While proud of their history, many Gibraltarians do not recognise territory’s image as sliver of British yesteryear preserved in sunny amber

As Michael Howard’s flag-waving, sabre-rattling, Madrid-baiting intervention made clear, Gibraltar can occupy an oddly atavistic place in some corners of Britain’s collective psyche.

Three centuries in British possession, a police service very nearly as old as London’s and red phone boxes that sit under azure skies have all conspired to give the territory a certain old-world cachet.

But while proud of their history, many Gibraltarians do not recognise, or understand, its image as a distant sliver of British yesteryear forever preserved in sunny amber.

Were it so, 96% of its residents would not have voted to remain in the EU, nor would its economy depend quite so heavily on access to the single market and freedom of movement – 12,000 Spanish and other EU nationals commute across its border daily.

“The people I talk to who have worked with Gibraltar haven’t got that image of us,” says Christian Hernández, a lawyer and president of the Gibraltar Chamber of Commerce.



“I think there might be certain sectors who still regard Gibraltar as an old-style colony but you only need to go on to Google and do a simple search on Gibraltar to know what we’re about.”

The invocation of the internet is not accidental. Today, 313 years after it was captured by the Anglo-Dutch fleet and almost two centuries after it formally became a British colony, Gibraltar is thriving thanks to online gaming, e-commerce and financial services. The online gaming sector alone employs around 10% of the territory’s 32,000 inhabitants.

“On the gaming side, we’ve got all the big players; we’ve got 888, we’ve got bwin.party; we’ve got Ladbrokes, we’ve got William Hill,” says Hernández. “The reason they are here is because Gibraltar is a highly regulated gaming centre and we only want to attract bluechip business.”

Thanks to its 10% corporate tax rate, the territory has drawn many international companies to the Europort complex and the surrounding area, although Hernández is keen to stress Gibraltar is not your “stereotypical finance centre … We’re not like the Panamas of this world, for example.”



But it is the territory’s status as a tax haven – along with the similarly vexing issues of fishing rights and Gibraltar’s airport – that has long antagonised the Madrid government.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A Gibraltar police boat, Spanish Guardia Civil boat and Spanish fishing boats during a protest by Spanish fishermen in the sea near the Spain/Gibraltar border in 2013. Photograph: Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images

“Frankly speaking it does not give me a second of happiness if the Spanish flag is on the rock,” Javier Nart, a Spanish liberal MEP, said on Monday. “What is important for Spain, and for me, is that this territory is not used as a fiscal base against Spain.”

Despite Lord Howard’s posturing, Jack Straw’s contention that Gibraltar is an affront to the Spanish national identity – “a bit like having a part of Dover being owned by Spain” – and the routinely hardline pronouncements of the former Spanish foreign minister José Manuel García-Margallo, sovereignty is far from the be-all-and-end-all for most Spaniards.

“I think that for a long time – especially during the dictatorship – the issue of Gibraltar was one of the most frequently used tools for mobilising the people,” says Emilio Sáenz-Francés, professor of international relations at Madrid’s Comillas Pontifical University.

“But a lot of time has passed since then and Spanish society has evolved a great deal. Nationalism is very scarce in Spain – you only see it with certain patriotic things such as football.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Spanish workers sit next to a traditional red telephone box in Gibraltar. Photograph: Daniel Ochoa de Olza/AP

Spaniards, he adds, are more worried about employment and the country’s conflicting identities – Spanish, Basque, Catalan – than ownership of the Rock.

“If you went into a cafe and mentioned Gibraltar, people would start talking about [Spain’s North African enclaves of] Ceuta and Melilla straight away – even though they’re two different problems.”

Pablo Simón, a political science professor at Madrid’s Carlos III University, says that while it is very unlikely that Gibraltar will actually pass to Spanish ownership, everything is now back on the negotiating table.



“There’s a game going on here on two different levels,” he says. “The first is one that we’re still not seeing – what’s going to happen with the Spaniards who live in the UK and vice versa. The second is about the Rock of Gibraltar, which has been in Spanish foreign ministers’ in-tray for a long time; in the time of [prime minister] José María Aznar there was talk of the possibility of joint sovereignty.”

Those efforts came to nothing. In the 2002 referendum brokered under Aznar, Gibraltarians overwhelmingly rejected joint rule with Spain, just as they had in another vote 35 years earlier.



However some, like David Smith, a 53-year-old IT project manager, fear the EU council’s draft guidelines – which give Spain a veto over any arrangements on a future relationship with the territory – mean the UK will be forced to forsake the territory, giving it with no choice but to seek independence.

“The UK is in no position to support us as it will succumb to Spanish demands: we will be the sacrificial lamb on the altar of the benefit of the many in the UK,” he says.

“We are effectively now placed in co-sovereignty with a hostile power. That is not sustainable and it is time to break the ties with a powerless and distracted UK.”



At 28, James Netto is too young to remember the Franco-era tensions and the 13 years during which the border with Spain was closed, leaving families stranded on either side of the frontier.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A woman in Gibraltar shows her support for the United Kingdom to remain in the European Union on the day of the referendum. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

“In many ways, we are true Europeans,” says the human rights lawyer.

“Our Saturday tapas are followed by a full Sunday roast. We regularly cross an international border that was once firmly shut. We prove that British national pride and a love for the EU can overlap.”

And now, he says, it is those who have gained most from the UK’s membership of the union that have most to lose.

For Hernández, whose Spanish merchant ancestors arrived in the territory in 1821 to trade with the British garrison, the Gibraltarian identity is a simple, historical and unequivocal fact.



“We’ve been British for longer than most Americans have been Americans. But it’s not a question of Gibraltar being anti-Spanish; it’s a question of, well, we’ve never been Spanish. It’s like you going to Texas, which once belonged to Mexico, and asking them why they don’t want to be Mexican.”



Gibraltar in numbers

2.6 sq miles (6.7km sq) Gibraltar is less than a third of the size of Westminster in London.



32,194 Total population of Gibraltar, making it one of the most densely populated areas in the world.

Two Number of times Gibraltarians rejected proposals for Spanish sovereignty (in referendums in 1967 and 2002).

Eight Languages spoken in Gibraltar. Most of the locals are bilingual, speaking Spanish and English. Other languages include Arabic, Berber, Maltese, Hindi, Sindhi and Gibraltarians’ unique dialect, Llanito.

40 Insurance companies based in Gibraltar.

0.68 Banks per 1,000 people, making Gibraltar the place with the fifth most banks per capita in the world.

300 Barbary apes living in Gibraltar.



Additional reporting by Carmen Fishwick and Hanna Yusuf







• This article was amended on 5 April 2017. An earlier version of the “Gibraltar in numbers” section said “13.2% Percentage of the population in Gibraltar that is British”. To clarify: 13.2% were “Other British” in the 2012 Gibraltar census; 79% were Gibraltarians, who are also ­British citizens.