Britain and Spain have been discussing how to share sovereignty over Gibraltar. The inhabitants of the Rock are furious, andthe negotiations look set to founder. But can the status quo be maintained? The Tablet?s executive editor reports.
WHEN Bishop Charles Caruana drives me to the southernmost tip of Europe?s last colony, it is, unusually, raining, and because the Rock?s apes have chewed the rubber off his Lordship?s windscreen wipers, it is not until we get out of the car that the clear, windswept view of Africa unfolds. The Atlas mountains and Tangier are clearly in view, as is Ceuta, the Spanish garrison town which Morocco ? in a paradoxical mirror of Spain?s claim on Gibraltar ? would like returned. The Rock is an impressively huge lump of limestone that soars suddenly, even contemptuously, out of the surrounding Andalusian plains to 1,300 feet, jutting out over where the Mediterranean and the Atlantic meet and Europe and Africa almost touch. Small wonder that Britain has held on to Gibraltar; small wonder that Spain has always wanted it back.
But this is an age of decolonisation and European integration. A colony in the European Union is an anomaly. Spain?s claim to Gibraltar is a running sore; Jos? Mar?a Aznar, the Spanish Prime Minister who also occupies the European Commission?s rotating presidency, has forged close relations with Tony Blair, who in turn wants to see an Anglo-Hispanic counterweight to Franco-German domination. New Labour has none of the Conservative Party?s nostalgia for colonial relics, and everyone agrees that the Spanish-Gibraltarian border, with its stiff fences and arbitrarily draconian controls, is out of place in a Europe where goods and people are supposed to flow freely. It is, surely, sensible for Britain and Spain to try to bring an end to the dispute with a deal that will suit all three parties. The status quo is unsustainable, and a solution too desirable to ignore.
The trouble is, no one bothered to consult the people of Gibraltar, who believe ? with justification ? that they are being traded like an eighteenth-century chattel. They would like better relations with Spain, their mighty, antagonistic neighbour, but sovereignty, they say, is up to them. They say the United Nations recognises their right to self-determination, which they want to express by remaining linked to Britain. And right now they are angry that this right is being ignored.
Every Friday since last November, when London and Madrid started talks on sharing sovereignty of the Rock, Bishop Caruana has led a procession at the Shrine of Our Lady of Europe as well as at his Cathedral of Our Lady of the Crowned. He is praying that justice will be done for the 30,000 people who live at the base of the Rock, 23,000 of whom are Catholics. He knows that after 300 years Gibraltar is not about to be handed back to Spain; the British Government has guaranteed that any agreement will be put to Gibraltar in a referendum, and no one who has stepped on to the Rock doubts for a moment that there will be universal rejection of any deal on sovereignty. But like other Gibraltarians, he worries that their rejection of the agreement will lead to Spain tightening the screws on the border ? Aznar has already threatened as much ? and that a declaration of principles on sovereignty will erode their right to decide their destiny. His people are anxious, and he fears disorder.
Close to the shrine, consecrated to celebrate Gibraltar?s recovery by the Christians in 1462, is a new multi-million-dollar mosque, built with Saudi Arabian money. It is a reminder that Gibel Tariq, or ?Tariq?s mountain?, was the starting point for the Muslim conquest of Europe in 711. But it also indicates the importance of Gibraltar in Spain?s national consciousness. For the next 800 years it was Moorish, until the Christians finally succeeded in retaking it on the feast day of St Bernard, the Rock?s patron saint. Within 30 years of regaining the Rock, Isabella of Castille and Ferdinand of Aragon launched Spain?s great imperial career? 1492 was the year Spain drove the Moors from the peninsula, expelled unconverted Jews, and Columbus set sail. A few years later much of Europe would be added to Spain?s overseas dominions by marriage into the Hapsburg empire. Little wonder that Isabella, who presented the town with its coat of arms, commanded her heirs in her will ?never to alienate or otherwise dispose of her city of Gibraltar?.
Yet Gibraltar has been British for 300 years, longer than it was Spanish; and history?s symbols are malleable. Isabella?s coat of arms ? a red castle from which hangs a golden key, symbolising the Rock?s vital role in restoring Spain to Christianity ? is today Gibraltar?s flag, brandished alongside the Union Jack as an expression of the Rock?s refusal to be handed back to Spain.
If Gibraltar was vital to Spain?s national career, consider the humiliation of the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713, which grants Britain the Rock ?absolutely and for ever, without impediment or exception?. The Rock was seized by the British at the end of a long and messy pan-European dynastic war which dismembered Spain?s European territories. Britain emerged from the treaty with most of the trophies, including the monopoly of the American slave trade, and possession of Minorca as well as Gibraltar. The treaty was imposed by force on Spain, which made repeated, unsuccessful attempts to overturn it.
