Consolidation and sieges Despite its later importance to Britain, Gibraltar was initially seen by the British Government as more of a bargaining counter than a strategic asset. Its defences continued to be neglected, its garrisoning was an unwelcome expense, and Spanish pressure threatened Britain's vital overseas trade. Spain's loss of Gibraltar and other Spanish territories in the Mediterranean was resented by the Spanish public and monarchy alike. and peace was eventually restored by the
Treaty of The Hague. In January 1727, Spain declared the nullification of the Treaty of Utrecht's provisions relating to Gibraltar on the grounds that Britain had violated its terms by extending Gibraltar's fortifications beyond the permitted limits, allowing Jews and Moors to live there, failing to protect Catholics and harming Spain's revenues by allowing
smuggling. Spanish forces began
a siege and bombardment of Gibraltar the following month, causing severe damage through intensive cannon fire. The defenders withstood the threat and were reinforced and resupplied by a British naval force. Bad weather and supply problems caused the Spanish to call off the siege at the end of June. Britain's hold on Gibraltar was reconfirmed in 1729 by the
Treaty of Seville, which satisfied neither side; the Spanish had wanted Gibraltar returned, while the British disliked the continuation of the restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Utrecht. Spain responded the following year by constructing a line of fortifications across the upper end of the peninsula, cutting off Gibraltar from its hinterland. The fortifications, known to the British as the Spanish Lines, and to Spain as
La Línea de Contravalación (the Lines of
Contravallation), were later to give their name to the modern town of
La Línea de la Concepción. Gibraltar was effectively blockaded by land but was able to rely on trade with Morocco for food and other supplies. Gibraltar's civilian population increased steadily through the century to form a disparate mixture of Britons, Genoese, Jews, Spaniards and Portuguese. By 1754 there were 1,733 civilians in addition to 3,000 garrison soldiers and their 1,426 family members, bringing the total population to 6,159. The civilian population increased to 3,201 by 1777, including 519 Britons, 1,819 Roman Catholics (meaning Spanish, Portuguese, Genoese etc.) and 863 Jews. Each group had its own distinctive niche in the fortress. The Spanish historian
López de Alaya, writing in 1782, characterised their roles thus: Life for the ordinary soldiers of the garrison was tedious and harsh, with corporal punishment administered for even the most trivial offences. A drummer in the
20th Regiment of Foot became famous for being the most-flogged man in the British Army, receiving 30,000 lashes during his 14 years stationed at Gibraltar. Suicide and desertions were common due to boredom, shortages of food and the poor living conditions. At
Middle Hill Battery, guards had to be posted to prevent soldiers from deserting by lowering themselves on ropes down the cliff face. One soldier wrote despairingly in his diary: from
Franco-
Spanish forces. The fortifications of Gibraltar were modernised and upgraded in the 1770s with the construction of new batteries, bastions and curtain walls. The driving force behind this programme was the highly experienced Colonel (later Major General)
William Green, who was to play a key role a few years later as chief engineer of Gibraltar. He was joined in 1776 by Lieutenant General
George Augustus Elliott, a veteran of earlier wars against France and Spain who took over the governorship of Gibraltar at a key moment. Britain's successes in the
Seven Years' War had left it with expensive commitments in the Americas that had to be paid for and had catalysed the formation of an anti-British coalition in Europe. The British Government's attempt to levy new taxes on the
Thirteen Colonies of
British America led to the outbreak of the
American War of Independence in 1776. Spain declared war on Britain and
started the Anglo-Spanish War and then tried to recover Gibraltar with French aid. Deliberate targeting of civilians was unprecedented at the time and was to continue for 2 years, obliterating any architectural heritage from the Spanish period. Unable to starve the garrison out, the French and Spanish attempted further attacks by land and sea. The night before the Grand Attack on 27 November 1781, the British garrison filed silently out of their defence works and made a surprise
