Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
GIBRALTAR ROCKS
Peninsula rife with curious macaques, military history
GIBRALTAR – I’ve dodged elk on the road in Colorado, buffalo roaming the pavement in Wyoming, oblivious gaggles of sheep on the twisting Connemara byways in Ireland, and heedless white-tailed deer darting across my own street in northern Virginia. But monkeys? That’s what the warning signs said — “SLOW,” with the outline of an ape on all fours — as I cautiously maneuvered our car up narrow Queen’s Road into a lush, green and sometimes misty world clinging to the Rock of Gibraltar, just minutes from the fish-andchips shops, Marks & Spencer and other British comforts transplanted to this tiny overseas territory.
Visitors are drawn here because it’s such a famous dot on the map, visually stunning, packed with history and — the monkeys!
Up on the monolithic Rock, we got used to the monkeys, as they already were accustomed to us. Our sure-footed friends — really Barbary macaques — jumped from rock to railing, from tree to tree, and from railing onto our car’s windshield.
The macaques were looking for food, but people should know that Gibraltar Nature Reserve officers will fine those who take pity on what looks like a well-fed community of entertaining simians and try to give them snacks.
The monkeys are known to climb inside cars, rummage inside purses and pretty much take advantage of any inattentive human too smitten with the creatures to roll up the window and close the car doors. They can bite. But most seem content with sitting around watching visitors, grooming each other and posing for pictures.
The Rock and the postage-stamp-sized territory it belongs to have been under the Union Jack since a 1713 treaty, an outpost of the British Empire on the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, bordered by Spain and within sight of Morocco across the Strait of Gibraltar.
Over the centuries, the monkeys became a symbol of tenacity in the face of Spanish claims: as long as the macaques remained on Gibraltar, so, too, would the British.
Gibraltar has persisted as a regular point of tension between Britain and Spain, particularly in the last 70 years. In 1969, Spain, then under dictator Francisco Franco, closed the border. Even after Franco’s death in 1975, it took several more years until the border was re-opened.
Since the 2016 vote by the British to leave the European Union — 96 percent of Gibraltarians voted to remain — Spain has renewed its bid to regain control of Gibraltar or, at the very least, to establish some type of co-sovereignty over its 30,000 residents and roughly 230 macaques.
For now, though, Gibraltar is very much a slice of Britain, from the moment visitors cross the border from Spain.
The only way in by land is a road that crosses the runway of Gibraltar International Airport. When the occasional jetliner lands, gates block the road until the plane passes. It sounds and looks crazy, but it’s the most memorable border entry you’re likely to encounter in Europe.
Gibraltar is not for the claustrophobic: an entire functioning city-state is jammed into 2.6 square miles (you are reading that right). A town, a port, new apartment and office buildings, seaside resorts, six beaches, two casinos, a nature reserve and a military outpost squish onto a scenic point overlooking the strait.
Gibraltar town appears to have been lifted from the British countryside. The police wear the traditional London bobbies’ helmets, the postal boxes are stamped “Royal Mail,” and the streets bear names like King’s Yard Lane, Trafalgar Road, Governor’s Street and Hargrave’s Parade. British beer flows in pubs like the Lord Nelson on Casemates Square and the Angry Friar on Main Street. Patrons pay in pounds sterling, albeit the notes say “Gibraltar pounds.”
Main Street is shopping central, with a mix of British institutions and local establishments, sprinkled with the familiar logos that dot city streets across the globe. Yes, a lot of stores offer a lot of versions of stuffed toy macaques. As in many European cities, the shopping area is set aside for pedestrians only. Narrow streets and lanes lined with shutter-bedecked buildings lend British colonial charm to the palm trees and Mediterranean sun.
All around town are reminders that Gibraltar was (and is) a military base. Stone fortress walls, gates and tunnels built in the 18th and 19th century surround the central town area. Gun emplacements and reinforced concrete installations from the 20th century add to the martial architecture and make driving the cramped one-way back streets a challenge.
Roy’s Fish and Chips, in a square converted from military casements, is a good, ahem, perch for watching the bustle of Gibraltar, which can sometimes be overrun by cruise ship day-trippers. Roy’s delicately fried fish and muscular fries fueled the afternoon’s journey up the Rock.
The stunning views from the steep overlooks take in the town, harbor and the Costa del Sol and, facing south, the busy Mediterranean and blue-shrouded peaks in Africa.
The weather on such a promontory can be changeable: rainy and low clouds one minute, foggy another, then windy, sunny, dry and back again.
The weather doesn’t change inside St. Michael’s Cave, an ancient network of caverns covered with stalagmites and stalactites illuminated in colored lights. The cave is so spacious that part of it is used for concerts and other events.
What nature did not provide, man dug — or blasted.
Gibraltar’s strategic location and the Rock’s great height (its zenith is 1,398 feet above the Mediterranean) made it an ideal place from which to protect the territory and command the strait.
The first tunnels in the Rock were dug in the late 1700s, a successful defensive effort by the British then under siege by the French and Spanish. The “Great Siege Tunnels” contained full provisions for troops and openings in the rock walls for cannons. Even after the siege ended in 1783, the digging and blasting continued.
The outbreak of World War II sparked a massive expansion of the tunnels and the addition of many defensive installations. British and Canadian engineers created an entire city inside the Rock, served by a network of 34 miles of tunnels. Visitors can access some of the tunnels and get a feel for life during the war. And the views out of the Rock through the gun emplacements are spectacular.
A fence line runs along the rocky slopes above the Nature Reserve and the military tunnels.
“How do we get up there?” I asked an officer.
“This is as far as you go,” he said apologetically.
He offered no details, but a little research revealed that the fenced area up to the peak, which is called Rock Gun Battery, was under control of the British Ministry of Defense until 2005. The military still is using the very top, apparently for communications.
If the weather is good, a six-minute cable car ride from the southern end of the town to the neighboring peak, known locally as Signal Hill, offers visitors a wide-open, 360-degree perspective on the importance of this tiny place in world history. And the monkeys will be sitting right there, although their eyes won’t be taking in the view. They’ll be trying to spot who has ignored the warning signs and has something tasty in their pockets.