Gibraltar - My Rock Documentary

[Music] my name is anna garcia my home is the rock of gibraltar a tiny piece of britain on the southern tip of spain gibraltar has spent 300 years torn between these old colonial rivals britain and spain but for me gibraltar's home as i prepare to return to get married i find myself more curious than ever about my deep connection to this ancient rock maybe if i can unravel the conflicted history of the rock i can answer some of the questions about who i am and where i come from my family played a prominent role in the recent political wrangles over gibraltar so by exploring old archives some family super 8 footage and new interviews i hope to fully understand the story of gibraltar and the people on the rock report is paradise there's no way i challenge anybody to tell me where is a better place in gibraltar sometimes we get rain but otherwise everything you want is here whether you're hindu muslim jewish catholic protestant were all one big family britain captured gibraltar from spain in 1704 and with it took control of the strategic gateway to the mediterranean between europe and africa in the treaty of utrecht the king of spain signed gibraltar away to britain forever the rock became a british military garrison and soon trade began with mediterranean neighbors eventually these merchants began to settle within the garrison walls the garrison became a country and its countrymen the gibraltarians [Music] gibraltar is a politically it is a country it has its own parliament it has its own airport its own hospitals its own schooling systems it has everything that a country has the only thing that makes me hesitate slightly is because of 30 000 people as you know we say here british we are british we stay but spanish we speak all day i'm a british ebolatarian and medieval train yet i love bull fighting with all respects to the rspca so we have the best of both worlds when people say we're more british than the british i said you got it all wrong it's not that we're more british than the british is that we are more mediterranean about being british than the anglo-saxons life on the rock hasn't always been easy spain believes gibraltar should be spanish and has spent centuries trying to regain it in 1954 her majesty the queen visited the rock and trouble soon followed the display of sovereignty angered spain's fascist dictator general franco and reignited spain's claim on the rock a broken society still suffering the aftermath of civil war and now turning its aggression towards us we needed a plan and my grandfather peter isla was one of those who took a stand i am your grandmother in 1956 we got married went on a honeymoon and when we came back he gave me the wonderful news that he was going to stand for election with his father he knew i didn't like politics but he says i'll only be there a couple of years and a couple of years lasted fifty my grandfather became the leader of the opposition and his greatest rival sir joshua hassan became the chief minister of gibraltar people loved him so much because he was friendly with everyone remember gibraltar is a very small place and he knew practically everyone by name they were pretty bitter enemies um there was a lot of personal animosity between them but having said that it didn't stop them in the 60s forming a coalition government because of the pressures that spain was putting on gibraltar they were very great indeed you remember the border troubles we felt that the state was in danger and the two groups came together because we thought the main enemy was spain this was the era of anti-colonialism and in 1963 the united nations had finally called for the decolonization of gibraltar britain resisted but spain took advantage of this anti-imperial movement to restake her claim on the rock we were in london with your mother when he got this phone call from the joshua's office to say we're off to united nations so joshua came to london met peter and they both left and i was left on my own with your mother we went there it was like an emergency call you know 48 hours notice we're on a plane after new york but we knew nothing of the procedures there we wanted to be british spain hadn't been particularly friendly spain uh was a fascist regime it made its intentions very clear wanted to take over gibraltar so that's you become defensive but in those days of course the united nations generally were totally against britain they regarded britain as an imperial power i mean you felt it when you were talking i mean they couldn't understand why we wanted to stay with britain you know we just couldn't understand it most of the delegates [Music] there wasn't anything bigger than that and going to the united nations to fight for our freedom what more do you want my grandfather and sir joshua called for recognition of the people's right to self-determination spain objected but the united nations agreed to defer enforcement of the decolonization of gibraltar while discussions continued it it was a first time gibraltarians had gone to the united nations you know i mean this is the guys in the little village you know actually appearing before world i mean irrespective of the result everybody was going to welcome them we all did and when i met him at the airport when they came down from the plane i said you don't know what's waiting for you and sir joshua and they said what and i said the whole of gibraltar have come out to welcome you [Applause] i think the people were celebrating was the fact that all right we might not have come back with a with a great trophy but gibraltar had spoken and it was the first if you like whispers of a voice that would slowly build into something more credible as the politics changed in those days i was a bachelor and i had an mg red car sports car and i was asked what i would mind taking them at the back of a car i would drive them down the town i was delighted but i do remember it um and it was obviously great sitting in the car between sir joshua hassan and and my dad until eventually they kicked me off [Music] wherever we were stopped i drank water they drank whiskey because i had to make sure i was in my full senses the whole of dubrota came