sortie, routing the besieging infantry in their trenches and postponed the grand assault on The Rock for some time. On 13 September 1782 the
Bourbon allies launched their great attack; 5190 fighting men, both French and Spanish, aboard ten of the newly engineered '
floating batteries' with 138 heavy guns, as well as 18 ships of the line, 40 Spanish gunboats and 20 bomb-vessels with a total of 30,000 sailors and marines. They were supported by 86 land guns–8,000 French) on land intending to assault the fortifications once they had been demolished. The 138 guns opened fire from floating batteries in the Bay and the 86 guns on the land side, directed on the fortifications after weeks of preparatory artillery fire. But the garrison replied with
red-hot shot to set fire to and sink the attacker's floating batteries and warships in the Bay. The British destroyed three of the floating batteries, which blew up as the 'red-hot shot' did its job. The other seven batteries were scuttled by the Spanish. In addition 719 men on board the ships (many of whom drowned) were casualties. In Britain the
Admiralty considered plans for a major relief of Gibraltar, opting to send a larger, but slower fleet, rather than a smaller faster one. In September 1782 a large fleet left
Spithead under
Richard Howe, arriving off
Cape St. Vincent on 9 October. The following evening a gale blew up, scattering the Spanish and French fleet and allowing Howe to sail unopposed into Gibraltar. A total of 34 ships of the line escorted 31 transport ships, which delivered supplies, food, and ammunition. The fleet also brought the
25th and
59th regiments of foot bringing the total number of the garrison to over 7,000 Howe then sailed out and fought
an indecisive battle with the combined allied fleet before withdrawing to Britain in line with his orders. The siege was continued for some months longer, but in the spring of 1783 a preliminary peace agreement brought the cessation of hostilities. Finally, in February 1783 the siege was lifted. The outcome of the Great Siege made it politically impossible for the British government to again consider trading away Gibraltar, even though King
George III warned that it would be the source "of another war, or at least of a constant lurking enmity" and expressed his wish "if possible to be rid of Gibraltar ... I shall not think peace complete if we do not get rid of Gibraltar." General Eliott and the garrison were lauded for their heroism, and the tenacity of their defence of Gibraltar acquired, as one writer puts it, "a sort of cult status". The British public acquired "an emotional, albeit irrational, attachment to the place." The reputed impregnability of Gibraltar gave rise to the expression, which is still current today, of something being as "strong as the Rock of Gibraltar".
Gibraltar as a colony Following the Great Siege, the civilian population of Gibraltar – which had fallen to under a thousand – expanded rapidly as the territory became both a place of economic opportunity and a refuge from the
Napoleonic Wars. Britain's loss of North American colonies in 1776 led to much of her trade being redirected to new markets in India and the
East Indies. The favoured route to the east was via
Egypt, even before the
Suez Canal had been built, and Gibraltar was the first British port reached by ships heading there. The new maritime traffic gave Gibraltar a greatly increased role as a trading port. At the same time, it was a haven in the western Mediterranean from the disruption of the Napoleonic Wars. Many of the new immigrants were Genoese people who had fled Napoleon's annexation of the old
Republic of Genoa. By 1813 nearly a third of the population consisted of Genoese and Italians. Portuguese made up another 20 per cent, Spaniards 16.5 per cent, Jews 15.5 per cent, British 13 per cent and Menorcans 4 per cent. The young
Benjamin Disraeli described the inhabitants of Gibraltar as a mixture of "Moors with costumes as radiant as a rainbow or Eastern melodrama, Jews with
gaberdines and skull-caps, Genoese, Highlanders and Spanish." The inhabitants had a clear pecking order, with British officers at the top and Jews at the bottom. The American naval officer
Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, writing in 1829, described the market traders and shoppers in what is now
John Mackintosh Square: Gibraltar was an unhealthy place to live due to its poor sanitation and living conditions. It was repeatedly ravaged by epidemics of
yellow fever and
cholera, which killed thousands of the inhabitants and members of the garrison.
