As of today there is no need to wear a mask in Gibraltar. Group immunity has been achieved. They have been among the first. The planet observes the llanitos with fascination: never Spaniards; British citizens (their way); educated in England; Catholics for the most part; Puritans (abortion is punishable by life imprisonment) and more Latinos than Saxons. Wary of Great Britain (the mother) and fearful of Spain (the stepmother). Mestizos, victimizers, resistant, flexible and friendly: oscillating between British phlegm and Cadiz wit. Survivors Of expatriation and diaspora during the Axis bombings in World War II; of the 15-year lockdown during the Franco regime (an isolation that lasted until 1985, when Spain had to open the Gate to enter the EU) and the economic abandonment of Margaret Thatcher,that liquidated the public shipyards and forced them to reinvent themselves. They did it through tourism, low taxes, the financial services typical of an offshore paradise and becoming the tax headquarters of some thirty online gambling companies. It worked out well. The metropolis already only runs with 6% of its budget. It's the first thing they tell you: "We don't cost the crown a penny." For the UK, Gibraltar is an aircraft carrier bargain at the gates of the Mediterranean."We did not cost the crown a penny." For the UK, Gibraltar is an aircraft carrier bargain at the gates of the Mediterranean."We did not cost the crown a penny." For the UK, Gibraltar is an aircraft carrier bargain at the gates of the Mediterranean.
View of the Rock of Gibraltar taken from one end of the border, next to the Levante de La Línea beach. James Rajotte / EPS
The llanitos are convinced, as the last poet of British imperialism, Rudyard Kipling, wrote, that "if they give in, they lose." That is why they distrust. In the last five years, due to the departure of the United Kingdom from the EU (which is theirs), which gave them prosperity for four decades: they had the best of a colony and a community territory. "We know that the English remain here because of the naval base," describes a local politician. “And if they gave us independence, in 24 hours Spain had occupied us. That is why we want to be plain, British and European. In that order. And that Spain recognize and understand us. And continue in some way in the EU, which is what is being negotiated in Brussels. And that will mean prosperity for the Spanish and for Gibraltar. Brexit has been the suicide of the English ”.
The Minister of Education, John Cortés (who describes himself as a left-wing socialist), defines Brexit as follows: “The least logical political decision I have ever seen in history.
I feel like a citizen of the world and I am for a Europe of the peoples.
And within that political framework, this three-century dispute could have been resolved.
We are not a threat to the economy of this area of Spain;
we are an opportunity.
We need workers and we don't have territory.
And Spain has people and territory.
We respect the Spanish, that they respect our existence ”.
- Why don't they accept a co-sovereignty between Spain and the United Kingdom?
So they could continue in the EU ...
—And why do I have to give half of my house to someone [Spain] who does not belong in order to get along?
Being in the UK gives us security;
we like the queen;
we are loyal British and if they put their foot on our neck we react.
It is too late for Spain to buy us with a carrot;
It has given us a lot of trouble.
This will never be Spanish.
Then let's get along.
Main Street, Calle Real, is the heart of Gibraltar, full of shops and gossip.
Jonathan Dawson, a Gibraltarian resident and retired journalist, walks his dog here every day.James Rajotte / EPS
In Gibraltar, on June 23, 2016, 96% of voters in the Brexit referendum opted for remain, to remain in the EU, twice as much as in the United Kingdom as a whole. It was a European profession of faith. “It was a box; the llanitos knew that we are better inside than outside ”, explains Brian Reyes, editor of the Gibraltar Chronicle. “We are not English, we are part of Europe, we are connected to it by land, in front of the metropolis, which is an island, and if we do not reach an agreement with the EU (that is, the United Kingdom), the Gate, as they say you, it becomes an external border of the European Union, between Spain [which is a Schengen State, which allows the free movement of people without controls between its Member States] and a third country [United Kingdom]. And that would mean the creation between Gibraltar and La Línea of a hard border;with a strict visa regime [passports would have to be stamped upon entry and exit], inspections, certifications, and terrible retentions between Gibraltar and La Línea, from which 15,000 people come to work here every day. You could not live. It is not a question of economy, but of humanity ”.