If Spain is pathological about the Rock, this is why: it is a part of Spain?s territory which was lost in humiliation, and the nationalist drum has been beating ever since. Gibraltar is an issue which most Spanish can forget about until they are reminded, when they speak with one mind: the Rock must be returned.
The Spanish press has a series of id?es fixes about Gibraltar which exclude the possibility that the people of the Rock might choose for sound reasons to remain British. Its people want the best of both worlds (or ?their bread buttered on both sides?, as a taxi driver in the border town of La L?nea put it); Gibraltar, it is erroneously believed in Spain, is a centre of money laundering and drug trafficking; and that llanitos ? as the Spanish call the Gibraltarians ? are really Spaniards disguised as British. Between these views ? I learned in Madrid, shortly before catching a train to Algeciras (there are no flights from the Spanish capital to Gibraltar) ? and those of Spanish bishops, there is, as Bishop Francisco Mart?nez Fern?ndez of C?rdoba somewhat apologetically told me, no difference at all.
But Spain is frustrated in its efforts to recover Gibraltar through legal means. Madrid bases its claim on United Nations resolutions calling for decolonisation and recognising territorial integrity, and to the final clause in the Treaty of Utrecht giving Spain first option over Gibraltar if ever Britain relinquishes it. But international law overwhelmingly recognises the principle of self-determination of colonial people, a principle that can be expressed in wishing to retain links with the colonial power. Britain has always recognised that principle in its dealing with its former colonies, and insists that, as with the Falkands, it must be paramount in the case of Gibraltar.
So rather than pursue its case in international courts, the Spanish state has adopted a policy of attrition. When Franco sealed the border in 1969, he wanted to show Gibraltarians that they could not survive without Spain. But the strategy backfired. Paradoxically, those years of isolation reinforced Gibraltar?s sense of nationhood and pride, and made it more anxious to remain British. Every Gibraltarian has a horror story from that period, of divided families shouting news at each other across the fence, and of relatives dying in hospital because Spain would not allow oxygen tanks through. By the time the border opened again in 1985, the bonds of a tight-knit community were stronger than ever, as was Gibraltar?s suspicion of the Spanish state and its loyalty to Britain as her protector. Those feelings are still raw today, when thousands of Spaniards cross the border each day to work in Gibraltar, and wealthy Gibraltarians commute in from the coast around Marbella.
I had been ready to sneer at Gibraltar. Were it not for Bishop Caruana?s invitation to see for myself, I would have steered clear of the Rock. Red-cheeked Daily Mail-type nostalgia for outposts of little England leaves me cold, and I was not keen to see package tourists too timorous to go to Spain shopping instead for tax-free whisky and electronics on Main Street; nor the bobbies, flags and cannons; nor the ersatz pubs everywhere selling atrocious coffee with traditional English breakfasts.
Yet, for all its pseudo-Britishness, I discovered an impressive, close-knit, peace-loving community with a strong sense of its unique history. Although they are at ease in both English and Spanish, the people of the Rock are mostly neither. They are of Maltese extraction (both the Rock?s bishop and its Chief Minister are called Caruana, a common Maltese name), as well as Genoese, Sephardic Jews and north Africans, and they have developed a culture and an economy all of their own. It is a distinctiveness recognised by the Vatican in 1816, which detached Gibraltar from the diocese of C?diz, placing the Rock under a vicar apostolic, and which elevated it in 1910 to a diocese answerable directly to the Holy See. Bishop Caruana is as proud of this ecclesiastical singularity as he is of the Rock?s peculiar religious history: when Jews were banned in Spain, he points out, they were welcome on the Rock, just as Catholics could practise freely in Gibraltar while their confr?res in England were forced underground. Bishop Caruana?s history, Rock Under a Cloud, also documents the anomaly of the Gibraltar Catholic Church being governed by a Junta of Elders, laymen responsible for governing Catholic affairs.
It is this uniqueness, and a way of life that is prosperous, peaceful and privileged, which Gibraltarians want to defend in a way that is as Mediterranean as it is lacking in British phlegm. Dennis, who steers the cable car up to the apes? den, demonstrates this passion when I ask him his view of the talks. Raising his fists (to the alarm of Mr and Mrs Torquay, who are sharing the confined space) he thunders: ?Three hundred years of loyalty to Britain and look what she does to us! We would rather die than be Spanish! Over my dead body! We will fight to the last man!?
Where does this militancy come from? Is it bigotry, pride or something else? Looking north-west from the height of the apes? den, Gibraltar and the nearby port of Algeciras form one continuous, prosperous development. The lives of Gibraltarians are too bound up with their neighbours to be anti-Spanish; their fury is, rather, reserved for the Spanish state, which since the reopening of the border has continued its policy of attrition through a stop-start policy designed to cow the Rock into swapping masters.
