, however, vote to leave the European Union by a margin of 51.89 percent, while Gibraltarians, taking into account their relationship with neighbouring Spain – and thus, the rest of Europe – voted 95.91 percent against. With some 15,000 workers residing in Spain crossing into Gibraltar every day, the territory requires border fluidity to function smoothly.

History – including a devastating border closure under Spain’s dictator Francisco Franco in the late 1960s – has shown that conflict over the border leaves room for political power plays. In the past, Gibraltarians have claimed that Spanish border police have intentionally provoked delays, leaving them stuck in traffic jams for hours. As a result, Gibraltarians have often looked to the UK as a sort of protector, a bulwark against Spanish pressure. 

For centuries Gibraltar’s destiny has been shaped by these two nations, Spain and Britain. Their identity remains hidden somewhere behind that history, with Gibraltarians emphasising their Britishness in response to political actions – and obscuring their own unique culture as a result. 

Eve, only twelve years old when her family moved to southern Spain, didn’t know about the political tensions at the border of her new home. But she does clearly remember when she first crossed that border to visit Gibraltar. It was the day her parents signed the contract for the apartment in La Línea, and they wanted to celebrate by touring the iconic rock. “It was probably one of the best days from that year,“ she remembers. 

To enter Gibraltar, Eve and her family passed through the double checkpoint by foot and crossed the 1,800 metre airfield runway, where up to three planes from the United Kingdom land each day. They walked by a stadium where, during football matches, boys sit on the outer stone wall to watch. After about fifteen minutes of walking, they arrived at Gibraltar’s town centre. Around the town’s main square, Casemates, restaurants advertise fish and chips next to Mediterranean meals and international cuisine, while customers are encouraged to pay in Gibraltarian pounds, instead of euros. Professionals rush to and from work and meetings, shouting greetings in passing to friends they encounter on the street. Small, colourful houses with colonial-style balconies and terraces line the town’s Main Street, as do well-groomed hedges and black iron lanterns – fixtures that seem more British than Spanish. Gibraltar, a coastal settlement developed during the height of the British Empire, contains a unique mix of Mediterranean architecture and British culture. 

After entering the territory, the family wanted to ascend the 400-metre-high rock. To do so by foot, you can climb a series of stairs and narrow alleyways to the top. But Eve’s family found a taxi tour guide instead, and they drove to the rock’s highest point, which, to Eve’s delight, is home to 200 wild Barbary macaques – the only wild monkey population in Europe. “It was very sunny, and on top of the rock the monkeys would jump on us,” Eve remembers. The guide gave them peanuts and the monkeys climbed up their arms. Eve cradled them like infants. 

From that windy vantage at the top of the rock, the sea, dotted with tanker ships, is visible on three sides of Gibraltar, whose only land border is with Spain. Only twenty kilometres of water separate this small strip of land at the bottom of the Iberian Peninsula from Morocco, which, on clear days, is visible from Gibraltar’s southern tip, called Europa Point. From here, Gibraltar’s strategic advantage is clear – and, with this in mind, you can begin to understand the significance of the territory. 

I myself became interested in Gibraltar in 2019 when I was writing about how Brexit might affect the British territory and its people. One day, on my first trip there, I met with Jennifer Perrera, the director of the Garrison Library, which aims to preserve the cultural and historical heritage of Gibraltar. The library is housed in a Victorian-style building with a patio full of palm trees. Massive, centuries-old books rest behind glass panels, which cover the walls. Sitting behind a heavy wooden desk, Jennifer spent two hours explaining the history of Gibraltar and its ongoing territorial dispute – one that has its origins long before Brexit.

Gibraltar is where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic. On clear days, you can spot every ship that passes through the Strait of Gibraltar. Fifteen hundred kilometres south of the United Kingdom, Gibraltar lies on a shipping route that leads to the Asian economic powerhouses – Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, India; all former British colonies. This is reason enough for the United Kingdom to keep its claim on the territory for more than 300 years – and counting. 