Months before the 2016 referendum, the Government of Gibraltar published a report entitled Preparing for a no deal Brexit: Get ready, prepared by the number two of the Executive and in charge of the powerful lobbies of the Peñón in Europe, Joseph García, where, after warning citizens not to "panic", he concluded that the delays to cross the customs post with a hard Brexit could be up to six hours. The chief minister, Fabián Picardo, acknowledges that during those days he ordered the drafting of a multitude of contingency plans in the event of a hypothetical closure: from waste treatment to the supply of medicines and sanitary oxygen. "It was envisaged that Morocco would become our supplier of basic products in case of isolation."The Yellowhammer report, drawn up by the British Cabinet, agreed with these theses. Contrary to what their government's ruling advised them, the Llanitos panicked. They were the worst days on the Rock since the Franco dictatorship.
An A400M aircraft of the British Royal Air Force lands at Gibraltar airport, from the British base of Brize Norton, with one of the last shipments of vaccines against Covid. This military airfield is one of the most dangerous in the world.James Rajotte / EPS
The parliamentarian Marlene Hassan, 45, leader of the center-left party Together Gibraltar and a feminist activist ("which is very much needed here"), recalls with dread the days after the Brexit consultation: "The English thought I was not going to get ahead, which was a theoretical exercise. But it came out. And the next day you would see people in mourning and crying on Real Street [Main Street]. We didn't know what was going to happen. We have lost this war, not the UK. And Spain could have tightened the nuts on us, but the pragmatism of its Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya, who signed a pre-treaty agreement with the United Kingdom in the early morning of December 31, 2020 to avoid a hard closure, has triumphed. . And to earn that status we have to pay a price to the EU [that is,to Spain] which means losing part of the border control, which does not imply in any way that the United Kingdom loses even a minimum of sovereignty over this British territory ”.
Nobody in Gibraltar wanted Brexit. The Chief Minister, Fabián Picardo, a 49-year-old Oxford-trained lawyer ("one of the smartest guys I've ever come across," according to a senior Spanish diplomat), remembers how all his predecessors in office, regardless of party. , participated alongside him in a joint act to promote remain: “I did not find anything positive in Brexit. I felt sorry for my children, who were no longer going to have the European continent at their fingertips. But in that process, Spain and Gibraltar have met. And together we can create a sustainable economy in the Campo de Gibraltar; grow even more, reposition ourselves; transform ourselves from an old-fashioned financial center to a modern one with total fiscal transparency.Brexit has given us the opportunity to talk about our future and to find ways of understanding ”.
The Convent has been the official residence of the British Governor of Gibraltar since 1728. The current representative of the Queen, Vice Admiral Sir David Steel, lives here. In the picture, the banquet hall, decorated with portraits of the current sovereign and her direct ancestors.James Rajotte / EPS
Crumb of the British Empire, visited by the British monarchs of the twentieth century and even by the Kaiser and the Emperor of Japan, in just twice the size of New York's Central Park (most of it urbanistically indomesticable, but which dominates the mouth of the Mediterranean) and With a population similar to that of Andújar (Jaén), 34,000 inhabitants, here, however, it has been played since 1714 in the great leagues of world diplomacy. According to a leading source from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Gibraltar is not a mere anachronism that poisons relations between the Kingdom of Spain and the United Kingdom (“which must be taken care of, because it sends us 20 million tourists every year and is one of our main commercial partners ”); The UN, NATO, the European Union, the OECD also take part in the game;and it also complicates the bilateral affairs of Spain with the United States ("which maintains a special relationship with the English") and with Morocco ("where they are attentive to the evolution of Gibraltar in its demand for Ceuta and Melilla"). Never a territory so sleepy and cornered gave so much to talk to the world for so long.
A placid spring morning passes under the radiant sun of the Straits crossed by cargo ships and heavy tankers coming from Suez on their way to the English Channel. From the highest deck of the luxurious Sunborn floating hotel, overturned on the Peñón airfield, a handful of idlers with a pint in hand watch an A400M of the Royal land in Gibraltar (considered one of the most dangerous airports in the world) Air Force, coming from the British base of Brize Norton, loaded with a shipment of vaccines. They will be one of the last. The vaccination program is ending. In January, the United Kingdom began to deliver to its colony 2.0 (for them, a British overseas territory; for the UN, “a non-self-governing territory subject to decolonization”) 50,000 double doses, the majority from Pfizer,enough to immunize its 34,000 inhabitants and the 15,000 workers in the Campo de Gibraltar region who cross the customs post every day to work here, mainly in construction and hospitality. Of these, more than 10,000 are Spanish, from La Línea, the mirror city of Gibraltar, on the other side of the Verja, whose dilapidated blocks of officially protected flats can be seen from the Sunborn pool.
