GIBRALTAR
MY HOME
Gibraltar is a rocky promontory, standing 1,400 feet high, at the western extremity of the Mediterranean, as the gateway from the Atlantic into Europe. Two and a quarter miles long and three quarters of a mile wide, it has a population of 30,000 people of which around 24,000 are Gibraltarians. The British are often blamed for having brought their weather to Gibraltar in that a cloud seems permanently to hover over the top of the Rock, in what is otherwise, a mild Mediterranean climate which Gibraltar shares with the rest of the area. However, we have it on the authority of Homer (B.C.573) describing the passage of his archetypal wanderer Ulysses, through what are believed to be the Straits of Gibraltar that:
"Of the two other rocks, the one reaches up to the sky
With sharp-pointed peak, and a cloud encompasses it
That never disperses, nor clear air ever reveals
Even in summer or autumn its heav'n soaring crest."
(as translated by S.O. Andrews)
We thus owe to Homer, our knowledge that Gibraltar is one of the oldest identifiable geographical locations.
HISTORY
History tells the same story. Gibraltar is known in anthropology as a home of Neanderthal man, and known to the Romans as "Mons Calpe". It is mentioned in Greek Mythology, together with its twin, "Mons Abylla" as one of the Two Pillars of Hercules.
Gibraltar took its present name from an Arab leader in the relatively more modern history of the World. In A.D. 711, a chieftain called Tarik ibn Zeyad, a berber, spearheading what was to become a wholescale invasion of the Iberian Peninsula, landed at the Southern end of the Rock. After quickly beating the Christian Defenders, he fortified himself and his people in what the Spanish historian Conde, in his historical works "Arabs in Spain" describes as:
"a hill at the extremity of Gezira Alhadra, which from that time was called Jebel Tarik, or the Mount of Tarik."
His memory lives on to this day in the name "Gibraltar", which is a corruption of the Arabic words "Jebel Tarik".
The invasion of the Iberian Peninsula had begun and gradually the whole of Iberia had been overrun except for the Cantabrian Mountains and the Pyrenees. For over six centuries, with a short break from 1309 to 1333, Gibraltar remained under Moorish occupation.
Although Tarik had ordered some fortifications to be built, no town existed in Gibraltar until 1160. In that year, Abdul Mamen, Caliph of Morocco, ordered a city to be built with all the necessary fortifications, including a castle. A small walled city then grew up on the western side of the Rock.
Gibraltar was
recaptured from the Moors by Spanish forces in 1462. Initially
taken on behalf of the King of Castile, it was besieged and taken
by the Duke of Medina Sidonia in 1466. Three years later, the
Duke's son was confirmed as the rightful owner of the Rock by
Royal Decree.
When Queen Isabella became Queen of Castille in 1474, she determined to get Gibraltar back. This was achieved in 1501. The following year she proudly gave Gibraltar a coat of arms, known as the Castle and Key, still in use as the arms of Gibraltar to this day.
Gibraltar remained a Spanish possession until the beginning of the eighteenth century. During the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1713), the Rock of Gibraltar became a pawn in the struggle between the two rival claimants to the Spanish throne, the Frenchman Philip of Anjou ("Philip V") and the Austrian Archduke Charles ("Charles 111"). Held by forces loyal to the former, Gibraltar fell to a combined Anglo- Dutch force supporting the latter in 1704. It was ceded to Britain in perpetuity by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.
Still a bone of contention in current times, a dispute as to sovereignty over its small territorial resources, continues to rage between Britain and Spain, principally at the behest of the people of Gibraltar. Between, 1969 and 1985, this dispute led to the closure of Gibraltar's frontier and the severance of all links and other communications between Gibraltar and Spain, whether by sea, land, air or even by telephone. Relations with Spain were restored to "normality" by the end of that period.
However, hopes that this conflict of nationalities within Europe would dissolve in the wake of the European Union, as it developed from economic union, into a union of a broader kind, have proved fruitless. The fortunes of Europe may gain or may wane, but at the moment, the Gibraltar question is at best or at worst, static.
However, the Gibraltarians are determined to decide their own future and as strong as the Rock itself.