out to greet them and to thank them and that was very moving their success however was short-lived the united nations could not accept gibraltar's wish to remain with britain the battle had only just begun to say to the decolonization committee set up by the united nations to liberate people from imperialism how wonderful imperialism is it's you know it's like competing harikari gibraltarians however it was not about imperialism it was about a 260 year old british identity my father considered himself to be uh completely british in the sense that that's what what he chose to be he had many friends in spain but he loathed their system to him you know next to god winston churchill and delson was a tough call between either of them to be to be the greatest man that ever lived so yeah he was very very british and he wanted us to have an english education so he sacrificed his holidays and quite a lot of money to send us to the uk for the doubtful privileges of a public school education i mean jib was was structured in the classic uk style it was a class driven society where i think gibraltarians generally invented their own place in that class along with the british military and the gibbelterians they were the spaniards gibraltar's workforce came mostly from spain with some crossing the border daily slowly numbers increased as cross-border relationships grew and the societies intertwined the border was the lifeline when franco began to increase pressure on the rock it was the border that was first and hardest hit here on the frontier there are still some 90 or so cars waiting to get from gibraltar into spain and some of them have already been waiting for three days since october 1964 the spaniards have only allowed three cars an hour to go through into spain and the frontiers only open for 15 hours a day so that's 45 cars a day we're just waiting here on the border everybody here has been as kind as they possibly could the english been very helpful to everybody here the real campaign against gibraltar had begun soon things were turned back at the border even medical supplies were stopped coming in there were difficulties it was always uncomfortable to go to spain there was always a cue and paperwork and you were always stuck and getting in at the car and being searched and they were armed you know our officers were your friends yeah but their their officers were any piece it was always scary because there were no freedoms there my aunt married a republican him and his four brothers saw their father shot dead in front of them and these are stories that we've been brought up with the rebels in spain that escaped with their lives escaped here and the one thing they taught their children in the country will never go back to that blood because i'm lucky to have got here with the head of my shoulders you see we were constantly being um insulted on television on radio so our backs were up all the time you know it was a silent war you know it's not even about being spanish they don't want the gibraltarians to be spanish they want gibraltar period you know they don't care about the gibraltarians we can all get lost look if if we're not the real owners then i have to say that that the first bosano in gibraltar who got married here in 1748 was the first guy to be squatting and i want to know how long how much more than 300 years we have to be squatting before we acquire some kind of rights to territory [Music] by 1967 it was clear that both the united nations and spain were refusing to acknowledge that gibraltar wished to remain british under increasing pressure from spain britain called for a referendum in gibraltar it was a final bid to show the world where our allegiance lay it was very exciting we had a special meal if i remember rightly and everybody had to go to vote and we went along and waited outside it was your civic duty but a referendum is always a risk because it's a very drastic step to take on something as important as this was to us at that time if the result had been 80 or 70 um it would have been very encouraging to the other side and there was a risk in doing that when we were under siege incest hall they counted the votes there i was there on the first row number of votes cast for alternative course a 44 number of best cars for alternative course b 12 [Music] [Applause] the result came out and 44 voted for spain uh which i thought was you know 99. i thought it was pretty wonderful i remember my parents being utterly livid it should have been zero and it was that woman he they knew from down the road that she was because she was spanish she would have voted because i remember at the time also even with the 44 they were saying that you know there was one who had said yes to spain because he took the wrong box so the suggestion was that it wasn't even 44. the people had spoken the results were overwhelming but the anti-colonial mood was even stronger they took the result of the 1967 referendum to the general assembly for about and they lost the vote two to one but if there was a defining moment when it was clear to the entire world the gibraltar wanted to remain british and that's what the voice of the people that was it despite the wish of the people the united nations ordered the decolonization of gibraltar britain resisted she would not abandon gibraltar to a fascist regime this angered franco and the people of gibraltar united in defense but a small group of gibraltarians had other ideas they called themselves the doves and opened a dialogue with spain there was outrage when their intentions were revealed basically there were these five people who uh phoned me up and said look we've got this letter we'd like to publish and i read the letter and i said this idea of coming to some sort of a deal with spain i said this is not going to be accepted very well in gibraltar at the moment on the other hand you have a right as far as i'm concerned there's no libel in it so i will publish it and in fact i said it's of such interest if you don't mind i'll publish it on the front page that was one of my bad moments there were five five businessmen and lawyers who took the view that long term the best thing was to come to resolution with