Gibraltar

Gibraltar is a self-governing British overseas territory located on the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula and Europe at the entrance of the Mediterranean overlooking the Strait of Gibraltar. The territory covers 6.843 square kilometres (2.642 sq mi) and shares a land border with Spain to the north.

Gibraltar was conquered by Britian in 1704 and retained ever since, as a major base for the British Armed Forces and particularly the Royal Navy. Its strategic position at the entrance to the Meditteranean made it invaluable for British imperial interests for several centuries. Conversely, the creation of such a British enclave on Spanish soil was a visible indication of 18th Century Spain having slipped to the position of a second-rate power, a humiliation to Spanish national pride which Spaniards tried at various times to redress. During the American Revolutionary War and again in the Napoleonic Wars Gibrantar was under siege but Spaniards and French failed to cpature it. Gibraltar's impoertance grew after the opening of the Suez Canal increased the importance of Mediterranean sea routes in general.

During the Spanish Civil War, the British in Gibraltar watched events without interfering. Many of the ruling British conservatives actually prefered the Nationalists of the Republic, dominated by various left-wing revolutionaries; however, some of the Admirals were concerned about the Nationalists' alliance with Gemrany and Itlay, and the danger it might pose to Gibraltar in case of a genral war. Indeed, Second World War Nazi Germany formulated plans for the conquest of Gibraltar, codenamed Operation Felix, and the British, in anticipation of such a move, evacuated all women and children from Gibraltar. However, Franaco's Nationalist Spain - in control of the ajacent territory - rejected these approaches, kept open diplomatic channels to the British, and did not interefere in the extensive use of Gibraltar a a vital British base for the naval war in the Mediterranean. This greatly contributed to Franco, alone of Europe's Fascist and extreme-right dictators, retaining power after 1945 and until his natural death in 1975.

In later years Franco did assert a Spanish claim for Gibraltar, by diplomatic protests and the prolonges closing of the border, but never considered a resort to arms. At present - with the British Empire long gone and both Britian and Spain as democratic constitutional monarchies and members of the European Union - the remaining Royal Navy base at Gibraltar is no longer vital, and for itself Britian might have been content to cede the territory to Spain. However, the Gibraltarians - a population of very mixed ethnic origins which grew up during the centuries of British rule - are strongly oppised to any such option, as no less than 98% oh them expressed in a 2002 referendum, and the British government is pledged to respect their wishes.

Gibraltar in Worldwar
When The Race began to take notice of human shipping lines, they bombed the British base of Gibraltar more persistently and precisely than ether the Germans or the Italians. Dispite this, Gibraltar stayed in English hands.

While on his way through from England to Palestine, Moishe Russie and his family docked at the base, and then transferred onto the cargo ship Naxos. Russie saw that there were some German submarines in the harbor, and laughed at the irony of them using a base they tried very hard to destroy just a few years before. \

Gibraltar in "The War That Came Early"
In the early months of 1939, General Sanjurjo, the political and military leader of Nationalist Spain, came to the crucial decision of conquering Gibraltar and restoring it to Spanish rule. This was in the aftermath of the Republican victory in the Battle of the Ebro. Final victory, which seemed in the Nationalists' grasp for much of 1938, had slipped away, and they faced the prospect of continued years long grueling war with no end in sight. The re-conquest of Gibraltar - a small territory but a highly symbolic one - would present the Nationalists and Sanjurjo personally with a major achievement. And Sanjurjo's German and Italian allies, considering that the fighting in northern Europe might soon spread to the Meiditerranean, were eager to deprive the British of the strategic Gibraltar.

The conquest of Gibraltar was far from easy for the Nationalists. The naval guns of the moored British warships, designed to break through the armour of enemy warships, took a terrible toll of the advancing Nationalist infantry; Joaquin Delgadillo counted himself lucky to have survived this barrage. However, the fighter airplanes of the German Condor Legion proved decisive. Enentually, the Royal Navy ships had to evacuate Gibraltar and steam into the open sea, and as Sanjurjo's propagndists proudly proclaimed, the Spanish flag flew over the Rock of Gibraltar for the first time in two and a half centuries. The Gibraltarian civil pupulation was harshly treated by the victors, being considered as traitor Spaniards who had sided with the British (in fact, only about a quarter of them were of Spanish origin at all, the others being immigrants from elswhere in the Meditteranean).

Conquering Gibraltar was a major gamble on Sanjurjo's part. In case of Gemrany winning the war, he would be able to retain it and have a honourable place in Spanish history as having removed a stain on the country's national honour. However, while hitherto British Conservatives tended to prefer the Spanish Nationalists to the Republican Communists and Anarchists, the conquest of Gibraltar marked Sanjurjo as a prime enemey to British imperial interests, and virtually ensured that he would not survive a German defeat.

Gibraltar in "Down in the Bottomlands"
The Barrier Mountains at he western end of the Bottomlands prevented the Western Ocean from filling it, thus leaving it a unique sub-sea level desert.