As we spoke, Jennifer told me about the legal document essential to understanding why the dispute over Gibraltar is still alive: The Treaty of Utrecht, which was drafted at the end of the Spanish War of Succession. In 1704, during that war, Gibraltar was conquered by British and Dutch marines in the name of the House of Habsburg’s Archduke Charles. After the alliance lost a battle in Catalonia, they resolved to take over Gibraltar, which lay unprotected on the British and Dutch armies’ route back home. After a short but brutal takeover, the British took control of Gibraltar, and, when the war ended in 1713, the Treaty of Utrecht made the Rock an official British territory. Today Gibraltar is self-governing, while Britain oversees its defence and foreign affairs. 

In the treaty, Article X stipulates that, should Great Britain give up their claim of Gibraltar, the territory will immediately become Spanish. Two hundred years after the treaty was signed, Gibraltarian officials presented options to the United Nations to bypass Article X and become an independent territory, as opposed to Spanish, should that scenario ever arise. 

But Spain vetoed each option. 

I wanted to know why a treaty from more than 300 years ago still shapes political struggle today. Why have the Spanish been unable to reclaim Gibraltar in all that time? Why did the Gibraltarians decide to stay British even though they had close relations with the Spanish neighbours? And how is this relationship today? To answer these questions, I needed to go back in time.

At Jennifer’s recommendation, I spoke with her friend, the architect Carl Viagas. Both Carl and Jennifer grew up in Gibraltar during an especially tumultuous period for the region, the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, which lasted from 1939 until his death in 1975. During the latter part of his rule, Franco closed the border between Spain and Gibraltar, effectively isolating the Rock for more than a decade. Because of this, Carl remains wary about Spain. He vividly remembers life in Gibraltar at that time, being limited to 6.7 square kilometres that was only accessible by boat. 

While Jennifer preserves the historic Gibraltar, Carl modernises it. As an architect, he turns historic infrastructure into places he would have liked when he was growing up there. His most recently competed project was a leisure centre – complete with a cinema and bars – that he built into King’s Bastion, a former defensive fortification. Before that, he built the Sky Walk –a translucent platform from which visitors can enjoy views of the sea – on the foundations of a Second World War military observation post. Sine 2019, he has been working on the northern defences, excavating the ancient walls to, he hopes, eventually build terraces where people can have a drink while looking out over the border with Spain. 

We met in the spring of 2019, in Gibraltar’s main square, Casemates, where people sat enclosed by ancient town walls, enjoying food and drinks underneath umbrellas. From here, Carl led me up narrow stone stairs to the remnants of the northern defences, and then, we entered the caves of the rock of Gibraltar. Inside the cold, pitch black caves, I realised that the gigantic limestone mass, which had seemed so solid, is actually hollow, with more than 50 kilometres of tunnels drilled through. Carl and I walked through one that ran parallel to the outer wall that faced Spain, the territory’s only land border and, after Britain’s capture of Gibraltar, its historic enemy. 

Here, Carl pointed to the narrow vertical slots, where pillars of sunshine – the only source of light in the tunnel – shone. These, he told me, were special loopholes that allowed the defenders to shoot at invaders. Peering out of a loophole and into the daylight, I saw Gibraltar’s airfield, and the border checkpoint. The airfield runway extends the length of Gibraltar into the neutral zone that belonged neither to the British nor the Spanish – an ongoing source of dispute.

Carl spoke quickly and with great excitement as he showed me the numerous protective walls on the rock. He could easily note the layers of history, pointing out which different armies used them: the Arabs, the Spanish, and the British – each building on top of the other. 

In the year 711 A.D, the Moors began their conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. They entered Andalusia through Gibraltar, and remained there for centuries. Gibraltar’s name derives from the Arabic Jabal Tāriq, a reference to the leader of the offensive, Tariq ibn Ziyad. It took the Spanish Kingdom 700 years to take Gibraltar back.