Avi Wine is a young man (17 years old) of Israeli origin living with his family in Gibraltar, where there is an influential Jewish community. Every day he climbs the cliffs that surround the Rock.James Rajotte / EPS
A kilometer separates them. Ten minute walk. Gibraltar and La Línea form a geographical and human zipper with ties of blood and, above all, mutual dependence. The Linenses say that the llanitos are their first industry. They provide them with more than 100 million euros a year in salaries in pounds (twice the budget of the City Council); They represent 40% of La Línea's consumption and 80% of the hotel industry reserves, and they rent thousands of properties in the area. During the pandemic, Spanish workers on the Rock have been paid the British minimum wage. However, the economy of this Cadiz region has never taken off. Not even towed by the multiple development plans designed by the Franco regime (since 1965) and later by democracy, which, in the end, either were not fulfilled, or were a fiasco.
The train does not arrive here, nor is there an airport.
The hotel offer is testimonial.
Nobody invests here.
The Line carries a bad reputation.
Seven million vehicles cross it each year heading towards Gibraltar without stopping.
The bet of the Franco regime was heavy industry.
In the sixties it was decided to build the largest oil refinery in Spain in the heart of this beautiful bay facing Africa, which fumigated the possibilities of it becoming a tourist attraction pole between Malaga, Tangier and Cádiz.
The Ibrahim-al-Ibrahim mosque is located opposite Morocco, at the southern end of the rock.
Funded by the monarchies of the Persian Gulf, during the pandemic it has been kept open only in the hours of prayer.James Rajotte / EPS
Today, the per capita income of the Rock (the third in the world after Qatar and Luxembourg) is four times higher than that of its Spanish neighbor. It is one of the deepest wealth gaps on the planet. La Línea suffers unemployment figures above 40%, a low educational level, high rates of school failure, a huge floating population of 10,000 people (unaffordable for social services) and an economy that is largely nourished by the Moroccan hashish traffic and the contraband of Gibraltarian tobacco (lower taxes) through some thirty mafias, in which it is easy to enter and from which it is difficult to desert. "If you are a kid from La Línea, why are you going to study if you can have 1,000 euros in your fanny pack and an Audi Q7 if you are part of a mafia?" Asks a teacher. "Gibraltar is our salvation and our downfall",says social activist María Luisa Escribano. “The problem is that the Spanish State has understood this as a grievance, a national disgrace, and not as a social problem. The English, on the other hand, have spoiled the plains. They have been given self-government. They pay their studies in England and finance their houses. The Spanish governments have forgotten the Campo de Gibraltar. This has been a sinkhole. Look at Tarifa (half an hour from here), which was a lost fishing village and is today an international luxury brand. They have let this collapse ”. For many Linenses (and many Llanitos), the different Spanish governments have caused the decline of this city to show the world that Gibraltar sucked the blood of Spain.“The problem is that the Spanish State has understood this as a grievance, a national disgrace, and not as a social problem. The English, on the other hand, have spoiled the plains. They have been given self-government. They pay their studies in England and finance their houses. The Spanish governments have forgotten the Campo de Gibraltar. This has been a sinkhole. Look at Tarifa (half an hour from here), which was a lost fishing village and is today an international luxury brand. They have let this collapse ”. For many Linenses (and many Llanitos), the different Spanish governments have caused the decline of this city to show the world that Gibraltar sucked the blood of Spain.“The problem is that the Spanish State has understood this as a grievance, a national disgrace, and not as a social problem. The English, on the other hand, have spoiled the plains. They have been given self-government. They pay their studies in England and finance their houses. The Spanish governments have forgotten the Campo de Gibraltar. This has been a sinkhole. Look at Tarifa (half an hour from here), which was a lost fishing village and is today an international luxury brand. They have let this collapse ”. For many Linenses (and many Llanitos), the different Spanish governments have caused the decline of this city to show the world that Gibraltar sucked the blood of Spain.They have been given self-government. They pay their studies in England and finance their houses. The Spanish governments have forgotten the Campo de Gibraltar. This has been a sinkhole. Look at Tarifa (half an hour from here), which was a lost fishing village and is today an international luxury brand. They have let this collapse ”. For many Linenses (and many Llanitos), the different Spanish governments have caused the decline of this city to show the world that Gibraltar sucked the blood of Spain.They have been given self-government. They pay their studies in England and finance their houses. The Spanish governments have forgotten the Campo de Gibraltar. This has been a sinkhole. Look at Tarifa (half an hour from here), which was a lost fishing village and is today an international luxury brand. They have let this collapse ”. For many Linenses (and many Llanitos), the different Spanish governments have caused the decline of this city to show the world that Gibraltar sucked the blood of Spain.They have let this collapse ”. For many Linenses (and many Llanitos), the different Spanish governments have caused the decline of this city to show the world that Gibraltar sucked the blood of Spain.They have let this collapse ”. For many Linenses (and many Llanitos), the different Spanish governments have caused the decline of this city to show the world that Gibraltar sucked the blood of Spain.