spain as i understand it they went to discuss matters uh with with the spanish government and and therefore that was best for gibraltar clearly the gibraltarian people especially having expressed their view in the referendum the year before it would have been they were probably a bit sort of foolhardy to consider that as you know possibly politically naive but do you think there's any room for negotiation with spain yes well i have i have said so very clearly i think that the newsroom we publish certain articles in which we actually put forward proposals for a negotiated settlement they didn't meet with the best possible response and it also did they well they were very unpopular they're still very unpopular the people who want to talk to the spaniard might have thought what they were doing was the right thing to do and in the best interest of gibraltar they're entitled to have that view what they're not entitled to do is pretend that they spoke for the rest of us they had no right to do that it came out on the saturday morning and we had to rise it was very frightening because i'd never experienced any form of disorder or writing because you're used to a very peaceful quiet town that had erupted in a matter of hours and everybody was rushing and people shouting and women crying what the hell's going on and we got a whiff it was a tear gas bomb i do remember being on the street when a crowd of a mob of very angry men went down to to the house of one of the tree eyes one of the doves at my house they broke in the windows they burst into the entrance and they broke everything that they found on their way and at the office they did exactly the same thing they assaulted and beat my brother they also burnt a yacht of mine and to other doves overturned buses belonging to their businesses they broke into their shops they said let's go and get the chronicle so i probably foolishly on my own i wandered back up got into the chronicle office and sat there waiting for the attack which never came [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] well it wasn't it wasn't right it was right at the end of the day people are entitled to their views i may not agree with them but they're entitled to them it was a pretty horrific day episode in our in in our history and certainly not one to be to be proud of in any shape or form and eventually it's the straw that breaks the camel's back so in itself the one issue may not mean that important but if you add it to everything else it's like a bloodletting or a release of tension do you regret publishing that letter no from my point of view was freedom of expression which was rapidly disappearing in toronto to put a good word for one of these doves this man is a good man but a lot of people in gibraltar owe him a lot because he used to take them across to aji where they could go to lalini and to see their families or whatever for an emergency even to people to take them to hospitals and things like that in his own private yacht they knew when he bought because the original was burnt that man should be honored for that because despite of what they did to him you know like they say pay pay a bad debt with a good one you know there you go next tuesday the spanish government has announced that it's going to close the border to all traffic from la liga going to jib this will mean a very serious blow to the gibraltar tourist industry but worse may follow because the story in gibraltar is that the permits of the 5 000 spanish workmen who every day come from la linea to jim to work in the docks and in the offices and the hotels may be withdrawn and if they are withdrawn the border may then be closed completely if this is true it will be in fact the biggest step taken so far by the franco government in its current blockade of gibraltar i think the cause was the first and my husband and i had just got married we got married in 66 september 66 and we were on honeymoon coming back uh driving down we were in madrid when my family called us and said that the frontier was shutting and we had to go drive to lisbon and take a ferry from lisbon to gym and thank god it was we were lucky it was the last ferry and we're taking the car back to gym but just to go round and round in circles around jib because we can't go into spain so but there it is that's what we did in 66 things got very bad spain stopped the female labor force from coming through the frontier arguing that they were in danger here from the men would you believe it i mean there was no end as to what the spanish government would invent to offend us so what we did is we formed the women's housewives association and do you know every single job in hotels hospitals private homes anywhere in gibraltar was meant by a volunteer woman in june 1969 the spanish government struck its hardest blow against gibraltar angered by britain's refusal to hand over gibraltar franco decided to take matters into his own hands overnight the spanish labor force was removed from the rock and the land frontier was closed men who had worked in gibraltar for a lifetime trooped across the frontier into spain for the last time can you imagine stopping them coming into work i'm i mean what would they live from and how very sad that they were all crying and so upset they gradually had to take their things back you know all their tools and whatever they had there were a lot of people you see that who had houses mostly mixed marriages with spaniards and tribal terrorists who had to make a big decision either to give up the house in spain and come to gibraltar where they had the job or stay in spain without a job foreign [Music] foreign [Music] i remember the frontier closure because i just what i remember was the number of people weeping you know that's this was my memory of it just lots of people weeping [Music] [Music] [Music] then [Music] and there was so much sadness because there was so many spanish people who worked here for years who became part of local families who were suddenly told that's it it's finished now [Music] [Music] oh [Applause] [Music] well of course when the border closed all the gerald cars came back to jib and they had nowhere to go so they we just went round and