Given the history of invasion from northern Africa, the Spanish garrison were unprepared for the British and Dutch attack of 1704. The hundred odd Spanish soldiers stationed on the Rock were facing south – from where they thought an attack may come. They forgot about the north – a strategic error that many Spaniards regret to this day – and were not prepared when the Anglo-Dutch force of 1,800 marines attacked from three directions, including the isthmus that connected Gibraltar to the mainland.

Fewer than 500 people lived on the Rock at this time. They refused to give up their land to the invading forces, proclaiming fidelity to the French successor of the Spanish throne. The take-over was brutal. In a matter of hours, the Spanish surrendered, and the British retained control when the Dutch moved on.  The Spanish tried almost immediately to regain control over the territory but failed twice. When the war ended in 1713 with the Treaty of Utrecht, Gibraltar officially became a part of the British Empire. In the following decades, the British defended Gibraltar from two Spanish attacks: a four-month siege in 1727 and a four year battle starting in 1779. 

Over the centuries, the British turned the Rock into a fortress. They further developed the northern defences, and they flooded Gibraltar’s land entry, creating an artificial lake to ensure the narrow routes into the territory would be easily observable. Engineers invented cannons capable of shooting down at a 45-degree angle from a great height; carved out tunnels; and built natural water tanks into the rock. Because of its vital geo-strategic role – both as a base for the Royal Navy and as a staging post on the route to India – the British spared no expense to make the Rock almost impossible to conquer. 

The Gibraltarians could very well be Spanish today, had the Spanish behaved differently with them, Jennifer told me when we spoke at the Garrison Library. She was referring to Franco’s dictatorship and the general anti-Gibraltarian sentiment people experienced during that time, insinuating that locals could have voted in a referendum to become Spanish at some point in their history. But any desire to become Spanish was quashed during Franco’s rule, she said. Gibraltarians faced regular harassment by Spanish officials when attempting to cross the border, as well as a wave of nationalistic and anti-Gibraltarian animosity from sectors of the Spanish population. This nationalistic sentiment was encouraged by the Franco regime, which sought to return Spain to the glory of its imperial days, and believed that the Spanish were the rightful rulers of the territory.

At the beginning of the Franco dictatorship, the border between Spain and Gibraltar had been relatively fluid, with checkpoints much like those seen today. But slowly – and then quickly – things began to change. In 1954, Queen Elizabeth II visited Gibraltar; a trip that was seen as symbolic by the Gibraltarians, but that Franco perceived as an insult to Spain. In the years following that visit, Spanish officials waged a campaign on the European stage, aimed at dehumanising Gibraltarians. “They told us over and over again that we were a people without identity. That we were a cancer,” Jennifer told me. As she spoke, I could actually hear the pain in her voice, even though we were talking about some- thing that started long before she was born. Then, after decades of Spanish leaders seeking to reclaim Gibraltar, and even going to the United Nations to make their case, the residents of the Rock took to the polls in 1967 to vote in a referendum on whether to remain British or become Spanish. In total, 12,138 people voted in favour of staying in the United Kingdom, while only 44 voted against. (Just over 27,000 people lived on the Rock at that time.)

The political consequences were dramatic. The Gibraltarians received their own constitution. And Franco, scorned and angered by the outcome and the territory’s new constitution, ordered the border closed. 

This was a blow to the Gibraltarians, who, as a result, grew even more attached to their British identity. It was also devastating for the Spanish living in La Línea. While the Gibraltarians urgently worked on new trade agreements that would bring in fresh fruit and vegetables as well as labour from Morocco, Spanish workers and merchants lost access to the territory’s economy. Out of work, many people in La Línea had to immigrate to other European countries like the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, and France. As a consequence, the city and surrounding region, called the Campo de Gibraltar, became impoverished – a reality that remains today. 

In 2021, Gibraltar is the most important employer in the region, just as it was before Franco closed the border. As Eve observed during her first few months in Spain, people from La Línea and the surrounding towns cross the border daily to work in Gibraltar’s shops and restaurants, among other businesses. La Línea, in a way, exists because of Gibraltar. The city grew with the economic exchange around the border. 