A street in the town of La Línea.
With 60,000 inhabitants, it has a floating population of another 10,000 which complicates the adequate provision of social services.James Rajotte / EPS
Abandonment is the most repeated word on La Línea.
To begin with, by its mayor, Juan Franco, 45, independent (on the left), who obtained in 2019 with his party, La Línea 100 × 100, 67.5% of the votes.
“Gibraltar has always lived here and the time has come to create a competitive, non-dependent economy in La Línea;
to work with them, but not to live from them ”.
"What do you propose?"
"Approach the llanitos fiscally." Cooperate with them, but on equal terms. That they channel investments to us and that companies that leave there be installed here because they want to continue being in the European Union. The Spanish State should grant La Línea the status of an autonomous city, like Ceuta and Melilla, through article 144 of the Constitution, with a special tax regime. What happens in La Línea, with this customs post on which we depend, does not happen anywhere else in Spain. Our youth unemployment is 70% and we have had the highest covid peaks in Spain. And thanks to the fact that in Gibraltar they are vaccinating the thousands of linenses who work there, our curve has been narrowing.
Aboard his old utility vehicle with the roof fastened with staples, we tour the city. The economic deterioration is evident. Even more after the covid and the police blows to the local drug trafficking. The restaurants are empty. Stores closed. Official protection blocks form ghettos; 98% of the houses in the Zabal neighborhood are built illegally (according to its mayor). And in La Atunara, a town on the Levante beach where 7,000 fishermen lived, many subsist on tobacco and hashish. It is strewn with unemployment and slums. We cross the street of the Canary Islands, its heart, they say it is one of the most dangerous in Andalusia. It is not so bad. But his image transports him to other settings where drug trafficking reigns: idle people, motorcycles, cars, mobile phones, sunglasses, gold chains, joints, bottles and desolation.The narcos have their soccer teams and their own brotherhoods for the processions. Given this scenario, it seems clear why the llanitos do not want to be Spanish.
Ismael Casas (left) and Samuel Esquivel walk along the Levante de La Linea beach on horseback. This area, practically virgin, has never been developed touristically and is used by smugglers and drug traffickers for their illegal businesses.James Rajotte / EPS
After the Brexit referendum, Gibraltarians felt forgotten by their metropolis. For months they roamed the ring soundlessly. His bewilderment was short-lived. Until the UK put into practice one of its constant diplomats: "The Empire has no friends or enemies, only interests." He stroked the back of Gibraltar. And he won her back. To start with, with vaccines, for everyone, free and fast. Quite the opposite than on the other side of the Gate. In addition, the UK Government assured the Gibraltarian financial sector that it would continue to enjoy privileged access to the British market (its main customer). And also cheap access to credit markets with a sovereign guarantee worth 600 million euros. He even moved a warship to the Rock, the HMS Trent, as a reinforced symbol of his sovereignty.It was a virtuous mix of soft power and hard power. Of public, economic and military diplomacy. And at the same time, the Foreign Office began to negotiate with Spain the future relationship of its "overseas territory" with the EU, that is, with Spain; that is to say, on the border of La Línea, never recognized by Spain.