Lord Nelson wrote the following March that he hoped that Gibraltar "will escape the dreadful scourge of last autumn, and I hope that
General Fox has burnt down all the small houses at the back of the Town; and perhaps if half the Town went with them, it would be better for the Rock." , which took plane on 6 July 1801 off Gibraltar During the wars against
Napoleonic France, Gibraltar served first as a
Royal Navy base from which blockades of the ports of
Cádiz,
Cartagena and
Toulon were mounted, then as a gateway for British forces and supplies in the
Peninsular War between 1807 and 1814. In July 1801 a French and Spanish naval force fought the two
Battles of Algeciras off Gibraltar, which ended in disaster for the Spanish when two of their largest warships each mistook the other for the enemy, engaged each other, collided, caught fire and exploded, killing nearly 2,000 Spanish sailors. Two years later Gibraltar served as a base for Lord Nelson in his efforts to bring the French Admiral
Pierre-Charles Villeneuve to battle, which culminated in the
Battle of Trafalgar in which Nelson was killed and Villeneuve captured. Nelson sailed to Gibraltar in June 1803 to launch the
Trafalgar Campaign and oversee the blockades against France and Spain, though he spent little time ashore. On 28 October 1805, a week after the Battle of Trafalgar, the badly damaged
HMS Victory returned to Gibraltar with Nelson's body aboard;
Admiral Collingwood's dispatch to General Fox, announcing the victory and Nelson's death, was printed in the pages of the
Gibraltar Chronicle. It thus became the first newspaper in the world to report the victory at Trafalgar, two weeks ahead of
The Times. In the years after Trafalgar, Gibraltar became a major supply base for supporting the
Spanish uprising against Napoleon. The French invasion of Spain in 1808 prompted Gibraltar's British garrison to cross the border and destroy the ring of Spanish fortresses around the bay, as well as the old Spanish fortified lines on the isthmus, to deny the French the ability to besiege Gibraltar or control the bay from shore batteries. French forces reached as far as San Roque, just north of Gibraltar, but did not attempt to target Gibraltar itself as they believed that it was impregnable. The French
besieged Tarifa, further down the coast, in 1811–12 but gave up after a month. Gibraltar faced no further military threat for a century. on Parade at Gibraltar After peace returned, Gibraltar underwent major changes during the reformist governorship of General Sir
George Don, who took up his position in 1814. The damage caused by the Great Siege had long since been repaired, but Gibraltar was still essentially a medieval town in its layout and narrow streets. A lack of proper drainage had been a major contributing factor in the epidemics that had frequently ravaged the fortress. Don implemented improved sanitation and drainage as well as introducing street lighting, rebuilding
St Bernard's Hospital to serve the civilian population and initiating the construction of the
Cathedral of the Holy Trinity to serve Gibraltar's Protestant civilians. For the first time, civilians began to have a say in the running of Gibraltar. An Exchange and Commercial Library was founded in 1817, with the Exchange Committee initially focused on furthering the interests of merchants based in the fortress. The Committee evolved into a local civilian voice in government, although it had no real powers. A City Council was established in 1821, and in 1830 Gibraltar became a
Crown colony. In the same year, the
Gibraltar Police Force was established, modelled on London's pioneering
Metropolitan Police Service, and
a Supreme Court was set up to try civil, criminal and mixed cases. The economic importance of Gibraltar changed following the invention of
steamships; the first one to reach Gibraltar's harbour arrived there in 1823. The advent of steamships caused a major shift in trade patterns in the Mediterranean. Transshipment, which had previously been Gibraltar's principal economic mainstay, was largely replaced by the much less lucrative work of servicing visiting steamships through coaling, victualling and ferrying of goods. Although Gibraltar became a key coaling station where British steamships refuelled on the way to
Alexandria or
Cape Horn, the economic changes resulted in a prolonged depression that lasted until near the end of the century. The demand for labour for coaling was such that Gibraltar instituted the practice of relying on large numbers of imported Spanish workers. A shanty town sprang up on the site of the old Spanish fortifications just across the border, which became the workers' town of La Línea de la Concepción. The poor economy meant that Gibraltar's population barely changed between 1830 and 1880, but it was still relatively more prosperous than the severely impoverished south of Spain. As a consequence, La Línea's population doubled over the same period and then doubled again in the following 20 years. , 1833 Visiting Gibraltar in the mid-19th century, the English writer
