Gibraltar: The Most Happy Colony

“Why, sir!” exploded the British governor when a Spanish general threatened to attack Gibraltar in 1748. “If you dare give me any more of your damned nonsense, I will kick you from Hell to Hackney.” In the 260 years since Admiral Sir George Rooke captured the Rock from Spain, the kicking match has gone on almost nonstop. Last week, when General Francisco Franco opened his umpteenth campaign to regain the terrain for Spain, the British were ready with both feet.

Before the United Nations Decolonization Committee, Britain’s Cecil King reasoned that it was up to the people of Gibraltar to decide for themselves be tween British and Spanish rule; Franco vehemently opposes self-determination for the Rock. King received spirited support from Sir Joshua Hassan, the colony’s vigorous, voluble chief minister and a sixth-generation Gibraltarian. Says Sir Joshua: “If we had a plebiscite on whether Gibraltar was to remain British or become Spanish, my only fear would be that we might get a 120% majority for the status quo.”

Pescado & Chips. Gibraltar’s original inhabitants all fled when the British first landed. Most of today’s “Rock scorpions,” as Gibraltar’s 24,000 natives proudly call themselves, are not of Spanish ancestry but are descended from the Jewish, Maltese, Genoese and Moroccan immigrants whom the British encouraged to settle there. A tough, cocky breed, the citizens of Britain’s only European crown colony speak breakneck English and a kind of cockney Spanish, follow British soccer as avidly as the bullfights, and pride themselves on their stiff upper lips, the view from their 1,400-ft.-high peak (Africa is only 20 miles across the straits), and the fact that the great-great-great-great-grandfather of Britain’s Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home was one of the best governors they ever had.

Gibraltar’s main — and almost only —street is a delightful omnium-gatherum of the civilizations that have passed its way since Hercules rent Europe from Africa and made the Rock one of his Pillars. On the soft Mediterranean air, jasmine and mimosa mingle with the aroma of frying pescado and chips; from back alleys float shreds of flamenco music, tourist twist and the dogged strains of Methodist choir practice (Rock of Ages is a Gibraltarian favorite). Helmeted native bobbies impartially ogle vacationing English shopgirls, off-duty African belly dancers, and the Midwestern matrons among the 240,000 visitors who stop off there by sea each year.

“Shame of Spain.” In stores that are indistinguishable from London shops 1,085 miles away, Hindu merchants do a roaring trade in duty-free Japanese radios, American cigarettes and German cameras. The 15,000 Spanish workers who flock to work in the colony each day — and take home more than $7,000,000 a year in relatively high British wages — make a lucrative second living from smuggling goods that can be sold for a hefty profit in highly taxed Spain. Irked by its loss of revenues as a result of smuggling, the Franco regime calls the British enclave the “shame of Spain” — a name that ordinary Spaniards have mischievously applied to the shoddy, Madrid-made automobiles that are Franco’s pride.

Despite its carnival air, the great silver-grey rock is still first and foremost the world’s most impregnable natural fortress — one that might have been designed for the nuclear age. It is manned by 1,000 men of the Royal Air Force, some 700 Royal Navy personnel, and two companies of British soldiers. The troops, men from the Middlesex Regiment, provide a colorful guard for the governor, train Gibraltar’s draftees, and keep ready to support the island’s civil authorities in any emergency that might arise. The limestone Rock is a rabbit warren of caverns linked by 25 miles of deep-hewn tunnels. Unsinkable, indestructible, the bastion has not once fallen to its foes in the score of sieges and blockades it has undergone since the Union Jack was first hoisted over the straits.

If ancient superstition holds true, Gibraltar will be British just as long as it is inhabited by the famed Barbary apes that somehow found their way there from Morocco. In 1941, after Hitler promised to deliver the Rock to Franco in return for Spain’s wartime support, word reached Winston Churchill that the simian population was dangerously depleted. The Prime Minister cabled back: STRENGTH OF ROCK APE PACK TO BE KEPT UP AT ALL COST. It was — and the cost was high indeed. For every ape smuggled onto the Rock by Franco’s soldiery, the British handed over a case of precious Scotch.