Sun sets on the Rock

The ironies of a UK-Spain clash over Gibraltar

Britain’s decision last summer to exit the European Union — Brexit — has already produced any number of unforeseen consequences. One such suddenly splashed itself across the front pages of the world’s newspapers last week, when Spain and the United Kingdom headed towards a confrontation over tiny Gibraltar. The Rock of Gibraltar, perched at the entry to the Mediterranean with a population of 30,000 people and 300 monkeys, is one of the last remnants of the British Empire. It’s ironic that Brexit, a decision that was draped by its defenders in imperial nostalgia, may finally end one of the last real bits of the Empire on which the sun has quite definitely set. As befits its anachronistic status, it appears to visitors to be more British than the home island, a little slice of the 1960s Britain still kept alive by a fiercely nationalistic population. 

Yet, when British Prime Minister Theresa May began the formal process to withdraw from the European Union recently — “invoking Article 50” — she forgot to mention Gibraltar in her official notification. But Brussels did not. Buried in the EU’s response was a reminder that, after the UK’s exit, Gibraltar’s existing treaty status would no longer be valid. And in the future, the decision would no longer be Europe’s, but that of the Kingdom of Spain — which has, since it first ceded Gibraltar to the might of the Royal Navy in the early years of the 18th century, has been seething and wants it back. This was all the provocation that Little Englanders needed. Michael Howard, the former Conservative prime ministerial aspirant, immediately invoked the Falklands War: “Thirty-five years ago this week, another woman prime minister sent a task force halfway across the world to defend the freedom of another small group of British people against another Spanish-speaking country... I am absolutely certain our current prime minister will show the same resolve in standing by the people of Gibraltar.” London’s tabloids began war-games in earnest, effectively promising that British troops would be in Madrid by Christmas if the Spanish did not keep their mouths shut. 

Almost on cue, a Spanish gunship, the Infant Cristina, decided to enter Gibraltar’s territorial waters on April 4, and had to be “chased out” by what remains of the Royal Navy. Naturally, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, after meeting the colony’s Prime Minister Fabian Picardo, could not help declaring that London’s support for the Rock remained “rock-like”. Madrid’s position — that El Penon, as they call it, is part of the Spanish land-mass and essential to Spain’s territorial integrity, no matter what some musty old treaty signed in the 18th century says — is outwardly logical but also hypocritical. After all, Spain occupies two equivalently tiny bits off the Moroccan coast — and this dates back to pieces of paper even more mouldy than the Treaty of Utrecht that gave London Gibraltar. 

But hypocrisy is not the point. The point is that Gibraltar’s very existence depends upon Spanish co-operation. It is kept running by 10,000 Spanish workers who cross the border daily. It speaks an odd English-Spanish hybrid called “Yanito”. Gibraltar itself is so tiny that many of its residents have to live outside its borders — and most of their supermarkets are outside, too. If Spain closes its borders, then Gibraltar goes back to the isolated, poor 1960s, in which it had to be resupplied by air because Britain and the Franco regime in Madrid were in a constant state of confrontation. And Spain has other tricks up its sleeve — it could, for example, drop its opposition to an independent Scotland inheriting Britain’s position in the EU automatically, which ups the chances that the northern kingdom would leave the Union.

Either way, this kerfuffle is a reminder of why the EU was formed: To prevent open confrontation between European nations, and to ease the lives of all Europeans.