Tour of Gibraltar
On the fourth day of our visit in
Spain, we visited Gibraltar and the cape of monkeys.
This was another fascinating
journey from Torremolinos. It was a very early start in the morning but we were
all excited as we knew we were visiting the rock of Gibraltar and the monkeys
amongst other beautiful sights.
The scenery was breathtaking as
we were travelling and the sun was rising suddenly making the whole place like
a picture out of a movie scene. It was just sheer magic to see the dawn
breaking and feel the sun rays on your face as you looked out through the coach
window.
As we approached Gibraltar, we
could see the rock.
The rock has been British for the
last three hundred years. Prior to that, it was Spanish for 250 and before that;
it was Arabic Moorish for nearly 800 years.
The rock has always been a source
of conflict because of its strategic importance and that is due to Gibraltar’s geographical
location in the world. At the crossroads of two continents, Africa and Europe,
and also at the cross roads of two bodies of water; the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.
That makes Gibraltar a unique place and for that reason it played a vital role
during the Second World War, in the invasion of North Africa in the form of Operation
Torch planned from the mountain of Gibraltar.
The population of Gibraltar
during the Second World War was evacuated because an attack was expected from Germany,
it never happened but nevertheless the population was evacuated, mainly the
women, children and the elderly. The men had to stay behind to help the army.
As we turned the roundabout, we
saw a monument which was dedicated to those evacuated from Gibraltar; this
monument depicts them coming back from the evacuation after seven years.
There was a bit of a problem with
this monument as our guide said, because one of the ladies was depicted as
carrying a baby! As the woman had spent seven years away from her husband, he would
not have been happy to see this. The guide said that when somebody pointed this
to the husband, that the baby was removed to be replaced by the mother-in-law
for the husband to see. He was joking of course.
And as he continued driving down
the road to Gibraltar to see the monkeys in a cave, the guide explained that
the inside and outside of that area was a reclaimed land, which means that it
is artificial or man-made. It was reclaimed about 20 years ago.
A lot of things are going on in Gibraltar
because the population is growing very fast, and as of last year the population
was about 28,000.These people share the rock with 300 hundred monkeys or is the
other way round?
As we went further down the road,
we saw a place the guide called home away from home which was a Morrison
supermarket and he joked that people from the UK would normally go to
Morrison’s and stand in the air conditioning instead of going to the airport
and back home. He also pointed out that the price of petrol is in litres and in
pounds. And fuel price in Gibraltar is the cheapest in Europe because no tax is
paid.
On the right, we saw the American
embassy, McDonald’s and a hospital was just across the road, which was not a
coincidence.
The bit of land there is also reclaimed
land, but that bit was reclaimed about hundred years ago and the sea would have
lapped the defensive walls. We saw plenty of sea water following us all the way
to the south of Gibraltar.
We could see the old part of the
town, although it looked like a Mediterranean town, it didn’t look like the
typical white villages of Andalucía but as he said there was a reason for that.
In 1704, the British took
Gibraltar from the Spanish during the war of Spanish cessation, but the Spanish
destroyed the whole of the city before they left and the only people that
stayed were the British and Italian immigrants who were living together with
the Spanish but did not get along with them, and so they decided to stay
together with the British and helped them reconstruct the city.
This is why the buildings in
Gibraltar as you look at it look is similar to those in Italy rather than Spain and it goes even further
because 70% of those that live in Gibraltar are descendants from those Italians
and our guide was one of those descendants whose surname was Rocca. His family came originally
came from Genoa, Italy and he said that Italian tourists that he had on board,
always find it funny that he holds British passport, has Italian name and
looked Italian and they ultimately ask “Le parla Italiano? Do you speak
Italian?” And he would answer in the affirmative and say Pizza, macaroni, pasta
and the most important cappuccino.