The elderly Spanish in La Línea still recall the fiestas they enjoyed before Franco closed the border. They fondly remember the country’s best bullfighters, the vibrant flamenco performances, the lively festivals. But all of that ended when the border was shuttered. The town, no longer sustained by the Gibraltar’s economy, deteriorated. Today, it is one of Spain’s poorest regions, with a 42 per cent unemployment rate as of February 2021. Since 2007, its unemployment rate has never been below 30 per cent. 

The border stayed closed until 1982, seven years after Franco died. During those thirteen years of shut down, Gibraltar was like an island. Although the territory remained economically sound during this time, having replaced Spanish labour with Moroccans and reached new trade agreements with other countries, life was limited. Carl, the architect I met in 2019, told me that to reside in Gibraltar during the years of border closure was like living on a carousel, in which you could merely drive in a circle around the rock. He remembers it took hours to travel to Spain, because he had to take a ferry both to and from Morocco. During the ferry rides, he claimed with a laugh, he could see his house in Gibraltar the entire time. He remembered, when driving through Spain with his family after the long ferry journey, being impressed by a cow, which as a six-year-old he thought was a massive dog. There are no farms in Gibraltar, no forests or fields and very little livestock. Other people told me they only understood how limited their lives were when they saw images of Woodstock on television. 

Apart from the economic effects on La Línea and the limitations to life in Gibraltar, the community on both sides of the border suffered immense tragedies. Gibraltarians had to leave Spain, and Spaniards had to leave Gibraltar. Brothers and sisters, parents and their children, were separated from each other. Family would meet every Sunday at the two gates – one on the Spanish side and one on the Gibraltarian side –which were some 100 meters apart. Parents dressed up their children for this occasion. Then, people would scream over the fences and hold up babies for their relatives to see. For years, this was the easiest way to communicate between families and friends, for Spain had cut telephone lines to Gibraltar, making it difficult to call. Sometimes, people would use radio frequencies to communicate. Yet even while this was the painful local reality, some people in Spain – even Gibraltarians’ La Línea neighbours – were calling for Gibraltar to become Spanish. 

Mercedes Beneroso Jiménez, a Spanish citizen from La Línea who works in Gibraltar, is deeply disappointed by the rhetoric calling for a “Gibraltar Español”, or a Spanish Gibraltar. I meet her in the autumn of 2020 at the Garrison Library, where she has been cleaning the creaking wooden floor of a conference hall. Her long hair is dyed blonde and pulled up in a ponytail. She wears blue scrubs and sunglasses on her head. As we sit on chairs with red cushions, the room, with its high ceilings, absorbs our conversation. Mercedes tells me that although she would like to work in Spain, she has three children and a mortgage to pay, and there are few jobs in La Línea. “The truth is, we owe a lot to Gibraltar. So, so much,” she tells me, holding back tears. 

Mercedes, who is fifty-five years old, remembers when the border opened again in 1982. At the time, Spanish officials were seeking to consolidate democracy during the transition phase after Franco’s death. In preparation for joining the European Economic Community, they agreed to open their border with the Untied Kingdom, which was already a member. “It was incredible,” Mercedes says. “It was like the time had stopped there. Everything was exactly as it was when the border closed.” After the gate opened for motor vehicles two years later, the people of La Línea applauded the Gibraltarian motorists as they drove into Spain. “There were so many cars, they came out for hours. The whole boulevard in La Línea was full. Everyone was so happy and hugging and relieved. They had the better cars, but we had the roads.”

Mercedes was seventeen when she visited Gibraltar for the first time. Her boyfriend had started working in a local supermarket in the town. He had already made some friends and Mercedes remembers going to a pub together. This was her introduction to what she now considers an important part of British culture: drinking pints with friends. “This pint, I was wondering how they were able to drink so much beer,” she tells me, laughing. “How would it fit into my stomach?”

She would go to Gibraltar to buy chocolate and tobacco and outfits or presents for family events. When she got married, her wedding party took place in Gibraltar’s Rock Hotel. “It is ironic that this rock means home to us. When you have been travelling and you come back and see it, it is such a relief,” Mercedes says. “But it isn’t Spain,” she laughs. “It’s Gibraltar!”