round circles especially as you get older the freedom to move around that you you just couldn't go in the car and or go for a weekend to spain or whatever you were pretty much stuck here and it was a surprise that somebody could do that shut off 30 000 people into marriages people from both sides of the border so suddenly all these things just disappeared from local life although i mean spain had been you know a strong presence here the man who sold the bread and all this kind of thing it wasn't just that it was the maliciousness if you can call it that to cut off the telephone lines for example there was no need that wasn't any part of any political political campaign but to shut off the telephone lines was particularly nasty in my view and the spaniards were left on the spanish side with no work and nothing absolutely nothing and that's how they did it they didn't care about their people so if they didn't care about their own people how would you expect them to care about us you've got to remember when the frontier closed there was no industry in gibraltar there was no trade in gibraltar the only way we could survive was through development aid from the uk or handouts from the uk or a heavy reliance on the uk military within gibraltar so it really was a massive weapon to hit us on the head with when franco forced on them the choice of spanish citizenship or the sack from spain where many gibraltarians lived they chose the rock in spite of the dismal accommodation available there many refugees are still living in very squalid so-called temporary accommodation what sort of bathing accommodation have you got here no answer what about language facilities today well we've got one over there how many families use that um nine families families what's it like here in the winter terrible in what way well water coming through the ceilings there through the windows do you ever regret the fact that you chose to come to general no don't you think it's a heavy price to pay for being british heavy price i wouldn't say so we were a village of 30 000 people under attack in every possible way it was an effort to bring us to unease and unfortunately for them unfortunately for us that happens in many of these cases when you push communities it has the opposite effect i thought i was concerned being so good locked in i felt no different there were enough things to be done here to forget to go to spain the rock for a lot of people were swinging i mean people must have drank more than they ever would now clubs and cocktail parties left right and center there would have been the military were obsessed with cocktail parties the sergeant's mess would be swinging wife swapping parties on the balcony and you know it was just everything was happening and you made friendships that you hadn't made before because you've been going out now you're there sport blossomed in gibraltar because it was a way of uh it was an entertainment dancing dancers developed there was a lot of social life development the one habit i remember very distinctly was that the the bar that's in the air terminal um was super popular and people would go down to the bar and see who was coming in even if they're not because they were expecting anybody they just go out of curiosity to see who was arriving on the plane thing after mass on sundays we would all troop into the car and do a sunday drive and we'd go around in a sort of crocodile line at five miles an hour i think people used to call it the skeletrics like the toys that you just keep going around in the circuit people went round and round the rock what you do is that you want to make the best of the situation to show them that you're absolutely fine i think in many ways it was like well this is if this is the price i have to pay for being british i'd do it people started speaking english people stopped watching spanish television it had a very dramatic effect on gibraltar society but one which you took on with a siege mentality it took on were not going to be defeated what happened is the deportations have opened their eyes to the world and we know that there's life beyond spain and beyond the rock and there's a big wide world out there which jupiterians started to explore and that thanks to franco before the frontier closure we used to go to spain a lot obviously and my aunt lived in algecira as a los pino so we used to go there a lot and in the summer we used to spend a couple of weeks with her there they had three children they had evarito maddie and antonio maddie is exactly my age we've always all our lives adored each other from a very young age my aunt magda wanted her sons to be educated in gibraltar to get some of their gibraltarian identity [Music] um [Music] [Music] [Music] i mean we were at school and then suddenly we heard you know they're not going to be able to come to school here anymore the front is closing maddie's going to have to stay in spain and i remember being devastated really devastated and it was awful because uh you know i knew that once she went back to spain um i couldn't see her i couldn't talk to her i see koboya a we had friends in tandya and we called them and say call magda and duska you know and and call us back and that's how we could be in touch with with uh with my sister in spain my uncle your great uncle lawrence he wrote a song and it was accepted and your grandma sang it oh my god it was something i never thought i'd ever do um [Music] okay [Music] no i never went to the gates i think there was that feeling of you know if they want to shove down the frontier fair enough you shut down the frontier i'm not going to go to the frontier and shout across foreign well you know the frontier closure did affect us we were the ones who were in the cage and we suffered the scars of that cage almost everything that's happened from the closure of the frontier to the campaign of the spaniard each and every one of those elements has helped weld us more and more into a closer and closer-knit community you know i often say the only good thing frank did in his entire history was to close that border because it made us look inside and ask ourselves who are we and we found ourselves [Music] franco died in 