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“This expertly researched book challenges the assumption
that Gibraltarians have always held deep antipathies toward
Spain and fiercely hold that their national identity is tied
up with being British. Instead, both Gibraltarians and Spaniards
at the border understand the physical frontier between them
to be little obstacle to a relationship built over the course
of the 20th century. Stockey argues that the frontier can
best be seen as a ‘process,’ whereby economic
forces emerged to encourage or discourage social, cultural,
and political interaction between the societies on either
side of it. The fence built by the British in 1908–9
may have caused friction between Madrid and London. It was
the physical expression of differing areas of sovereignty
and different tax regimes (especially during the years of
the Franco dictatorship), but it belied the fact that an intimate
relationship marked by trade (often in contraband), the use
of Spanish, intermarriage, and fluid immigration and labor
patterns had been forged without much concern or regard for
the posturing of politicians in those capitals. A solid work
on borders and borderlands. Highly recommended.” Choice
“Gareth Stockey covers a subject central to Anglo-Spanish
relations during the two dictatorships of Miguel Primo de
Rivera and Francisco Franco and the tumult of the Second Republic
and the Civil War. The book’s approachability is enhanced
by its highly vivid sense of place and people. It delineates
superbly the acute social and economic differences on both
sides of the Spanish frontier and does so in a way that clarifies
the fluctuations in the close relationship between both communities.
Dr Stockey’s work is also informed by a real sensitivity
to the social impact of diplomatic issues on the population
in both Gibraltar and Andalucía.” From the
Preface by Series Editor Paul Preston
“The focus of the study is the frontier between
Spain and Gibraltar and the fluctuations in the relationship
between the communities on both sides between 1900 and 1954.
The author’s ‘revisionist’ theses are threefold.
First, that the relationship has been determined not only
by political events but also by the differing concerns of
various class groups within Gibraltar and the neighbouring
Campo. Second, that the relationship was an increasingly close
and symbiotic one, which was broken neither by the Spanish
Civil War nor by the evacuation of most of the population
of Gibraltar during the Second World War, but by Franco’s
political opportunism following the visit of Queen Elizabeth
to Gibraltar in 1954 as part of her Coronation Tour and the
subsequent border restrictions; these led not only to the
destruction of the economic interdependence across the frontier
and other forms of interaction (230), but also to ‘the
closure of hearts and minds’ (224). Third, during this
period there was an inherent ‘Spanishness’ in
civilian Gibraltar, while the development of a distinctive
Gibraltarian identity only seriously arose after the 1950s
(although he rightly concedes that it began to appear in the
immediate aftermath of the War [183]). …
… One issue that arises from the study of the history
of a British colony in isolation is that it is difficult to
adjudge the extent to which some of the phenomena described
are unique to Gibraltar or are in fact paralleled elsewhere
and are therefore typical of colonial or cross-border situations.
For example, the author makes a strong case regarding the
divide between the ‘imported British community’
and the civilian population before the First World War and
he refers to the ‘barriers to entry’ being physical
as well as social (22). But was this unique to Gibraltar or
a reflection of colonial life anywhere in the Empire at that
time? Similarly, was the use of the Spanish language by both
the moneyed and the working class in Gibraltar typical of
any cross-border scenario? Was the general consensus ‘that
there should be no return to the pre-war status quo of quasi-dictatorial
rule by British officialdom, and a monopolisation of civilian
representation in government by the self-interested [...]
elites’ (187), echoed elsewhere in the colonies? Some
wider contextualization of the Gibraltar experience would
have been enlightening.” Bulletin of Spanish Studies
“Stockey addresses 300 years of diplomatic tensions
between Britain and Spain over the governance of Gibraltar
and focuses this study on the economic, political and social
issues that have developed along the Spain–Gibraltar
frontier. Written for students and scholars of international
relations and economics, this book describes how Gibraltarian
identities are not isolated from those of Spain, and how cultural
distinctions have been blurred between borders due to a history
of surprisingly cordial relations. A section is devoted to
the Franco regime, and how Spain attempted to break down the
frontier through an aggressive foreign policy agenda.”
Reference & Research Book News
“This book details the generally positive relationship
across the border (Campo) between Gibraltar and Spain from
the onset of the twentieth century, a harmonious situation
that was challenged by the Spanish Civil War and the subsequent
Franco dictatorship.
… Stockey devotes separate chapters to key changes in
Spanish policy, mainly those of Franco, through 1954. Various
actions by Franco, such as restricting Spanish workers entering
Gibraltar, inconvenienced Gibraltar but did not persuade its
residents to abandon ties to the United Kingdom.