When Eve moved to La Línea from Canada, she was unaware of the history that has deeply shaped the world she was about to enter. She had a small radius of life, moving between school, the grocery store, and her house, which was located right across from the beach. There, one day, she found a € 50 note. “If it is still there when we get back, you can keep it,” her mother said, and luckily for Eve, it was. She knew exactly what she wanted to purchase: a radio. She started listening to Radio Gibraltar non-stop, she tells me, and loved it. There, she heard the ever-repeating phrase “Spanish citizens in Gibraltarian waters”. The phrase referred to instances in which Spanish ships sailed through the disputed waters around Gibraltar, which Gibraltarian authorities considered British. In 2021, the radio broadcasts this phrase nearly ever day, she tells me – proof that the dispute is far from over.

In the past decade, territorial tensions have remained steady. In 2013, Gibraltarian authorities threw cement rocks in the water to create an artificial reef, threatening the work of Spanish fishermen. In their defence, UK authorities claimed the fishermen had no right to be there. Six years later, in 2019, British authorities stopped an Iranian oil tanker in breach of EU sanctions in what Spain considered to be Spanish waters – provoking the Spanish foreign ministry to file a complaint to its British counterpart. And yet another conflict exists because of the advent of air travel. In the treaty of Utrecht, formulated in 1713, the parties did not include air space rights, as aeroplanes had not yet been invented. The dispute over who owns the air above Gibraltar remains unresolved. 

Even before Franco’s border closure, Gibraltarians had embraced Britishness as their identity. An important development in this identity formation was the Second World War. Because of Gibraltar’s strategic position, the British made extensive preparations for a possible Nazi invasion, supported by Franco’s forces. Engineers expanded the existing network of tunnels – allowing up to 17,000 troops to shelter inside. Deep in the tunnels, the Allies secretly assembled aeroplanes. They also constructed a hospital; a secret chamber that could host spies for a long period of time; and a command centre hidden inside the rock. In November of 1942, from those same tunnels, then-Major General Dwight Eisenhower coordinated Operation Torch, the Allied landings in French North Africa, which was then controlled by Nazi ally Vichy France.

Beginning in 1940, the British government evacuated Gibraltarian civilians from the Rock. Women and children were sent to London, the British colony of Jamaica,  and – due to a treaty of friendship with neutral Portugal – the island of Madeira. Archived interviews from that era provide a glimpse into what Gibraltarians in London experienced at the time. Spanish-speaking, they felt strange in this new society, with its different food, weather, and culture. Many had to stay in London for several years before they could return home. The experience, in a way, made many of them feel British – and the subsequent border closure of the 1960s made them stay British. “My auntie gave me this great quote when she said: ‘I went [to London] as Victoria, and I came back as Vicky,’” Jonathan Pizarro, a thirty-five-year old Gibraltarian writer now living in London, tells me. 

Unlike the older generation, younger Gibraltarians with whom I speak have a different understanding of their identity, seeing it as one that is not exclusively British. Jonathan and his friend Mark Montegriffo, a press officer for the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain, were raised in Gibraltar but now live in London, where they’ve watched with great pain and dismay the effects of Brexit on their lives. Having grown up next to Spain, they identify as Europeans. And as Gibraltarians, they were raised to be British. They are not either one or the other, they say. They are both.

But, in London, they have experienced a curious new way of being, as though they belong nowhere. When they moved to England, they expected to find a natural home, but to their surprise, they met people who knew nothing about Gibraltar and thought their way of speaking was strange. Both Jonathan and Mark were shocked to find themselves alienated in this foggy place that, as children, they were taught everything about and were told to love and defend. “In both cultural and political terms,” Jonathan tells me over the phone, “I have faced, I guess, a conflict or a contradiction between what I was told in Gibraltar, what I am and what I have experienced living abroad in the UK.” 

