A 6.8-square-kilometre rock still divides London and Madrid
British Overseas Territory Gibraltar guards the Mediterranean's Atlantic gate on 6.8 square kilometres at the Iberian tip. The Almohads built a permanent watchtower there in 1160, Castile took it in 1462, and an Anglo-Dutch fleet captured it in 1704, starting a quarrel with Spain that still simmers.
Its name comes from Arabic Jabal Ṭāriq, Mount of Tariq, after Tariq ibn Ziyad, whose largely Berber army crossed from North Africa in April 711 and began the Muslim conquest of Iberia. Before that it was Mons Calpe, a site of religious meaning where Phoenicians from around 950 BC, then Carthaginians and Romans, seem to have used Gorham's Cave as a shrine. The same cave holds Neanderthal traces from about 50,000 years ago and later human hearths and tools. Visigoths held the area from 418 to 720.
Sultan Abd al-Mu'min ordered a castle town, Medinat al-Fath, in 1160; the Moorish Castle's Tower of Homage still stands. Nasrids, Marinids and Castilians traded the town repeatedly until the Duke of Medina Sidonia took it in 1462, and he later sold it to 4,350 conversos from Córdoba and Seville. The Ottoman admiral Barbarossa sacked it in 1540, wiping out almost a generation. After the 1704 capture nearly all of the 4,000 to 5,000 Spanish residents left.
Rebuilt after the Great Siege, partly by the Milanese builder Giovanni Maria Boschetti, it became a Royal Navy base before Trafalgar and one of four imperial fortresses alongside Bermuda, Halifax and Malta; the Suez Canal raised its value further. Most civilians were evacuated in the Second World War, to London, Morocco, Madeira and Jamaica. Franco restricted crossings in the 1950s and shut the border outright after the 1969 constitution.
Gibraltarians voted overwhelmingly for Britain in 1967, and 99 percent rejected shared sovereignty in 2002; in the 2016 Brexit vote 96 percent chose Remain. Online gambling, finance, tourism and the port drive the economy, with much of the workforce living in Spain. A treaty signed by all four parties, Britain, Madrid, the territory and Brussels, in July 2026 did away with checks at the Spanish frontier.
Source: Gibraltar