… The concluding chapter comments on subsequent efforts,
sometimes by international bodies, to address the Gibraltar
situation noting the overwhelming vote to reject Spanish control
in the 1969 referendum on Gibraltar. Just as with the Falklands,
it is unlikely that Great Britain will abandon the Rock, as
long as its citizens clearly and emphatically wish to continue
to have British rule, if only in a loose sense.” British
Politics Group Quarterly
“Spain’s relationship with the military fortress
of Gibraltar and its surrounding community has been subject
to intense debate since the British took the Rock in 1704.
With this work Gareth Stockey seeks to revive the subject,
with an
emphasis on the period from 1900 through 1954. Queen Elizabeth
II’s visit to the Rock in that year led to a series
of reactionary policies from the dictatorship of General Francisco
Franco that culminated in the closure of the border between
Gibraltar and the adjacent Campo de Gibraltar in 1969. This
book merges traditional diplomatic history – the framework
used by most previous writers on the subject – with
insights from ‘borderlands’ studies in order to
place Franco’s actions in context. The result is an
analysis that squarely blames Franco alone for the current
hostility and separateness that exists between Gibraltar and
the Campo. While clear that Spain always claimed Gibraltar
should be its territory, Stockey nonetheless demonstrates
that for the first half of the twentieth century an important
and deep relationship between the Campo and Gibraltar flourished,
even in times of civil conflict and war.
… Stockey grounds the close relationship between the
Campo and Gibraltar in the economic, social, linguistic and
family ties that emerged in the late nineteenth century and
early twentieth, as both regions industrialized. While the
Gibraltarian ‘moneyed class’ was separate from
this process, the working classes of the region merged through
marriage and language usage, making the Gibraltarian workers
part of Spanish culture. The continued economic interdependency
of the Campo and Gibraltar over the course of most of the
century provided the opportunity for such cross-cultural ties
to deepen.
… In concluding with an assessment of Francoist propaganda
in 1954, during the Queen’s visit, Stockey is at times
too brief in outlining the nature of the change
occurring. Nonetheless, his point that Franco’s actions
effectively ended a cross-frontier relationship that had developed
rather naturally is well made.
Not only is this book a much needed revision of George Hills’
1974 Rock of Contention, but it also effectively combines
the traditional approach to the subject with the insights
of economic, cultural and social ties that are typical of
borderlands studies. The result is a book that allows the
reader to see the Rock as much more than a military outpost.”
David A. Messenger, Journal of Contemporary History
“In modern times, Gibraltar played a role in British
strategy on a level with Suez and Singapore, more notably
in the Second World War. The triumph of Francisco Franco in
the civil war produced a much more militant policy, and from
the summer of 1939 the Spanish dictator developed plans for
a direct military assault on the Rock. Adolf Hitler entered
the picture in August 1940, when Winston Churchill’s
refusal to surrender motivated Hitler to try to bring Spain
into the war, which would enable a special German assault
corps to seize Gibraltar and to close the west Mediterranean
to British forces. Spain’s economic weakness and Hitler’s
inability to meet Franco’s price in French African territory
frustrated this design, though a series of sabotage operations
against Gibraltar was mounted from Spanish soil between 1940
and 1943. Spanish policy returned to quiescence while the
regime endured post-war ostracism (1945–50), but then
resumed its militancy, closing the border altogether in 1969.
The democratic regime that followed eventually reopened the
frontier in 1985.
… The literature on Gibraltar has grown steadily, but
Gareth Stockey’s new treatment is not another diplomatic
and military account. It is rather a social and political
study of Gibraltar’s population and its interaction
with neighbouring Spanish society, reflecting recent scholarly
interest in borders and boundaries, and the extent to which
they do and do not manage to separate adjacent populations.
Stockey finds that, as Gibraltar developed as a naval base
and commercial entrepôt during the nineteenth century,
its society achieved a high level of symbiosis with the Campo
de Gibraltar, the neighbouring Spanish district. Though its
population was quite diverse in origin and its official language
English, the common language of Gibraltarean society, commerce,
culture, and education was Spanish. A social and cultural
frontier existed only for the British elite and servicemen,
and even that was highly permeable. Thousands of Spanish workers
crossed the border daily to work in Gibraltar’s large
dockyard and in its businesses and homes, injecting considerable
income into the neighbouring district of Andalusia, one of
the poorest in all Spain. Moreover, for most of the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, contraband was big business.
Gibraltar and its Spanish neighbour became both culturally
and economically interdependent and, when civil war came to
Spain in 1936, it divided the people of Gibraltar along much
the same lines as those of Spain.
… The beginning of greater separation came with the
Second World War, when much of the civilian population was
evacuated to Britain and elsewhere. This experience produced
a somewhat greater degree of ‘Anglicization’,
but even that was limited. The place of Spanish language and
culture in Gibraltar remained strong after 1945. Stockey finds
the line of separation to have begun to develop significantly
only with the more aggressive policy that Franco initiated
in 1950, followed eventually by the closing of the border.