The two are the first Gibraltarians I have met who critique the UK.  “I get quite angry when I go on Twitter and all those English people talk about Gibraltar and say like ‘Oh, it’s ours, it belongs to us,’” Jonathan, who writes a blog about living in the UK as a Gibraltarian, says.“ But it’s not a possession, it’s not yours. There are people who live there, that have their own culture and history, and we have our own language.” 

English people, he continues, only know vaguely, if at all, where his home is. “For the most part, Gibraltar to them is just an ‘exotic piece of Britishness’ that comes up in the news because of politics. And people don’t know a lot about it apart from there is a rock and there are monkeys, and it has good weather,” he tells me.

Mark, who is twenty-three years old, moved to the United Kingdom several years ago to study philosophy and politics. He shares similar views with Jonathan and emphasises his strong connection to Spain, especially the region of Andalusia. He supports the Malaga football club. He feels proud if he sees Andalusian actors in television series or movies. In our phone call, Jonathan adds that he feels offended when he talks about flamenco and Spaniards tell him he cannot discuss it because it is not his culture. For Jonathan, it is his culture.

Both agree that the Gibraltarians, as an effect of politics, tend to forget about themselves. As Gibraltarians abroad, Mark and Jonathan have common experiences and see that their culture goes beyond the UK. They have their own language, Llanito, which is a mixture of Spanish and English. And their culture, they tell me, is a mixture of Andalusian and British and the myriad other nationalities – Maltese, Italian, Moroccan – on the Rock.

Older generations and people who have never lived abroad, they say, cling to a particular historical conviction: to criticise the UK means giving ammunition to Spain. And they are British, no matter what. “Look at my great aunt: she mostly speaks Spanish, mostly watches Spanish televi- sion, but considers herself completely British,” Jonathan says.

It was when Jonathan moved away that he began to understand the value of his home. He misses the party scene on the Costa del Sol, to the east, the nature parks in the north, Cadiz, a town with colourful buildings and a laid-back atmosphere, to the west, and first and foremost the ever-beating sun. Thinking about these things, Jonathan tells me he is considering moving back to the region.

The Gibraltar of today looks different than the place where he grew up. During his adolescence, there was not much to do. The town’s bustling square, Casemates, was a car park, and the main street, which today is pedestrian-only, was also filled with cars. But today, there is Carl’s leisure centre, and Gibraltarians can go out at night to bars along the Line Wall or in the Ocean Village, a modern part of town near the marina.

While all of this development has positively affected the town, Mark says he thinks modern Gibraltar resembles a cruise ship: everything and everyone close by. It’s a small town, where every resident knows each other. That’s why Mark, unlike Jonathan, does not want to return. “You go to town and you bump into family and friends and I find these spontaneous meetings with people to be exhausting and confusing and I think it makes society very complicated,” he says. He pauses, and gives me several examples. “If you go on a date with someone and they tell their mother and the mother is like, ‘Oh, that person had a fight with my cousin.’ It has implications with everything. Even with the law. If someone’s arrested or something and it’s the relative of the judge or whatever. It’s natural in a small community, but it skews the relationships when everybody is always thinking about who is related to whom and what their connections are.”

That smallness makes Gibraltar a peculiar place to live, says Mark’s friend Anton Calderon, a thirty-nine-year-old Spaniard who grew up in Gibraltar, studied in the UK and now lives in La Línea with his Gibraltarian wife and baby. “Half of the population works in public office. That is not normal,” he says critically, telling me that Gibraltar is a bubble. (According to statistics provided by the territory’s press office, 43.5 per cent of employed Gibraltarians work in the public sector.) 

The reason for Anton’s criticism lies in personal experience.  He recalls that, when he began working on audiovisual projects for the Rock’s media, locals seemed to question that a Spaniard, and not a Gibraltarian, was working for the territory’s news outlets – even though he was educated in Gibraltar. He understands the scepticism, because after the border closure, Spain was seen as a clear enemy by Gibraltarians. But, from his perspective, the scepticism goes too far. Gibraltarians, he tells me, tend to look down upon their Spanish neighbours for being poorer and working class. 

