... Gibraltar ?? ...
Crtd 12-11-12 Lastedit 14-08-20
Gibraltar. I typed "Spain" then "Gibraltar" in my road GPS. No matches. O, yes, its British. The Dutch gave it to them 300 years ago in the Treaty of Utrecht 1713. But looking under UK I only got "Gibraltar BUCKS", NorthEast of London. My paper map of Spain featured Gibraltar, though. From Portugal, I should first go East to Sevilla, then South to Cadiz, then South East.
...
Gibraltar ?? ...
The signpost at the Cadiz highway branch (about 100 km from Gibraltar) did not sport Gibraltar. Fortunately I knew Gibraltar is near Algeciras. At los Barrios (28 km from Gibraltar) the signpost still forced me to trust on Algeciras. Then, at 19 km, where the roads of Gibraltar and Algeciras part, no Gibraltar. I had to shift to San Roque, Estepona, Malaga. But at 11 km, where the road to Gibraltar parts with the one to Estepona and Malaga, Gibraltar was finally indicated: La Linea, Gibraltar. 2 km before La Linea, behind which, according to all standards of geography I should see - to be honest already saw impressively filling the sky - Gibraltar, is a roundabout. There the signpost reads La Linea. No Gibraltar.
... The beach of
Spanish La Linea. Straight in front of those high rise buildings, from left to right, is
an impressive - British - runway that all traffic to Gibraltar crosses (yes: straight over the runway's tarmac) ...
the 2013 international diplomatic row was over some concrete blocs dropped right
side behind that pier at the yellow arrow ...
... the key
question: when one day, God forbid, traffic signs malfunction, who will have
priority? ... I mean, he came from left ...
From there I lined up in quite a jam to have my passport chequed by the Spanish immigration and my car by UK customs, then you cross the tarmac of an impressive runway to enter Gibraltar town. While the border hassle just made you feel you entered Africa, you now see signposts "Europa point", the name of Gibraltar's Southernmost tip. Right over the runway I took some surprisingly cheap fuel. We turned out to have British number plates here, but we drive right with left side steering cars.
... the place is
Hong-Kong-tight, and crammed with (my educated guess) 30 000 scooters at night
and 40 000 day time ... both Spanish commuters and "Gibraltarians"
tend to prefer them to a car ...
Wikipedia quotes 30 000 inhabitants in Gibraltar, but you would think that is far too low an estimate. May be this is because at least another 30 000 workers (estimates go up to 50% higher) commute every day from Spain. The place is Hong-Kong-tight, and crammed with (my educated guess) 30 000 scooters at night and 40 000 day time ... both Spanish commuters and "Gibraltarians" tend to prefer them to a car.
... a few steps to the defensive bridge to
the fortification
doors ... a few toll-free car parking places ... only to be had at dawn when fort
dwellers pick their cars, and dusk, when commuters go home ... sleeping not
allowed, but who sees me? ...
The fortification door gives way to a 20 m tunnel, opening up to the first a small long inner place. Right left an inviting pub terrace "we serve Lavazza". Terry, a Brit who planned to open a pub in Cape Verde, had just changed his mind and was the pub's new owner. Talkative between working very hard to clear his newly acquired premises, getting the kitchen started, setting up his delivery network. The Lavazza launched me into my first reconnaissance walks. It did not take long to see that here I found myself on the epicentre of British fundamentalism.
... Yes we're BRITISH! ... Not only monkeys on their way to the down town Pizza
Hut. You'll get it ALL: Bobbies AND the classical red phone booths AND post
consoles AND double decker buses wringing themselves through streets too narrow
for them AND bold muscular tattooed unexpectedly friendly
men, AND extremely courteous men in blazers with badges, the two cheerfully
singing together in church every Sunday AND no thieves anywhere AND fat ladies AND fat dogs on leashes AND
union jacks AND Nelson cult AND draught ale AND HDTV dart in the pub AND Morrison's supermarket
AND sterling-only cash dispensers ...
Gibraltar reminds Terry of Britain 50 years ago
("everybody here goes to church on Sundays"). He likes the folks very
much. So he changed his mind and stayed. His WIFI was in the air already and my laptop came in handy to post his
programme and announcements on the internet. Meanwhile he told me where to buy my
tax-free Cuban cigars. Never lived so few meters from such a nice pub. I Googled
and found there are not too many Anglicans and most are Catholic here.
I
turned out to have chosen the very best day of the year to arrive: Remembrance
day, when all English wear those red poppies and drop their red garlands at
their war monuments with the stiffest of faces. Two of the four high definition
screens of the Nelson Pub showed the London parades (the other two football,
while a duo in a corner sang songs of yet another repertoire with their guitar
richly amplified). All the military in full uniform, medals clinking all round,
and whoever could not claim any right to wearing one would at least sport a
blazer with an impressive badge. Despite the vast amounts of Spanish
commuter-workers there is, especially in political respect a strong anti-Spanish
sentiment. A look on the front page of the Gibraltar
Chronicle of 13 November 2012 (click there on text to enlarge) tells it all:
the centre article features the Gibraltar Remembrance Day, at the side the
serious incursion of a Spanish navy vessel "Vencedora" into "Gibraltar waters",
"navigating in a manner which was not in exercise of the right of innocent
passage". It is not speculated what highly dangerous intentions the Spanish navy
might have had with this intrusion, anyway, our boys were right at the spot to
block those filthy Spanish thugs in their efforts to let this spin out of hand.