Richard Ford wrote in his
Handbook for Travellers in Spain that "the differences of nations and costumes are very curious: a motley masquerade is held in this halfway house between Europe, Asia, and Africa, where every man appears in his own dress and speaks his own language. Civilization and barbarism clash here indeed ... or the Rock, like Algeria, is a refuge for destitute scamps, and is the asylum for people of all nations who expatriate themselves for their country's good." He described the town's Main Street as "the antithesis of a Spanish town", lined with "innumerable pot–houses", which made it a "den of gin and intemperance; every thing and body is in motion; there is no quiet, no repose; all is hurry and scurry, for time is money and Mammon is the god of Gib, as the name is vulgarized ... The entire commerce of the Peninsula seems condensed into this microcosmus, where all creeds and nations meet, and most of them adepts at the one grand game of beggar my neighbour." Relations with Spain during the 19th century were generally amicable. Regular British soldiers were forbidden to cross the border but officers could cross freely into Spain, as could the inhabitants of Gibraltar, some of whom had second houses in the town of San Roque about away. The garrison introduced the very British activity of
fox hunting in the form of the
Royal Calpe Hunt, started in 1812, which saw British officers and local Spanish gentry pursuing foxes across the Campo de Gibraltar. A major bone of contention during this period was the issue of smuggling across the border. The problem arose after Spain imposed tariffs on foreign manufactured goods in a bid to protect Spain's own fledgling industrial enterprises. Tobacco was also heavily taxed, providing one of the government's principal sources of revenue. The inevitable result was that Gibraltar, where cheap tobacco and goods were readily available, became a centre of intensive smuggling activity. The depressed state of the economy caused smuggling to become a mainstay of Gibraltar's trade; Despite the improvements made earlier in the century, living conditions in Gibraltar were still dire. A Colonel Sayer, who was garrisoned at Gibraltar in the 1860s, described the town as "composed of small and crowded dwellings, ill ventilated, badly drained and crammed with human beings. Upwards of 15,000 persons are confined within a space covering a square mile [2.5 km2]." Although there were sewers, a lack of water made them virtually useless in summer and the poorer inhabitants were sometimes unable to afford enough water even to wash themselves. One doctor commented that "the open street is much more desirable than many of the lodgings of the lower orders of Gibraltar." The establishment of a Board of Sanitary Commissioners in 1865 and work on new drainage, sewerage and water supply systems prevented further major epidemics. A system of underground reservoirs capable of containing 5 million gallons (22.7 million litres) of water was constructed within the
Rock of Gibraltar. Other municipal services arrived as well – a gas works in 1857, a telegraph link by 1870 and electricity by 1897. By the end of the 19th century, the "Gibraltarians" were given an official identity for the first time. There were 1,869 Spaniards (of whom 1,341 were female) with smaller numbers of Portuguese, Italians, French and Moroccans.
Gibraltar at war and peace visiting Gibraltar harbour in February 1909 By the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th, Gibraltar's future as a British colony was in serious doubt. Its economic value was diminishing, as a new generation of steamships with a much longer range no longer needed to stop there to refuel en route to more distant ports. Its military value was also increasingly in question due to advances in military technology. New long-range guns firing high-explosive shells could easily reach Gibraltar from across the bay or in the Spanish hinterland, while the development of
torpedoes meant that ships at anchor in the bay were also vulnerable. The garrison could hold out for a long time, but if the Spanish coast was held by an enemy, Gibraltar could not be resupplied in the fashion that had saved it in the Great Siege 120 years earlier. A Spanish proposal to swap Gibraltar for
Ceuta on the other side of the Strait was considered but was eventually rejected. It was ultimately decided that Gibraltar's strategic position as a naval base outweighed its potential vulnerability from the landward side. From 1889, the
Royal Navy was greatly expanded and both Gibraltar and
Malta were equipped with new, torpedo-proof harbours and expanded, modernised dockyards. Under the reforming leadership of
First Sea Lord Admiral John "Jacky" Fisher, Gibraltar became the base for the
Atlantic Fleet. In the British public's imagination, Gibraltar was seen as "a symbol of British naval power [and] a symbol of the empire that has been built and, more than the British lion or even