Gibraltar is not part of the VAT zone or the Shengen treaty on movement of peoples, and Spain is entitled to maintain border checks. But this frontier is not normal. The guardias civiles can make people wait for hours to cross. Rather than a car being pulled over, the other cars behind it are made to wait in line. The evidence that this policy is directed from Madrid is overwhelming: when Jack Straw, the Foreign Minister, paid his recent ill-fated visit to the Rock ? most of whose people turned out to demonstrate and call him Judas ? the traffic flowed freely across; and Gibraltarians have noticed that since the start of the talks in November the restrictions have eased. ?People don?t mind a normal regime in which it takes some time to get through?, the Chief Minister, Peter Caruana, tells me, when I ask him about the border. Rather, he says, ?people complain of the whimsical and capricious delays that they cause, not pursuant to any legitimate objective or function to which they are entitled?.
This is why any concession on sovereignty to Spain over the heads of Gibraltar would seem to the Rock dwellers a grotesque humiliation, a reward for Madrid?s longstanding campaign of harassment and restrictions. It would be a humiliation, says Andrew Haynes, one of the Rock?s leading lawyers and a former minister, underlined by the way in which the sovereignty issue is being resolved by Madrid and London, as if Gibraltarians were merely chattels.
But isn?t this just pride? Surely there are wider, European interests at stake? Is it not time for Gibraltar to move on? ?Maybe pragmatism dictates that the wishes of 30,000 cannot prevail against 40 million?, Haynes tells me, ?but you can?t transfer loyalty to another country ? that sense of belonging and fraternity ? on a whim.?
?Every new generation acquires a whole new load of prejudices against Spain based on the harassments, the hostility, the foul press, the irritation?, he goes on, ?and these just make Gibraltarians more keen on being British.? As a trading post, the last thing Gibraltar wants, he points out, is isolation; and he believes there would be real economic benefits in becoming the financial hub of southern Spain. If Gibraltar wishes to remain British it is not out of narrow economic self-interest, but something deeper, Haynes stresses. If Gibraltar were to become now even part-Spanish, he says, it would be tantamount to saying that the Rock?s identification with Britain had all been for nothing. ?My pride won?t let me think that it was just a joke that my father lived and died a Brit: that it was all untrue and that we had been squatters all along.?
Gibraltarians are still nervous, but for the moment any deal looks a long way off. The London-Madrid talks have stalled on the core issue of Gibraltar?s right to self-determination, which Britain recognises but Spain does not. This means that Spain opposes any agreement on the sovereignty question being put to Gibraltar, whereas Britain guarantees to do so. And whereas London wants any agreement to be lasting, Madrid wishes to reserve its claim that Gibraltar must eventually revert to Spain. There are also disputes over the naval base which Britain, in an apparent contradiction of its pan-European commitment, wishes to retain under its exclusive control. But both Aznar and Blair have reaffirmed their commitment to an agreement by the summer, and they say that Gibraltar has excluded itself from the process by practising the ?politics of the empty chair?.
But Peter Caruana says he is not opposed to dialogue on all the issues affecting Gibraltar?s relations with Spain, or even to talking about the sovereignty issue, as long as any talks start from the assumption that Gibraltar has the right to decide its own future. ?We?re not adopting some extreme position of wanting nothing to do with Spain?, he explains. ?All we?re saying is that that dialogue shouldn?t be structured in such a way as implicitly to deny our rights to decide our own future, by being so bilateral in nature that it becomes a conversation between an eighteenth-century owner and an eighteenth-century claimant. And that?s why we?re not there. We?re not practising the politics of the empty chair; we?re just not willing to sit in a chair that?s booby-trapped.?
Both Caruanas ? the Chief Minister and the Bishop, who are not related ? want the question of sovereignty to be put to one side, and for Gibraltar and Spain to come together in dialogue on issues which affect the people who live each side of the border. This is what the bishop describes as ?moving the talks away from the political and on to the human and commercial?. If Spain were to renounce its pathological attitude towards Gibraltar, and recognise the Rock?s right to self-determination, the interaction between Gibraltar and its mighty neighbour would soon lead to the sovereignty issue melting away. As the Chief Minister put it: ?Let?s build a relationship and let future generations, not just of Gibraltarians, but of Spaniards, in what will then be a very different climate, tackle the sovereignty issue with a chance that current generations on either side do not have because it?s all still too raw.?
That, surely, is the best way forward. But can enough pride be swallowed to make it possible? It takes 20 minutes from my hotel to reach the frontier, walking across the runway where planes bank steeply after take-off to avoid Spanish airspace. The guardias wave me through after a cursory glance at my passport. It creates an odd feeling, this border, this barrier that is as much psychological as it is practical: a defensive wall to keep Spain out, a fence to keep Gibraltar in. Surely, one day, it should come down? If Spain were to overcome its pathology, the llanitos ? whose multiculturalism in an odd way points to the new Europe ? would soon thrive as the international financial hub of southern Spain. But it will not happen as long as London and Madrid try to negotiate about sovereignty over the heads of Gibraltarians. This way, the border will only stiffen.