Spain, Great Britain Agree to Open Access to Rock of Gibraltar
Of course, you’d have to be living under a rock not to have heard of the Rock. You probably know it’s at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, connected to Spain by a short, sandy isthmus. You probably know that it rises high above the Strait of Gibraltar, which separates Spain from Africa and spills the Mediterranean Sea into the vast Atlantic beyond. You may even know that to the ancients, the Rock of Gibraltar was the end of the world.
But do you know that today, it’s 2.5 square miles (6.5 sq km) of controversy? That to the British, it’s a strategically important naval base? And that to the Spanish, it’s an old, open wound? Here’s the dirt on the Rock.
Hercules’ Rock
Recent excavations show that Gibraltar has been inhabited periodically since prehistoric times, but the Greeks wrote the most famous chapter in its ancient history. Along with Mount Hacho, across the strait in Morocco, the Rock of Gibraltar is one of the “Pillars of Hercules.” According to legend, the big guy created the pillars on his way to steal cattle from a triple-bodied monster called Geryon.
But the Rock was important to the ancients for more than just mythological reasons. Phoenician sailors built silver columns on top of it and Mount Hacho to mark the limits of the Mediterranean’s navigable waters, and the Romans reportedly coined the phrase “ne plus ultra” – meaning “no more beyond” – to refer to the strait. For those who knew nothing of transatlantic lands, to sail beyond Gibraltar was to slip past the edge of the world.
Tariq’s Rock
The ancients actually called the Rock “Calpe.” It didn’t get its current name until after 711, when a Muslim general named Tariq ibn-Ziyad led the Moorish invasion of Spain. To hail their conquering hero, the Moors named the big rock “Jabal Tariq,” Arabic for Mount Tariq. It took only a few centuries of western influence to turn Jabal Tariq into “Gibraltar.”
The Muslims built the first city in Gibraltar in the 12th century. Christian forces seized it in 1309, but the Moors recaptured it a generation later, and the Rock remained under Muslim rule until 1462. Eventually, Christian Spaniards forced the Muslims off the Iberian Peninsula, and in 1501, Queen Isabella officially claimed the Rock for Spain.
Whose Rock Now?
Spain held Gibraltar for more than 200 years, until the early 18th century, when a trans-European war broke out over who should become Spain’s king. The “War of the Spanish Succession” pitted Britain, the Dutch Republic, Denmark, and Austria against France, Spain, and a bevy of Italian and German principalities. Basically, the former wanted to prevent the duke of Anjou, grandson of France’s King Louis XIV, from becoming king of Spain, and so increasing French power.
In 1704, a combined British and Dutch force under Sir George Rooke captured Gibraltar, and Rooke claimed the Rock for Britain. The war dragged on for nearly a decade more. Peace finally came through the Treaty of Utrecht, under which Spain ceded Gibraltar to the British.
As early as 1727, and again in 1779, the Spanish laid siege to the Rock to try to take it back. They failed both times. In 1830, Britain officially made Gibraltar a colony, which it remains. The issue still divides the countries. Britain can point to the Treaty of Utrecht and argue “paper covers Rock.” Spain, on the other hand, argues for “territorial integrity.”
Britain also has to weigh the wishes of Gibraltar’s 30,000 residents, and they say they want to remain British. In 1967, they voted 12,138 to 44 to remain a British dependency. Then, in 2002, nearly 99 percent of voters rejected the idea of joint British-Spanish sovereignty. The tripartite agreement to be signed next month ducks the whole issue.
