Gibraltar has been under British control since 1713, ceded by Spain under the Treaty of Utrecht following the War of the Spanish Succession, and remains one of the last British Overseas Territories in Europe, a small peninsula whose sovereignty Spain has periodically continued to contest, most notably during a lengthy border closure imposed by Franco’s government between 1969 and 1985. Despite that friction, Gibraltar’s roughly 34,000 residents have repeatedly voted overwhelmingly in referendums to remain British, most recently by a margin exceeding 98%.
The Rock of Gibraltar itself, rising nearly 426 metres directly above the town, is riddled with tunnels, over 50 kilometres of them, dug primarily during the 18th and 19th centuries and expanded dramatically during the Second World War, when the entire garrison and much of the civilian population sheltered within the mountain during periods of heightened threat.
Monkeys With Their Own Local Legend
Gibraltar is home to Europe’s only wild population of primates, Barbary macaques, believed to have been introduced centuries ago, possibly by Moorish or later British settlers, and protected today under a local legend claiming that British rule over Gibraltar will end if the monkeys ever disappear, a superstition taken seriously enough that Winston Churchill reportedly ordered the population actively replenished during the Second World War when their numbers dwindled. The monkeys remain a genuine tourist draw today, though visitors are now firmly warned against feeding them after decades of problematic human interaction.
Gibraltar’s economy has diversified significantly beyond its historic military role, developing into a notable offshore financial and online gambling centre, even as the Rock itself remains, visually and symbolically, defined by the same strategic position that made it valuable to the British Navy three centuries ago.
Painting a Rock That Guards a Strait
The Rock of Gibraltar’s dramatic limestone face rising above the strait gives a watercolourist bold natural scale to work with. We’ve captured that imposing silhouette in our own Gibraltar Watercolor Print, painted first by hand and printed to order on archival paper, a small piece of the Mediterranean for a wall at home.
Held by Britain for over three centuries and guarded, according to local legend, by its own resident monkeys, Gibraltar remains one of Europe’s more stubbornly persistent small territories.