He went on to say that as this
land would have been reclaimed land and the sea would have gone up to the
defences on the left; We saw the walls which were British defensive walls and a
part of in front of us which was known as King Bastion, where a great naval
battle took place, known as the great siege that lasted four years and was won
by the British.
At that time, there were 5,000
soldiers posted to Gibraltar and the French were controlling Spain then and
they knew this. The Spanish were convinced that they can recover the rock in no
time because Gibraltar is not heavily defended, just 5,000 men so they can
storm and take control with a hundred thousand men.
But they tried for 4 years to no
avail, so they left empty handed.
We came up to Wellington Front,
the latest addition to the wall , completed in 1840 and started with British convicts
that were taken to Australia in a ship. These guys proved to very expensive,
didn’t want to work and the British administration put them back into the
ship and sent them back to Australia and employed locals to finish the wall. We
saw where the British wall merged into the Spanish one. The British wall is
made entirely of limestone and its white and the Spanish wall went further
along. The Spanish used limestone but with a lot more mud added and we saw the
difference in colour. The Spanish wall was brown in colour. But this is a much older wall built in 1440
under the reign of Charles the 1, the king of Spain at the time and the only
reason why the wall was built was because Gibraltar had been attacked several
times by a very famous Turkish pirate called Barbarossa (red beard). We also
noted that the wall ended abruptly as we went further down, and that is not a
coincidence because it was the southern Muslim
part that the Spaniards defended; they defended Gibraltar to the south
side and once we passed the Spanish wall we saw that the British wall carried
on all the way south. So the British had a different idea to Gibraltar as the
Spanish, and I suppose this was the success of Gibraltar remaining British, for
they defended the whole of the rock. Eventually they would have mounted the
forces there and attack the garrison, and I suppose that was their downfall not
protecting Gibraltar properly.
We went into the old fortress of
Gibraltar through the south, through a gate which was not reclaimed land but
Gibraltar proper.
And we saw at the top of a
hill beyond the roundabout, where the
trees were, was a place known officially as the Trafalgar cemetery and only two
people who died in the Battle of
Trafalgar square were actually buried there. All the rest of the
people died from yellow fever and had nothing to do with the Battle of
Trafalgar, but still people celebrate that naval conflict because it took place
not far away from Gibraltar which was about 80 miles north west from the rock,
in a place called Cape Trafalgar. This was port of the Napoleonic wars and it
took place on the 21st of October 1805.
When the French and the Spanish
fleets were replenishing at the port of Cadiz, the British fleet were located
at that same port. The French Admiral Villeneuve decided to leave the port and
take the battle to the British fleet but unknown to him, he was attacking the
best naval fleet under Lord Nelson who calmed his men fears and told them that
he will attack the enemy in a way that will take them by surprise, known
nowadays as crossing the T.
They managed to sink all the
enemy vessels but not before taking all the barrels of cognac to celebrate the
victory.
Nelson was killed in the conflict
and HMS Victory was severely damaged. Both were brought back to Gibraltar after
the battle and the ship was successfully repaired
And as Nelson’s body had to be
taken back to England to be buried as an Admiral, some of the chaps brought the
idea that his body be chopped and put in a barrel of cognac.
It was said that on the way to
England the soldiers decided to drink the cognac in which his body was in and
this is where we get the saying that “the cognac has gone body”.
We went inside the garrison and
saw the defensive wall on the right. In 1909, the British decided to reclaim
that piece of land and create the dockyard which was to our right. This dockyard
played a vital role in the 1st and 2nd WW.
Today, it is commercially run by
a British firm called camal laird but the administration reserved the right to
use the dockyard whenever it is necessary.
Further along to our left, we saw
the Gibraltar police and their headquarters. They were exactly the same as in
the UK, the typical British bobbies and are the second oldest police force in
the world, second to the Metropolitan Police in London formed in 1830, eight
months earlier.
Then the Victorian batches in
1884 where the guns weigh 110 tons, originally built for the Italian Navy, little
did they know then that the Italians were to become the enemy during the war. The
British decided to build four, two for Malta and two for Gibraltar.