This also roughly coincided with the introduction of broader
self-government in Gibraltar, and with the growth of a strong
and separate Gibraltarean identity in the second half of the
century, as by plebiscite the population massively rejected
union with Spain.
The complex interaction between the people of Gibraltar and
the society, culture, and politics of Spain is clearly described
in this brief account, which draws on diplomatic records,
the press, memoirs, and secondary works to present a fair
and balanced treatment.” Stanley G. Payne, University
of Wisconsin at Madison, The International History Review
“Gareth Stockey looks at trans-border relations
between Gibraltar and Spain during the first half of the twentieth
century, with particular focus on the years spanning the fall
of the Second Republic, the Spanish Civil War and Second World
War, and the lead up to the 1954 visit to Gibraltar by Elizabeth
II. These years are dealt with in great detail, with Stockey
analysing the complexity of interactions between both countries
and across different sectdors and interest groups on either
side of the frontier. The Gibraltar/Spain border is therefore
of central consideration, and, indeed, Stockey’s point of
departure is the construction, by the British military authorities,
of the fence on the neutral ground in 1908, an event which,
he suggests, ‘marked for the first time in over a century,
the existence of a physical “border” between Gibraltar and
the Campo’. A fence had in any case always existed at the
Spanish edge of the neutral ground but Stockey places some
emphasis on this development given that the relocation of
the British fence was only possible through the absorption,
by the British authorities, of their section of the neutral
ground into ‘mainland’ Gibraltar. The shifting of the boundary
not only brought Gibraltar physically closer to Spain, it
also redefined her territorial limits. Still, the question
of proximity is a central consideration here as Stockey sets
out to ‘challenge the importance of a formal frontier as a
dividing force between two communities’, going as far as to
suggest that these communities were so close by the first
half of the twentieth century that it might not be inaccurate
to suggest that they functioned as one rather than two separate
entities. Such a thesis raises all sorts of questions, especially
when considered in light of the powerful geopolitical discourse
that followed the closure of the frontier in 1969. The closure
not only kept communities apart, but also gave rise to insecurity
and the belief, on the part of Gibraltarians, that proximity
to Spain, culturally or otherwise, challenged their Britishness,
an important factor when it came to keeping the Spanish territorial
claim at bay. These complex feelings and some of the historiography
that followed tended to transplant the sentiments of 1969
onto the historical past as a means to explain Franco’s decision
to close the frontier.
… Then again, these are precisely the readings that
Stockey sets out to address; ones which he terms as ‘present-day
attitudes’ (although these are increasingly less current),
and which have served to define constructs of a Gibraltarian
identity and perceptions of her relationship with Spain. The
focus on the frontier has been such that the barriers (political,
class, economic, institutional or linguistic ones) that existed
within Gibraltar and between the Garrison and the civilian
population were rarely discussed.
… Stockey extends his challenge of a formal frontier
to include discussion on those other barriers within, making
this a very detailed study of Gibraltar society of the day.
The emphasis Stockey gives to the complex levels of interactions
is considerable and significant. He goes to great lengths
to demonstrate that far from a divider, the border with Spain
facilitated an economy and the transfer of cultural norms.
We are also dealing with trans-border relationships based
on dependencies; that of El Campo on the Gibraltar economy
and just as important, that of Gibraltar on El Campo for a
workforce. This very fact ensured, as Stockey argues, that
every diplomatic effort was made during some very challenging
times (see for example the Second World War and the threat
posed by Spain’s alliance with the Axis), to maintain fluidity
across the frontier.
… We see therefore, that despite diplomatic tensions
and the more local ones stemming from, on the whole, the contraband
trade, the frontier between Gibraltar and Spain operated with
fluidity and ease. A fence or frontier constructed by officials
may well have caused friction, but on the ground it did little
to alter the relationship between Gibraltar and El Campo.
Whether or not such interface led to these communities, or
at least certain sectors from each, being more similar than
dissimilar, or whether or not they functioned as one larger
community rather two separate ones remains a compelling question.
Stockey seems to suggest that it was during this first half
of the twentieth century that Gibraltarians became progressively
more ‘socially, culturally, linguistically and increasingly
politically’, closer to El Campo. It would also be useful
to look back to at least the nineteenth century to determine
if this trend forms part of a natural progression, one which
peaked in the twentieth century, or if we are dealing with
a pattern of interactions informed by ruptures over a period
of time. It is also interesting to note that it was precisely
Gibraltar’s status as a separate (from Spain) economic and
sovereign jurisdiction that fuelled, if not sustained, the
impressive level and range of interactions across both spaces.”
European History Quarterly
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