GIBRALTAR – From midnight tonight, land border checkpoints between Spain and the British territory of Gibraltar will cease to exist when a historic post-Brexit deal comes into action, ushering in a new era of openness in a world in which tougher border controls are being erected elsewhere.
The mood on the Rock is one of excitement ahead of the removal of the passport controls between the territory and continental Europe, which is expected to allow residents to circumvent the rules that limit Britons to staying only 90 days in every 180 in the European Union.
Gregory Butcher, a major property investor in Gibraltar who moved to the Rock from the UK 30 years ago, said the deal will bring investment opportunities in the low-tax territory.
“This will mean that Gibraltar could become a conduit for [British] investment into Spain,” he said. “British firms are excellent at services including, for example, insurance. Gibraltar does well in insurance but lacks the population of Bermuda, so insurance could create back office jobs in Spain.”
He believes the change will bring opportunities “across the gambit of services”, as well as “property companies channelling investment into shopping centres, student housing and hospitals”.
Enquiries from Britons seeking to move to Gibraltar have spiked since the agreement was announced last summer, with its government pausing applications in October to deal with the surge. Estate agents say they have had “hundreds” of people express an interest in buying or renting a property in the territory following the deal.
Many have predicted a rise in tourism, and Butcher says he “would expect to see investment into leisure centres and hotels”.
The wealthy Rock has become a tech hub in recent years and the agreement intends to create a zone of “shared prosperity” so the towns on the Spanish side of the border can benefit.
Tourists walk towards the city centre after crossing the border from Spain, after the European Union and Britain reached an agreement on the status of the overseas territory of Gibraltar (Photo: Reuters/Jon Nazca)“This deal will lead to much greater closeness,” Butcher said, but he stressed that the tax agreement between the Rock and Spain needed to be recognised internationally as a tax treaty, to avoid the possibility of a Gibraltar company that invests in Spain being taxed in both countries.
“We believe there should be much more cross-border co-operation but this cannot happen yet,” he added.
Greg Dyke, 64, who was born in Gibraltar in 1961, still remembers living trapped behind the frontier. Spanish dictator Francisco Franco ordered its closure over a sovereignty dispute when Dyke was eight, cutting off all communication, halting flights and severing telephone lines. It was not fully reopened until 1985.
Anyone wishing to cross to the other side of the border had to make a day-long journey by sea. “It was really sad to see families having to communicate across the frontier gates from a great distance, show their newborns, send condolences whenever someone died,” said Dyke, a retired shipping chief executive.
“The same thing happened on both sides. Half of the population of La Linea de la Concepción [the town on the other side of the border] had to move away. Our Gibraltar hospital was left without oxygen. Kids like me only knew what a cow looked like through books or TV.”
George Dyke, retired shipping executive who lived through the border’s closure under Franco, says the end of checkpoints heralds a brighter futureDyke believes the changes to the border will take Gibraltar into a new, brighter future. “It is a great achievement that will present its difficulties, but we will be able to overcome,” he said, adding that he planned to celebrate the deal “in the swimming pool with friends”.
The deal marks the biggest change since Spain first ceded the isthmus to Britain in 1713. The measure of how big a change this is for this tiny outpost of Britannia can be gauged by the rumour that Spain’s Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, may visit the border to celebrate the deal, another historical first as Spain’s traditional claim to sovereignty over the Rock has meant no serving premier has ever crossed the border.
Sánchez has hailed the arrangements as bringing down “the last wall” inside the European Union, saying they would create a zone of shared prosperity.
Gibraltar’s Chief Minister, Fabian Picardo, has described the agreement as removing “physical barriers of a bygone era of friction” but keeping the “keys to our own front door”.
Gemma Arias-Vasquez, Gibraltar’s health, care and business minister, was born on the Rock. Her mother, Mari-Carmen, and grandmother lived through those tough years when Gibraltarians had to shout messages across the frontier.
“Whilst today is a huge positive step, we will also be thinking of those that lived those difficult years so that we are in the positive position that we are in today,” Arias-Martinez told The i Paper. “Had they not endured what they endured – and it was hard – we would not be in the position that we are in today.”
Gemma Arias-Vasquez, a Gibraltar minister, called the move ‘a huge positive step’Most Gibraltarians agree the alternative to the deal signed in June last year and finalised today between Britain and the European Union would have left the Rock with a hard border that would have proved disastrous for both Gibraltar and Spain.
The territory at the foot of the Iberian Peninsula, which enjoys its own dialect – llanito, a mix of English and Spanish – depends on over 15,000 Spanish workers making the daily commute from across the border to keep the place going.
The 1,400-foot-tall Rock of Gibraltar looms over everything in the territory, which was the target of a plot by Hitler to seize it during the Second World War. Today, tourists can visit the tunnels burrowed inside the Rock that were part of the extensive plans to defend Gibraltar and its strategically important naval base from the Nazis.
Butcher said Gibraltar had been a “meeting point” with a variety of nationalities moving there. Apart from Gibraltarians and Britons, Chinese, Korean, Poles, Czechs have made their homes there.
Once Gibraltar was a tiny fortress holding out against the aggression of a Spanish dictator; now it seems like a small- if significant – land of opportunity on the shores of the Mediterranean.
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