Gibraltar

Gibraltar is a weird place. Our program had a day trip there today so I went because it was free and I thought that Gibraltar would be interesting. Really all I saw there was a huge rock and lots of monkeys. It’s a protectorate of the United Kingdom, but they drive on the right side of the road and they use Gibraltar Sterling, not the British pound for their currency. The language spoken there is a dialect of English called “Llanto,” basically spanglish with a British accent. Everything that people said was hilarious.

To the ancient Greeks, Gibraltar marked the end of the known world. Beyond was a waterfall at the edge of the world. It was also the site of one of the ancient Pillars of Hercules. Phoenicians and Carthaginians inhabited the caves on the Rock of Gibraltar and they are still used today – one cave has a newly built auditorium. The Arabs took it over in 711 and gave the place its name – Jebel-Tarik, which means Tarik’s mountain, named after the Arab general Tarik-Ibn-Zeyad. The name evolved into Gebral-Tarik and eventually Gibraltar. The Spanish took it over in 1462 and the British took it over in 1704, built a huge military base and they still control it today. The British defeated the French at the Battle of Trafalgar in Gibraltar 200 years ago. There were some celebrations going on for the 200th anniversary of that battle. The sovereignty of Gibraltar was a contentious issue between Spain and the UK for a long time. The border was closed completely in 1969 after disputes with Spain under Franco and it reopened in the 1980s.

Its other claim to fame is that John Lennon and Yoko Ono got married there in 1969. Their marriage was a big ordeal, they were not allowed to marry in Great Britain because they were both in the middle of divorces, they tried and failed to get married on the Channel Ferry and again in Paris so they flew to Gibraltar, got their marriage license and left in less than an hour. The song, “The Ballad of John and Yoko” tells the whole story. We stopped at the building that was the Registrar back then where they got their marriage license. The building is now a Juvenile Court. There is a famous picture of John and Yoko on Gibraltar’s airstrip, holding their up marriage license with the Rock in the background. We also went to the airstrip and took a picture in the spot where they stood.

Since it was supposed to be an educational trip, the first thing we did when we got there was go to the Gibraltar Chamber of Commerce to listen to the Secretary of Commerce talk about… commerce in Gibraltar. It’s a huge trading port for Europe and North Africa as it is the gateway between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. It’s also a tax haven and as part of the EU, any business in Gibraltar has full access to the entire European market. Lots of financial, shipping and internet businesses are based there. And of course tourism and the British military base are a big part of the economy. Gibraltar is only six square kilometers and has 28,000 residents but there is a lot of money and goods going through there. There is no sales tax and cigarettes and booze are really cheap. The most interesting thing that the Commerce guy talked about was how his office is trying to build up Gibraltar’s economic reputation by cracking down on smuggling and money laundering and promoting legitimate businesses.

Besides all the illegal and seedy things that go on in Gibraltar, the only other interesting thing there is all the monkeys. There are tons of monkeys. The British imported them from North Africa in the 18th century as pets and they found their home on the limestone cliffs of the Rock.

We had some pizza after the talk at the Chamber of Commerce. And then we walked down the main street where there were tons of tourist shops and lots of booze and tobacco. We took the tram up to the top of the Rock. We had to wait in line for a while, a huge cruise ship landed that day so there was an invasion of American tourists. The tram ride was cool, the cliff was really steep and there was a monkey waiting for us right outside the tram when we got off at the top. There is a big building and terraces and a nice restaurant at the top of the Rock. It was an amazing view. You could see the Spanish port-city Algeciras, miles and miles of blue Mediterranean Sea, dozens of huge ships, and the northern coast of Africa. There were monkeys walking around everywhere, hardly noticing all the people. It was a little unnerving at first. So many monkeys and so much monkey poop. Sometimes the monkeys jump on you or play with your backpack. But most of them were pretty well behaved. They do snatch plastic bags because they know they usually have food inside – we were warned about this. There were signs saying that there is a £500 fine for feeding the monkeys, but some people were feeding them anyways.

The monkeys seem to have a good time, they are comfortable with all the humans and they sit on the railings and play on the telescopes as if they are sea-saws. The only close encounter I had with one was when a female monkey hit me in the leg when I tried to take a picture of a baby monkey. I didn’t know that she was the mom and that she was going to get so mad at me. It was like a zoo without cages. One of the monkeys was sitting on a little wall, with his hands crossed in his lap. He just sat there looking at us; I got a picture next to him and pet him briefly. At first it was very strange to see monkeys everywhere and you had to be careful to step on one. They just sit up there looking at the views of Africa and Spain like everyone else. After a while it’s not so strange anymore.

We went back down on the tram and got off at the stop at the halfway point. There were some caves nearby but we didn’t have time to go in. We just saw some monkeys lying around, combing each other for fleas and eating scraps of food. Some of them looked like poor homeless monkeys, lying motionless in piles of food wrappers, kinda sad. At the bottom we walked through a botanical gardens. There were lots of beautiful trees and flowers. And then we walked back across the border and headed back to Sevilla. They didn’t stamp our passports, I’ll have to fly to London sometime in order to a British stamp in my passport.

Next weekend: Lisbon.