Gibraltar

A limestone headland at the mouth of the Mediterranean, held by Britain for three centuries and claimed by Spain throughout. The rock's name comes from Jabal Tariq, the mountain of Tariq, after the Berber commander who landed there in 711 to begin the conquest of Spain. Castile finally took it in 1462. An Anglo-Dutch force captured it in 1704 during the War of the Spanish Succession, and Spain ceded it in perpetuity by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 - a clause Spain has been trying to undo ever since, arguing that the treaty also grants it first refusal if Britain ever gives the territory up. The Great Siege of 1779 to 1783 lasted three years and seven months and failed, and the tunnels dug through the rock then were extended into an underground city during the Second World War. Its value was always the strait: any fleet moving between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean passes within sight. Franco closed the land frontier entirely from 1969 to 1985, cutting families in two. Gibraltarians have voted twice on sovereignty, rejecting Spanish proposals in 1967 and 2002 by margins above ninety-eight per cent. They also voted heavily to remain in the European Union in 2016 and left with Britain anyway. About thirty thousand people live on seven square kilometres. The macaques are the only wild monkeys in Europe. English and Spanish are both spoken, along with Llanito, a local mix of the two. The territory has no natural fresh water and long collected rain on concrete catchments. Its airport runway crosses the main road into Spain. Gibraltar keeps its own currency at parity with sterling.

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