John Bull himself, has come to represent Britain's power and prestige across the world." The value of the naval base was soon apparent when the
First World War broke out in August 1914. Only a few minutes after the declaration of war went into effect at midnight on 3/4 August, a German liner was captured by a torpedo boat from Gibraltar, followed by three more enemy ships the following day. Although Gibraltar was well away from the main battlefields of the war – Spain remained neutral and the Mediterranean was not contested as it was in the Second World War – it played an important role in the Allied fight against the
German U-boat campaign. The naval base was heavily used by Allied warships for resupplying and repairs. The Bay of Gibraltar was also used as a forming-up point for Allied convoys, while German U-boats stalked the Strait looking for targets. On two occasions, Gibraltar's guns unsuccessfully fired on two U-boats travelling through the Strait. Anti-submarine warfare was in its infancy and it proved impossible to prevent U-boats operating through the Strait. Only two days before the end of the war, on 9 November 1918,
SM UB-50 torpedoed and sank the British
battleship HMS Britannia off
Cape Trafalgar to the west of Gibraltar. The restoration of peace inevitably meant a reduction in military expenditure, but this was more than offset by a large increase in liner and cruise ship traffic to Gibraltar. British liners travelling to and from India and
South Africa customarily stopped there, as did French, Italian and Greek liners travelling to and from America. Oil bunkering became a major industry alongside coaling. An airfield was established in 1933 on the isthmus linking Gibraltar to Spain. Civil society was reformed as well; in 1921 an Executive Council and an elected City Council were established to advise the governor, in the first step towards self-government of the territory. The outbreak of the
Spanish Civil War in July 1936 presented Gibraltar with major security concerns, as it was initially on the front lines of the conflict. The ultimately successful rebellion led by General
Francisco Franco broke out across the Strait in Morocco, and the
Spanish Republican government sought on several occasions to regain control of the
Nationalist-controlled area around Algeciras. Although Gibraltar was not directly affected by the fighting, the war caused significant disruption. An undetermined number of Spanish refugees, perhaps as many as 10,000 persons, fled to Gibraltar, resulting in severe overcrowding. A Non-Intervention Patrol was mounted by the Royal Navy, operating from Gibraltar, to prevent foreign military aid reaching the belligerents in Spain. In May 1937, one of the ships involved in the patrol, the destroyer
HMS Hunter, hit a Nationalist mine and had to be towed back to Gibraltar with eight of her crew dead. With Europe sliding towards a general war, the British Government decided to strengthen Gibraltar's defences and upgrade the naval base to accommodate the latest generation of battleships and aircraft carriers. A Gibraltar Defence Force (now the
Royal Gibraltar Regiment) was established in March 1939 to assist with home defence.
Second World War The outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 did not initially cause much disruption in Gibraltar, as Spain and
Italy were neutral at the time. The situation changed drastically after April 1940 when
Germany invaded France, with
Italy joining the invasion of French territory in June 1940. The British Government feared that Spain would also enter the war and it was decided to
evacuate the entire civilian population of Gibraltar in May 1940. The airfield, which was now designated
RAF North Front, was extended (using soil from the tunnelling works) so that it could accommodate bomber aircraft being ferried to North Africa. The garrison was greatly expanded, reaching a peak of 17,000 in 1943 with another 20,000 sailors and airmen accommodated in Gibraltar at the same time. inspecting the men aboard the
Rodney, Gibraltar, January 1943 During the
Battle of the Atlantic, Gibraltar played a key role. The
Ocean Convoy System adopted by Britain after the
fall of France in June 1940 ran on two routes – an east–west route between the UK and North America, and a north–south route between the UK, Gibraltar and
Freetown in British-ruled
Sierra Leone. Even before the war, Gibraltar had been designated as one of the main assembly-points for convoys heading inbound to Europe. From late 1942, Gibraltar was the destination of the Central Atlantic convoy-route between the United States and the Mediterranean in support of Allied operations in
North Africa,
Sicily,
Italy and elsewhere in the region. A huge number of Allied troops and ships travelled this route; between November 1942 and August 1945, 11,119 ships travelled in 189 convoys between Gibraltar and the United States and vice versa, and between December 1942 and March 1945, 536,134 troops were transported from the United States to Gibraltar. Gibraltar came under direct attacks, both overtly and covertly, on several occasions during the war.
