Gibraltar: It's All About the Rock!

Except for the day being overcast and rainy, which spoiled many possibly incredible photographs, Gibraltar was a wonderful entry into Europe from Africa. Karen, our guide, should be elected "Best Tour Guide Ever." This was not just our opinion but the decision of Richard, the destination port lecturer who served as our tour escort. He gave Karen his business card and told her to contact him for information on how she could become more involved with tours hosted by Princess in this area.

Karen had a gift for making history exciting as she acted all the roles of the major players in her one-woman play. A native of Plymouth, England, she has served as an officer in the Army for 10 years, much to the dismay of her father who was a Navy man. Then she met her husband who was in the Navy. While her father was delighted that she had finally found the Navy, he thought she had gone around the mountain to do so. One of her husband's tours of duty was in Gibraltar, which they loved so much that they decided to stay there. Having five sons, Karen said she was used to being ignored so nothing that we did would offend her. She did request that we act smarter than monkeys because she had met many people who did not.

According to Karen, Gibraltar was the biggest pebble in the world with the fifth highest density of population with 28,000 residents in the ninth smallest country on Earth. It is blessed by a good climate. Life there is relatively calm and safe. However, the rock gives its residents nothing with no commercial industry or exportable products. As the gateway to the Mediterranean Sea, Gibraltar is a fortress with stone walls. Twice a year, the government sponsors a ceremony of the keys that lock the fortress. When standing on Europa Point, the highest elevation of this country, one is on the top of the Rock of Gibraltar, unconsolidated sandstone and the Pillar of Hercules, the name derived from its role as guarding the entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar. On a clear morning, one can see Africa from Europa Point but our visit unfortunately did not occur on a sunny day.

Wow! If that information is not overwhelming, this fact will blow most people away--the Barbary Apes, who have become the symbol of Gibraltar, are really monkeys. Popular belief is that 250 apes or monkeys were brought there by the English as a source of food. All the monkeys are named and tagged, and we were warned not to feed them. Their favorite pastime seemed to be sitting on the roofs of vehicles. Legend has it that as long as the apes, or monkeys, remain in Gibraltar, the British will keep the rock.

The highlight of any tour of Gibraltar is taking the cable car up the rock to stop half way up to commune with the monkeys and then arrive at the top for a walk through the tunnels. The construction of the tunnels started in 1779 when the British, who had stole the rock from the Spanish but brought their own weather with them, were tied up with the pesky revolutionaries in the American colonies so Spain decided to take back the rock in what became known as the Great Siege. Even though Gibraltar was cut off from the outside world and the soldiers were starving, the general decided that they must set up a cannon to defend the rock so the country go out with dignity. The only way to accomplish that task was to build a tunnel through the rock. While the malnourished soldiers could only work on the tunnels for one-half hour shifts, the enemy saw where the tunnel was going in 1783 and accepted defeat. But George Augustus Elliott wanted to continue the tunnel until the rock was defended. Rather than continuing straight across to the final point, an engineer suggested that the tunnel be dug downhill so that the cannon would be placed as if in the eraser of a pencil rather than on top. Score a big victory for Gibraltar.

While the Great Siege accounted for many of the tunnels, Gibraltar's role in World War II claimed the rest. In 1940 Spain, Gibraltar's only friend, was neutral. If the Nazi could capture Gibraltar, they could strangle all the Mediterranean and the English would starve. In Operation Felix, Hitler, who according to Karen was a mommy's boy who did not study history so history repeated itself, tried to get in bed with Franco but Franco maintained that Spain was a neutral country so Hitler decided that Germany did not need Gibraltar and would head east, the same way Napoleon did. If that strategy did not work for Napoleon, why should it work for Hitler? Big mistake! The United States entered the war in 1941. In 1942, the Allied soldiers relocated the citizens of Gibraltar and started to dig a village in the rock with 10,000 soldiers who could live in the rock and work three shifts under the Royal Engineers to complete 34 miles of tunnels with offices, barracks and a hospital. Gibraltar became the biggest air raid shelter in the world. As Eisenhower stated, "It's not the size of a dog in a fight that counts. It's the size of fight in the dog." Ten years ago, Operation Tracer was uncovered in which six volunteers were to be sealed in a cave to operate an observation post to watch the traffic moving in and out of the Mediterranean Sea. If the Germans were not defeated during the first year after Operation Tracer began, those volunteers would never leave the cave.

We only wish we could explain all the history of Gibraltar as our firecracker of a tour guide could. Karen even told us that the monkeys were under such stress during World War II that they demonstrated their stress by not reproducing. Churchill brought in other monkeys to keep up the population. Her brief early history of Gibraltar started with the Arabs who inhabited the area for 750 years. Then came the Spanish. But if one studies Spain, the screaming conclusion is that Spain was once an Arab country. In one generation, Queen Isabella moved Gibraltar from being an Arabic country to being a Catholic power. Then came the British. But history is layered. The victors often tried to wipe out the previous power but if one dug deep enough, the layers would be evident. In the 1920s, an Egyptian mummy was found in the bay. In 1948, the skull of a Neanderthal was discovered in a cave. It had to be assumed that the species had no where else to go in a desperate attempt to survive.

After our history lesson and a tour of the museum, we drove across the runway of the airport to the border crossing station from Spain, our first glimpse of a country that was high on our list of countries we wanted to visit. Traffic would be stopped if a plane is trying to take off or land on the world's fifth most extreme landing strip. To cross the border into Spain, one needed a passport, which was not in our possession but we had no real need to do so because we would be in Barcelona on Tuesday. Many people commute daily from Spain to work in the gift shops and restaurants.

After our tour, we walked along the winding main street, where the cultural mix was evident with women in full Arabic dress, British officers and Spanish speaking merchants. We engaged in Ken's favorite type of shopping, window shopping, because many of the stores were closed or closed at 5 p.m. because it was Sunday. All along the street, we engaged in conversations with fellow passengers heading back to the Pacific Princess. On our way back, Nathaniel, one of the ship's dancers directed us to a local grocery store where Ken purchased enough beer to last him through the remainder of the cruise. So all was right with the world.