The relationships between Gibraltarians and Spaniards, Anton says, never entirely recovered from the border closures. People who had grown up together – only to be driven apart by politics – raised children who grew to mistrust each other.

Ever since they moved to the region, Eve’s family has mingled with Gibraltarian society. About a year ago, they became official residents of the British territory. She vividly remembers her first day in her new school. It was right before Christmas and the school took a field trip to a holiday market. On the walk there, many students in her biology class introduced themselves. They asked her about her Canadian accent and generally showed interest in her life, making her feel welcome. Eve was reminded of the small towns where she lived in Canada.

In Spain, she had felt isolated. People her age, she tells me, grouped themselves into cliques.

“Even if they are okay with you, you will never be a genuine part of the group,” she says, “They will invite you to go out with them once or twice, but you will never be included one-hundred per cent.” She found it especially hard when she attended school in San Roque, a neighbouring town in the Campo de Gibraltar that is home to an oil refinery. “It’s quite a Spanish town and the teachers were older and more nationalistic,” Eve says. “It was the time I felt the most left out in my whole life.” There, the conservative party, Partido Popular, which aims to make Gibraltar Spanish, received more than 20 per cent of the vote in the most recent national elections in 2019, while in La Línea that party received just 6.4 per cent of the vote. 

In recent years, Eve has observed that La Línea has become more welcoming. The town’s main street runs between small, pastel-coloured houses with stores and restaurants behind big windows. The centre consists of just a handful of bars and restaurants, where after work, the typical Spanish lifestyle is in full swing. People gather for dinner, drink wine, and eat tapas. Children chase one another on roller skates deep into the night. It is loud, the atmosphere friendly. Spaniards always search for a good time, Eve says, no matter how bad things are. 

At the end of my trip to Gibraltar in the fall of 2020, I meet with Eve for coffee. Her long brown hair falls over the shoulders of her dark blue sweater, the uniform of the Gibraltarian school she now attends. Together, we walk on cobblestone streets through the town centre Flowers hang from the street lamps, and the afternoon is so bright that I have to shade my eyes from the sun. When we sit down at a café on Main Street, it doesn’t take long before people she knows stop by to say hello. Her visitors are an elderly couple who, for Eve, are like grandparents – and because this is the middle of the pandemic, they haven’t seen each other in a while. They spend a few minutes jovially catching up, and after the couple leave, Eve tells me that they moved to Gibraltar from the UK to enjoy their retirement in warmer weather. 

Every once in a while, Eve tells me, the territorial conflict flares up between Britain and Spain over Gibraltar. Often, the Spanish far-right party Vox brings the topic back into the national conversation. During the summer of 2016, for example, Vox supporters placed an 18-by-11-metre Spanish flag on the northern side of the Rock, before swimming back to Spain to avoid arrest by the Royal Gibraltar Police. But now, people try not to feel provoked by such actions, Eve says. “There is nothing really happening, so, I think people here are just trying to not make a big deal out of it”.

During the lockdowns in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, authorities have shut the border for everyone who does not have residency or a work permit for months at a time. On and off for periods over the past year, Eve’s parents have lived in their home in Gibraltar for work, while Eve has lived in Spain, watching two dogs, three cats, and her little sister. Sometimes life is hectic, she tells me. It’s difficult to juggle online classes with taking care of her sister and the pets. For social respite, she keeps up with friends over phone and video calls, as well as social media.

After learning about the history of Gibraltar, I can see the disturbing similarities between the current situation and the border shut down of the 1970s and 1980s. The town is once again an island. The situation has awakened those dark memories, says Brian Reyes, the editor-in-chief of the territory’s newspaper, the Gibraltar Chronicle. But while the lockdowns might re-open old wounds for older Gibraltarians and the people of La Línea, who see in them both the past and a possible post-Brexit future, younger generations experience a more modern reality. Eve, like her peers, lives in the digital age where borders represent fewer limitations than they once did. She can call friends around the world with the click of a button. In this new virtual reality, young people can laugh, study, and work together despite physical distance. People far away are much closer than their neighbours.

■■

Maren Häußermann