My God, if we did not have the Navy! Third front page item: Madrid blocks
Catalan self determination referendum. Now you should know that a 2002 Gibraltar
referendum blocked all efforts by Britain and Spain to find some compromise on
jurisdiction over Gibraltar. This third front page item shows that the Catalans
have enough of it as well! We are not alone! Best of all Spain would be cut into
small pieces the size of Gibraltar and then each piece have its own independence
referendum. That would bless us all with the happy end of bloody Spain.
I got the
firm impression that Gibraltarians consider euros a deplorable phenomenon haunting them
from the Spanish side but anyway, mine were cordially accepted in the bar. When
I reached the end of them the Gibraltarian cash dispensers
turned out sterling only.
That first night I went to sleep with 50 VERY cheap top
quality Cuban cigars and an indecent chunk of thick sliced Yorkshire ham for £4.
That would make the day even of a Gibraltar macaque.
During the morning coffee at Terry's I googled Gibraltar's tax system. Non-resident businesses do not pay income tax unless the source
of this income is Gibraltar proper. There is no tax on capital income. There is
no capital gains tax, wealth tax, sales tax or value added tax. Import duty is
payable on most items at 12% The main tax for companies is Corporation Tax. From
reading the tables, Income tax seems roughly between
between 12% and 20%. A pack of cigarettes in Gibraltar is £1.90, in Spain £3.75, in Engeland
£7.90. If those anti-Spanish Gibraltarians would have to choose between the Spain and the UK proper, they
surely would sing a different song! My top quality Cuban petit corona's £4, half
of the Netherlands, not unlikely a quarter of the UK price.
BUT! How this
extremely poor government tax income can cater for Gibraltar's public expenditure is seriously unclear: excellent roads,
sewage, power supply, the water, scarce on the rock, should be costly, requiring two desalination plants,
health care is free. It could be partly explained by a lot of employment being military,
hence falling under UK jurisdiction and thus UK tax payers' money (so when the Island Brit pays his bloody
£7.90 for 25 bloody cigarettes, that may partly run Gibraltar's desalination). I
heard of extremely short working days at the government office desks in
Gibraltar, but did not get clear what is local government and what may be UK
paid military. If roads, infrastructure and health care are also
"military", then the UK taxpayer may pay for most of the Gibraltar
infrastructure expenditures I do not have to
suffer for when I buy my my cheap cigars and virtually free Yorkshire ham.
One of the interesting follies of Europe is the mobile phone system. It follows the ancient country borders. As soon as you cross one of those - and you may stumble over them at unexpected places indeed! - your SIM card starts "roaming", that is, a few calls and emails and all balance is stolen from your prepay card by some pirate mobile provider of the "country" you enter that you of course have no contract with whatsoever (if your SIM works at all). By consequence, I have prepay SIMs for the Netherlands, Germany, France, Portugal and now Spain, and change SIM when I cross one of the former European borders, passing smaller "countries" like Belgium and Luxemburg as quickly as possible. How about Gibraltar? Yes you would not believe it! If you do not look out and block your Spanish SIM card manually, it will immediately get roamed by GIBTEL, the locally licensed provider. A unsuspecting US-citizen laughs his head off when he hears he has to buy a map of pre-European Union country borders and remember to buy another SIM card when he crosses one, but WHAT, I ask, WHAT will he think if he arrives at the car traffic lights of the Gibraltar Airport runway crossing and his Spanish prepay card gets roamed down by a UK licensed pirate provider?
... a nomad's
roaming prevention kit ... comes with a map of prehistoric European
borderlines ...
Anyway, time to visit Gibraltar's Southern tip, "Europa point".
... Africa ...
... by way of tax-free bonus I got a sudden heavy
thunderstorm coming up from NE against the sunset at "Europa point", the Southern-tip lighthouse ...
(middle on horizon huge cargo ships on anchor, waiting for orders) ...
While enjoying the "Europa point" view, friendly police came to check me out. They acted shocked seeing my glass of beer, "are you going to drive with it?" ("Yes ma'am its below the limit"). "I like the way you did your car", she continued, looking inside. I restrained myself and did not offer the well proportioned blonde to have a try inside. Was I going to sleep in this thing in Gibraltar? I graciously lied to assure her, quite a safe thing to do in Gibraltar, nobody ever does here. British honour.
Ready to leave the rock I realized I would be stuck with some funny money: £25 sterling. I offered them to the Nelson Pub staff, who had so cheerfully accepted my euros. But no. They were not allowed to give me euros. Once received by a Gibraltarian legal person a euro ceases to be legal tender and can only be exchanged for such at licensed exchange offices. For a fee of course. I decided instead to buy a Glenmorangy for less than half price: £24.95. The exchange office showed no interest in my remaining five pence.
On my way back to Portugal I could not resist visiting that venue of utimate Gibraltarian naval pride: the Trafalgar banks in front of Cabo Trafalgar, 37.4 nautical miles 287.7 degrees magnetic from Gibraltar, where Admiral Nelson died while winning a big naval battle against a Napoleonic fleet of French and Spanish war ships, that seriously limited Napoleons options for the rest of his 9 years in power (and do not forget that 7 years before, Napoleon, 29, only a general, had his entire Egyptian invasion fleet burnt behind his arse by an unexpectedly appearing Nelson, isolating the disembarked French army in Egypt for three full years, only to be retrieved by means of a treaty with the English. Rather touch guy, this Nelson. And brains too. He would not fear to merge Gibraltar with Spain.
... Cabo
Trafalgar (Google Earth KMZ) ...
... The famous semaphore the British admiral ship sported while starting a very
nonconformist two ship-line perpendicular attack ...
