My thanks to John, a regular reader who sent me this topical piece earlier today:
All right, Spain. You’ve asked for this.
You’ve issued one of your five-yearly threats to seize,
impound, disrupt, tax or otherwise penalise Gibraltar and its residents on the
grounds that this small bit of rock is attached to the bigger bit of rock you
call home.
For some, this provides irrefutable proof that Gibraltar is
Spanish. Presumably in the same way that China is Russian and Denmark belongs
to Germany.
Not letting logic get in his way, your foreign minister has
declared ‘the party’s over’ and threatened 100 Euro fines for people crossing
the border, banning flights from Spanish air space and generally started
behaving like Franco in a particularly belligerent mood.
O.K. Let’s look at the facts, shall we?
1. Gibraltar is about as Spanish as pie and chips. The first
recorded occupants were Lebanese traders, followed by Germans, Romans, and the
Islamic empire. The first castle was built by a Berber sultan and it wasn’t
captured by the Spanish until 1462.
2. Twelve years later you sold it.
3. You spent 200 years or so invading much of the world,
killing millions of American Indians with smallpox, and burning and torturing those
that survived because they didn’t think eating a thin bit of flour and water
was the same thing as eating the body of a man they’d never met.
4. You tried to do the same here, first by marriage and then
by invasion. Not the best way to make friends.
5. You did nothing very much with Gibraltar for two
centuries and then lost it in a fight with us and the Dutch. The fight was
about whether a French prince could succeed to the Spanish crown and thus rule
half of Europe. Most of Europe didn’t like the idea, and you were invaded by
pretty much everyone up to and including the Holy Roman Empire.
6. Unsurprisingly, you lost. We all signed the Treaty of
Utrecht in which the French prince was allowed to have Spain so long as he
promised to be nice and sign away a few things. Article X states: “The Catholic
King does hereby, for himself, his heirs and successors, yield to the Crown of
Great Britain the full and entire propriety of the town and castle of
Gibraltar, together with the port, fortifications and forts hereunto belonging;
and he gives up the said propriety to be held and enjoyed absolutely with all
manner of right for ever, without any exception or impediment whatsoever.”
7. There’s not a lot of wriggle-room in that. Lawyers, eh?
8. What you gave us in 1714 was a 300-year-old Moorish
castle, a medieval town and a fishing port. In the years since we have turned
it into a naval base, a financial centre, tourist destination and online gaming
base which turns over £650million a year and provides employment for 10,000 of
your citizens. You’re welcome.
9. The last person who seriously laid claim to it is the
fascist dictator you’d rather forget, and there were referendums in 1967 and
2002 which found 99% of the population wanted to remain British.
10. In 500 years of warring you’ve lost far more often than
you’ve won and you have, most noticeably, consistently failed to win against
us. You tried to seize Gibraltar by force twice in the 18th century and failed
miserably on each attempt, since we smashed your Armada in 1588 it’s never been
the same since.
Considering all this, it is entirely understandable that
with your economy on its arse, suicides endemic following eviction and a
government not so much beleaguered as halfway to hell and still digging you
might feel the need to hark back to the days of empire and rattle the old sabre
a bit.
You are though, on rather shaky ground, not just because you
signed a contract, but the 30,000 Gibraltarians want you in charge of them
about as much as they want to contract the Ebola virus.