Picardo remembers how in October 2017 he ran into the then Spanish Foreign Minister, Alfonso Dastis, on the London Strand. According to the Gibraltarian minister, they greeted each other, and Picardo snapped at him, in Spanish: “Alfonso, speaking people understand each other. And if we do, another rooster would sing to us ”. Dastis replied: "Fabian, don't tempt me." The talks began in February 2018. Picardo, Joseph García and the prosecutor Michael Llamas would be integrated into the British mission, which also included Her Majesty's ambassador in Madrid. For Spain, three general directors of the Secretary of State for the EU. Minister Laya and Secretary of State, Ambassador Juan González-Barba, participated in the decisive rounds.
PP and Vox value that three-way negotiation as a capitulation at a time when the United Kingdom (and Gibraltar) were at their weakest point in three centuries. "It was a second surrender of the Spanish government," says José Manuel García-Margallo, the foreign minister who preceded Dastis in office. Margallo, 76 (who has just published a book on litigation that reinforces his thesis), leads the hawks, supporters of firmness (even a heavy hand) with Gibraltar until they achieve co-sovereignty. In his Madrid home, surrounded by books, decorations and oil paintings of his ancestors, the PP MEP affirms: “That negotiation that Dastis initiated represents a abandonment of our sovereignty. Gibraltar is a parasite of The Line. And Laya has handed it over to the British.There has been no will to move on. To begin with, because Rajoy did not want trouble. The English have defeated us again ”.
According to one of the Spanish negotiators, President Sánchez was a firm promoter of the pre-agreement, which was concluded at dawn on December 31, 2020, was announced by the minister that same morning and would serve as a draft for a treaty on the future relationship of Gibraltar with the EU after Brexit, which will have to be drafted and initialed in these months by the United Kingdom and the European Union (with the right of veto of Spain). The key to the treaty (with a duration, in principle, of four years) is that Gibraltar becomes a territory where Schengen is enjoyed (freedom of movement in some thirty countries) but without being Schengen. That is, under the responsibility of Spain, which will assume control of its borders as guarantor of the Schengen treaty in that area. According to the pre-agreement,The Gate will be demolished and the customs posts will be located in the port and airport of Gibraltar, where not Spanish police will operate, but agents from Frontex, a European border corps that has a thousand agents of EU nationalities. They will be customs blue helmets.
Alberta Ortiz Morier (left) and Magdalena Hernansanz, sisters of the Marillac Home, in La Linea, dedicated for three decades to terminally ill HIV patients.James Rajotte / EPS
The basic approach of Spain in the negotiation was, according to Secretary of State González-Barba, “to dismantle the Gate, create mutual trust and focus on a shared prosperity between the region and Gibraltar, but safeguarding sovereignty position”. Twisting diplomatic language so as not to allude to Gibraltar's reviled concept of “co-sovereignty”, the Spanish negotiators coined “shared responsibility”. All accepted. The United Kingdom admitted that Spain was the responsible State for Gibraltar in Schengen. And Gibraltar (with misgivings), the presence on its soil of Frontex agents. Many of them will be Spanish police officers in community uniform. And in four years, after 307 disagreements, anything can happen. Now everything is in the hands of the neat EU technocracy, which has to implement that treaty.He doesn't seem to be in a hurry.
It's not easy to find a plate or mug with Harry and Meghan's faces in the souvenir shops on Main Street. A shop assistant explains that they have stopped manufacturing them in the metropolis. In reality, references to the crown are very rare on the Rock, apart from the standard portraits in the seat of Government and Parliament. They only overwhelm in The Convent, since 1728 residence of the governor, the representative of the queen, who reigns but does not rule the Rock. Inside, Victorian splendor is resurrected. The banquet hall is decorated with portraits of Edward VII and George V. The governor, Sir David Steel, eats breakfast with linen tablecloths and silver service in the same room and on the same table where Churchill and Eisenhower designed the assault on Europe.At the foot of the palace steps, visitors are greeted by his Royal Navy vice admiral saber.
When you leave the Rock on foot in the direction of La Línea, you stop for a few seconds in front of the controversial Gate. It is rusty, stranded and surrounded by weeds. It seems impossible to close it again. It gives the impression that the easiest thing is to demolish it.