Vichy French aircraft carried out bombing attacks in July and September 1940 after the
surprise attack on their fleet by the Royal Navy on 3 July 1940, and Italian and German long-range aircraft made sporadic raids, though the damage caused was not significant. Franco's position changed subtly from one of neutrality to "non-belligerence", which in practice meant allowing the Axis powers to operate covertly against Gibraltar from Spanish territory. Despite Franco's willingness to overlook German and Italian activities in and around the Bay of Gibraltar, he decided not to join
Hitler's planned
Operation Felix to seize the territory. A major factor influencing his decision was the vulnerability of Spain's food supplies, as the country was unable to feed itself after the destruction of the Spanish Civil War. It relied on grain imports from the Americas, which would certainly have been cut off had Franco gone to war with the Allies. Hitler eventually abandoned Felix to pursue other priorities such as the
invasions of Yugoslavia (April 1941) and
the Soviet Union Three Spaniards being run as spies and saboteurs by the German
Abwehr were caught in Gibraltar in 1942–43 and
hanged. In the war's aftermath, Gibraltar took decisive steps towards implementing civilian self-governance over most issues of public policy. The
Association for the Advancement of Civil Rights (AACR), led by Gibraltarian lawyer
Joshua Hassan, won all of the seats in the first post-war City Council elections in 1945. Women were given the right to vote in 1947, and in 1950 a Legislative Council was established. A two-party system had emerged by 1955 with the creation of the
Commonwealth Party as a rival to the AACR. That same year Hassan became the first Mayor of Gibraltar. The Governor still retained overall authority and could overrule the Legislative Council. This inevitably caused tension and controversy if the Governor and Legislative Council disagreed, but in 1964 the British Government agreed to confine the powers of the Governor to matters of defence, security and foreign relations. A new constitution was decided on in 1968 and promulgated in 1969, merging the City Council and Legislative Council into a single House of Assembly (known as the
Gibraltar Parliament since 2006) with 15 elected members, two non-elected officials and a speaker. The old title of "Colony of Gibraltar" was dropped and the territory was renamed as the City of Gibraltar. Gibraltar's post-war relationship with Spain was marred by an intensification of the long-running dispute over the territory's sovereignty. Although Spain had not attempted to use military force to regain Gibraltar since 1783, the question of sovereignty was still present. Disputes over smuggling and the sea frontier between Gibraltar and Spain had repeatedly caused diplomatic tensions during the 19th century. The neutral zone between Spain and Gibraltar had also been a cause of disputes during the 19th and 20th centuries. This originally had been an undemarcated strip of sand on the isthmus between the British and Spanish lines of fortifications, about wide – the distance of a cannon shot in 1704. Over the years, however, Britain took control of most of the neutral zone, much of which is now occupied by Gibraltar's airport. This expansion provoked repeated protests from Spain. Spain's push to regain sovereignty over Gibraltar was fuelled by the
decolonisation agenda of the United Nations, which had been initiated in 1946. In that year, Britain had listed Gibraltar among other "Overseas Dependent Territories" in conjunction with the drive towards decolonisation, but it was not appreciated at the time that Gibraltar was in a unique position; due to the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht, it could only be British or Spanish and could not gain independence. Franco's government calculated that Britain would be willing to give up an expensive possession that no longer had a great deal of military value, but this turned out to be a fundamental misjudgement. The British government followed a policy of allowing its colonies to become self-governing entities before giving them the option of independence. Almost all took it, choosing to become independent republics. That option was not available to Gibraltar under the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht, which required that if Britain ever relinquished control it was to be handed back to Spain. The Gibraltarians strongly opposed this and organised
a referendum in September 1967 in which 12,138 voters opted to remain with Britain with just 44 supporting union with Spain, though a further 55 voting slips were blank or invalid. and stating that the "real" Gibraltarians were the descendants of the Spanish inhabitants who had resettled elsewhere in the region over 250 years earlier. Further restrictions were imposed in 1964, and in 1966 the frontier was closed to vehicles. The following year, Spain closed its airspace to aircraft taking off or landing at
Gibraltar International Airport. In 1969, after the passing of the
Gibraltar Constitution Order, to which Spain strongly objected, the frontier was closed completely and Gibraltar's telecommunications links through Spain were cut. The Spanish decision had major consequences not only for the political relationship between Spain and the United Kingdom, but for the people of Gibraltar, many of whom had relatives or homes in Spain. As one of the Gibraltarians who suffered the closure of the frontier explains: Franco's death in 1975 led to the beginnings of diplomatic movement between Britain and Spain on the Gibraltar issue, though not immediately. Spain applied to join the
European Economic Community (EEC) and
NATO, for which it needed British support. In 1980, talks between British and Spanish ministers led to the
Lisbon Agreement, a statement on co-operation between the two countries that committed them to starting negotiations on Gibraltar's future and lifting the Spanish restrictions on communications with Gibraltar. Although Britain promised to "honour the freely and democratically expressed wishes of the people of Gibraltar", Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher indicated in the
House of Commons that sovereignty would be on the table, in a change from the previous policy. However, the border was not reopened due to "technical issues" – code for unresolved issues between the two governments – and the agreement was strongly opposed by many Gibraltarians, who did not wish their sovereignty to be under discussion and objected to the lack of Gibraltarian representatives at the talks. The outbreak of the
Falklands War in 1982 caused a further delay.
