The Rock

##### "Nation-Making in Gibraltar: From Fortress Colony to Finance Centre" by David Alvarez, in Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism (Nos. 1–2, 2001), University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada C1A 4P3.

Call it the mouse that didn’t roar. Tiny Gibraltar, the one-square-mile "Rock" at the southern tip of the Iberian peninsula, has been a more or less happy colony of Great Britain for nearly 300 years. It’s only because Britain withdrew troops and slashed subsidies in the 1970s and ’80s that the Rock’s 30,000 inhabitants are now thinking of loosening ties to the mother country.

"Mother country" is something of a misnomer. The native Spanish inhabitants fled after Britain took control in 1704 during the War of the Spanish Succession, and they were replaced by new arrivals from Britain and from all over the Mediterranean. The local culture was largely Catholic and Spanish-speaking.

During World War II, the British evacuated nearly the entire civilian population from the strategic enclave, notes Alvarez, who teaches at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan. The experience deepened the Gibraltarians’ loyalty to the Crown—many of them wound up in Britain—even as the jarring reminder of the Rock’s precarious position fostered interest in independence.

About one thing most Gibraltarians have been united: They want as little as possible to do with Spain. After his victory in the Spanish Civil War, dictator Francisco Franco tried to rally his countrymen by campaigning for the restoration of Gibraltar. Spain’s poverty, belligerence, and backward politics were not attractive. In a 1967 referendum, only 44 Gibraltarians voted for union with Spain. In 1969 Franco closed the border, and though it was reopened in 1985, controls remain strict.

Gibraltar has steadily gained greater selfgovernment and, especially in the last few decades, a stronger sense of national identity. Nationalists today are proud of Yanito—the widely used local version of "Spanglish"—and speak of their people as los Yanitos. A festive National Day holiday was inaugurated in 1993. Ongoing negotiations among Britain, Spain, and Gibraltar point toward some sort of de facto independence under British (or Spanish or European Union) sovereignty. But Alvarez is not so sure. Gibraltarians are forging new ties with Spaniards just over the border. To both groups, London and Madrid look far away. "Perhaps Gibraltarians and their . . . neighbours will eventually conclude that they have more in common with one another than they do with the nation-states of which they are now peripheral fragments."