1975 but the border did not fully reopen until 1985. it had been closed for 16 long years spain had agreed to open the frontier several years before it actually did but because of the falklands conflict in particular it postponed the opening and no doubt believing that a negative outcome for the uk and the falklands might strengthen their hand on the gibraltar issue [Music] the spanish government decided not to make a big thing of the opening but even they might have wished that the lock had worked rather better the key just wouldn't turn at first it was a very odd event because you know i think people had really mixed feelings about it in jib at the time there was there was a good crowd there and there was some i think it was a band or something was playing the bolt is back the lights are flashing [Applause] and the gates are open an historic moment in the history of gibraltar the land frontier open now no longer is gibraltar an island everyone was in high spirits [Music] and the visiting welsh choir was in very good voice i went to see my sister i went to see magda so we had a cow waiting on the other side we drove to magda's house and we gave her one of the biggest surprises she ever got in her life and when i got to her house she heard me she was in the garden and she heard me and she couldn't believe it and she ran out to greet me [Music] i had people saying to me going to my office and bang on the table and saying i will never go across that front i'd cut my legs off before i cross the front and then i'd make them shopping in continente and say how are your legs a part of us was was scared of enjoying an open frontier too much in case they took it away from us again you know it felt as though you could somebody was going to say to you hang on you're not meant to be here go back you know get back with that feeling over is it is it true is it real am i allowed i was four years old when the frontier opened i don't remember a closed border life but crossing has never been easy even today the ongoing cues at the frontier are a constant reminder that there is that separation between us [Music] sadly my grandfather is no longer with us one thing i do remember him saying is that the problem is not spain because we know exactly what spain wants and it's easy to defend yourself against that if anything the british foreign office is the one you have to keep an eye on because you're never quite sure what it is they're after we never spoke about these things i wish we had when people say you know where were you when 9 11 happened i remember very distinctly about to fly out to interview peter hayne to land a bombshell on on on gibraltar you'd had quite a lot of developments in northern ireland with the blair government and i think there was a sense in uk that they wanted to somehow resolve this gibraltar issue get on with it have good good relations with um with spain i recall traveling to madrid for my first visit with the spanish government and beginning to explore the thorny issue of gibraltar it just struck me that we needed to do something very radical to try and break this impulse hang came out and started fishing around had met kirwan i was talking to people and of course it's the biggest mistake is thinking that it's worth getting into trying to solve a little problem like gibraltar which is such a big problem for spain i want to reassure the people of gibraltar that they have nothing to fear from dialogue with spain which we're conducting through the brussels process we did not agree to take part in the dialogue that they were already having not telling us what they were discussing and it's with hindsight clear that what they wanted was by hook or by crook to get me to participate in that dialogue not because they were going to pay any heed to what i said they'd already cooked up the deal themselves what they wanted was my presence to give it democratic legitimacy and peter hayne called me from the from the airport actually and said look can you come over to to london next week and um i'll give you an interview um so i flew out and the interview was was so striking for me because it sort of teased out as i went along with it um that i realized you know in the middle of this that they had a plan and britain started trying to pursue this this particular program of some kind of a joint deal it was totally outrageous i mean you know how can this man move to negotiate uh on behalf of the the british population of gibraltar without even consulting the elected leaders of gibraltar tony blair who was very close as prime minister to athena spanish prime minister agreed that we needed to try and see if we could find a solution it was very much a sort of number 10 fantasy that had come into saying well we can do this because we can do anything the essence of the deal was that they would uh joint sovereignty for britain this was forever joint sovereignty for as if sovereignty which ultimately boils down to power and allegiance and affinity as if that could be shared for five minutes let alone for 500 years i couldn't as britain's europe minister even tony blake would not have somehow signed a co-sovereignty agreement without gibraltarians giving their acquiescence to it of course not but what he had to do is sign the agreement and then discuss it with and present it to the people of gibraltar if there were aspects of it maybe that they wanted to revisit we could have looked at that of course with spanish agreement and said yes or no it then becomes you know a very distraught visit for jack straw who had to try and come and sell it um how did that go well i mean you know he was spat on and there was a lot of tension in the air but he was brave man to go there i mean he knew he was going into the lions then and and he chose to go he felt that he could offer some kind of explanation which of course he couldn't well it was i wasn't uh it was what you expect from the man it's a absolute shyster but we were having it that is one of the biggest fears that gibraltar has they fear sellout and the nearest we got to that was with jack straw when he actually told spain yes we're going to come to an agreement we are both going to rule gibraltar hey i'm going