Argentina carried out
an unsuccessful sabotage operation, kept secret at the time, that was intended to sink a Royal Navy frigate in Gibraltar's harbour; the saboteurs were captured by the Spanish police in Algeciras before they could carry out their attack. A further agreement was reached in
Brussels in 1984, which clarified the Lisbon Agreement and required that Britain allow Spaniards to live and work in Gibraltar, which they would have the right to do anyway as EEC citizens. The border was finally fully reopened on 4–5 February 1985. The RAF presence was also downgraded; although the airport officially remains an RAF base, military aircraft are no longer permanently stationed there. The British garrison, which had been present since 1704, was withdrawn in 1990 following defence cutbacks at the end of the
Cold War. A number of military units continue to be stationed in Gibraltar under the auspices of
British Forces Gibraltar; the garrison was replaced with locally recruited units of the Royal Gibraltar Regiment, while a Royal Navy presence is continued through the
Gibraltar Squadron, responsible for overseeing the security of Gibraltar's territorial waters. In March 1988
a British military operation against members of the
Provisional IRA (PIRA) planning a car bomb attack in Gibraltar ended in controversy when the
Special Air Service shot and killed all three PIRA members.
Tourism in Gibraltar was encouraged through refurbishing and pedestrianising key areas of the city, building a new passenger terminal to welcome cruise ship visitors and opening new marinas and leisure facilities. By 2011, Gibraltar was attracting over 10 million visitors a year compared to a population of 29,752, giving it one of the highest
tourist-to-resident ratios in the world. The government also encouraged the development of new industries such as financial services,
duty-free shopping,
casinos and Internet gambling. Branches of major British chains such as
Marks & Spencer were opened in Gibraltar to encourage visits from British expatriates on the nearby
Costa del Sol. To facilitate the territory's economic expansion, a major programme of land reclamation was carried out; a tenth of Gibraltar's present-day land area was reclaimed from the sea. These initiatives proved enormously successful. By 2007, Chief Minister
Peter Caruana was able to boast that Gibraltar's economic success had made it "one of the most affluent communities in the entire world." Today, Gibraltar has one
Big Four accounting firm office per 10,000 people, the second highest in the world after the
British Virgin Islands, and a bank per 1,700 people, the fifth most banks per capita in the world. Gibraltar's relationship with Spain continued to be a sensitive subject. By 2002, Britain and Spain had proposed an agreement to share sovereignty over Gibraltar. However, it was opposed by the government of Gibraltar, which put it to
a referendum in November 2002. The agreement was rejected by 17,000 votes to 187 – a majority of 98.97%. Although both governments dismissed the outcome as having no legal weight, the outcome of the referendum caused the talks to stall and the British government accepted that it would be unrealistic to try to reach an agreement without the support of the people of Gibraltar. The tercentenary of the capture of Gibraltar was celebrated in the territory in August 2004 but attracted criticism from some in Spain. In September 2006, tripartite talks between Spain, Gibraltar and the UK resulted in a deal (known as the
Cordoba Agreement) to make it easier to cross the border and to improve transport and communications links between Spain and Gibraltar. Among the changes was an agreement to lift restrictions on Gibraltar's airport to enable airlines operating from Spain to land there and to facilitate use of the airport by Spanish residents. It did not address the vexed issue of sovereignty, but this time the government of Gibraltar supported it. A
new Constitution Order was promulgated in the same year, which was approved by a majority of 60.24% in a referendum held in November 2006. ==See also==