to mean it any change in the sovereignty of gibraltar will be subject to the consent of the gibraltarian people which in practice means a submission of these proposals to a referendum in gibraltar the government has criticized gibraltar's decision to hold its own referendum on the colony's future foreign secretary jack straw said it wouldn't stop negotiations going ahead with spain about sharing sovereignty don't you understand mr straw and mr hayne that by committing in principle to the principle of our future you are violating our right to decide our own future i don't think that could have been done in any different way i don't think given the politics on the rock given the fact that people feel besieged by spain feel constantly betrayed by london that is a kind of a mindset i do not think you've got any way if you'd just allowed a veto to happen from the rock from the beginning and this is where peter carolina was so right in what he did in in calling that referendum you know this is against human rights what you're trying to do here when 20 000 gibraltarians have cast their vote to attempt to deny that that is not the political and free expression of the democratic wishes of the people of gibraltar will lack all credibility but that is a matter for them and their own political consciences for the just votes 187 for the low vote 17 [Applause] [Music] [Applause] 900. one of the positive things of this whole sorry and sad exercise was that it flushed out madrid what it really did do ultimately is that when madrid was offered a joint sovereignty package notwithstanding lack of jupiterian consent they could not come to to accept it i realize i'm not welcome in the rock i realize people think i was up to all sorts of dark plots to try and do gibraltarians down believe me and what i was doing was finding a solution to this problem and i negotiated it with the with madrid it's a shame they walked away well after the defeat of the joint sovereignty project we actually extracted from them solemnly and in writing declared at the united nations that the united kingdom government would never again even sit down with spain to discuss sovereignty without our consent so it was a thoroughly disreputable period of time it was a thoroughly worrying period of time challenging time for gibraltar people and government but having survived it and won we then actually emerge with some prizes on my wedding day i wonder what the future holds for generations of gibraltarians to come it's almost as if the only people who recognize the germanitarians or the generalitarians themselves and and we feel this need to constantly reassert our identity and our right to exist as a people tends to be questioned so often and by so many that we feel this need for reassertion almost as if to convince ourselves you know that we deserve to be here sort of thing the foreign office has never defended us we've had huge queues at the frontier they've never once retaliated we're expendable we we're not worth the fight but it's worth the fight for us it's worth the fight for us yeah ever since i've been alive all i've known is spain trying to suppress us into into becoming spanish and as a friend of mine once said you know you'd be foolish to walk up the aisle with a man who's beating you the spanish closure of the border left a deep scar on my parents and grandparents generation but i hope things will be different for my generation we grew up with our family on the other side and this is a family we don't want to lose again we spend more time in spain now and unlike my parents and grandparents my wedding will take place in spain the beauty of gibraltar is how all these different ethnic peoples have integrated to become one family and becoming one family is vital for the future gibraltarians have come from all over the world my family came from italy we have maltese we have spaniels we have portuguese that have come together to form today's gibraltar they're all gibraltarians respectively where they come from so if you ask me what a gibraltarian is it's something that's been there for a considerable period of time and shares the identity and ideals that we all do i just hope that one day they'll change their ways and accept jib for what it is and the day that happens is the day like in a hundred years we'll integrate i'm sure i don't know i like my gibraltar we have a saying in spanish we said la cabras the goat always goes back up to the rock you know and perhaps i'm one of those there's no place like home we as a community no matter how small we are we have elected to have this way of life today i am offered marriage advice how to unite two different people and two different families the main foundation for a happy marriage is real love respect each other has to be equal the moment one side fails the marriage will stumble and that is what's happening between spain and us we have still friends even though one of the partners in this marriage keeps knocking us i think if my grandfather were here his advice would be to never forget who you are or where you're from we are gibraltarians and gibraltar is our home i hope this film will act as a reminder to my generation of the struggles our parents and grandparents went through to protect our rights to call jabal to home and that it will also help the world understand us better in the meantime we can only hope for a happy future you

Channel: DerekDalmedo

Views: 197,823

Keywords: Gibraltar, rock, british, rock of gibraltar, eu, brexit, llanito, yanito, latino, spain, uk, med, Mediterranean, sunshine, gbz, gib, Donald Trump, llanita, yanita, dalmedo, gibraltar espanol, boris johnson, theresa may, soft brexit, hard brexit, single market, spanish, donald trump inauguration video, immigration, Catalonia, cataluña

Id: LKM_mpVZ344

Length: 52min 0sec (3120 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 24 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Eddiespus]

Interesting to see this from the British point of view. We grew up going to Algeciras every summer to stay with my grandparents and always remember looking across the bay at “El peñón”. Me and my sis in 1983. sullen 1980s American teens in Front of “el peñón”