We went into small tunnels and
came out to a spectacular view of the beach. We saw the war camps for the
German prisoners but completely different now.
We saw the Bay of Gibraltar on
the right and mountains on the other side of the Bay of Spain and beyond the
mountains was the Atlantic Ocean.
And lying straight in front was
the strait of Gibraltar and on the left was the Mediterranean. We saw Africa on
the side of the mountain that is Morocco just 21 kilometres away.
Gibraltar is not the southern
most of Europe; it’s on the other side of the bay in a town called Tarifa and
it’s forty kilometres to Africa. On the left hand side, we saw a magnificent
waterfall but it was not a natural waterfall just an overflow of a salvation
plant.
The last tunnel that we went
through was built in 1961; the first tunnel to be constructed was in 1781.
There are about 30 kilometres of
tunnels in Gibraltar, and there are small roads inside the rock and out.
We went to the southernmost part
of Gibraltar where we were able to see the light house in red and white built
in 1938 which was the only lighthouse outside Britain
As we left the tunnel, we saw the
mosque that was built in 1998 with the funds donated by the King of Saudi
Arabia, King Fahd bin Abdul-Aziz at a cost of twelve million pounds.
Next stop was the nature reserve.
Gibraltar was declared a nature reserve in 1989. And I learned that Gibraltar
is one of the best places in the world for bird migration because of its close
proximity to Africa. And migration was discovered in the year 1756- prior to
that people thought that the birds migrates to the moon!
There are 600 hundreds plant
species on the rock, of which five are endemic to Gibraltar.
There were the Barbary apes,
wrongly named Barbary macaque apes because they have no tails. But they are monkeys,
not apes and there is a biological reason why. It’s because they came from the
Moyen atlas in North Africa, where it snows all year round and animals that
live in the snow lose a lot of body heat and nature, through evolution, they
get rid of their tails. There are twenty two species of macaque in the world
and out of these twenty two, two have no tails, one being the Japanese macaque
that lives in the snow and the other one being the Barbary macaque which lives
in Gibraltar but originally comes from the snow. The rest of the twenty all
have their tails and all live in the rain forest.
The entrance to the nature
reserve has got a peculiar name: Jews Gate.
The reason for that is that in
1704 Britain took Gibraltar from the Spanish and in 1713 the Spanish and the
British Crowns signed a treaty, the treaty of Utrecht which was supposed to guarantee
peace in Europe but that was not the case, it was a lie because there were more
wars after the treaty, but nevertheless within that treaty Gibraltar was passed
over to the British crown forever.
Not only that the Jews, who the
Spanish considered the infidels, were not allowed to live on the rock, but the
British turned a blind eye to that and allowed the Jews to live on the rock.
Also they were not allowed to be buried within the city wall when they die.
So the British administration
allowed them to bury their loved ones in the nature reserves away from the
prying eye of the Spanish. And the Spanish did not find out that there were
Jews living on the rock. We saw the cemetery as we went into the nature
reserve.
Even though there it’s Jews gate
and Gibraltar is small, and people know that there is a Jews gate, not everyone
know that there is a Jew cemetery.
On our right was black, green and
yellow background rings all over the place. They were put there by the British
and were used by them as a pulley system to hold the guns to the top of the
rocks.
As we were admiring the view, we
saw a cruise liner leaving the rock, the P&O Arcadia and we saw another one
called the Ocean Empress coming into the port.
We had a brilliant view of the
Bay of Gibraltar and the rocks were quite nice as we looked to our left but one
gets a little bit dizzy looking to your right, especially if you have a phobia
for heights.
There, we also saw the biggest
container in southern Europe and beyond the mountains was the Atlantic Ocean.
All the ships we saw in the bay
were either waiting for work or waiting for bunkering. We then headed towards
St Michael’s cape where we spent about twenty minutes inside and ten minutes
with the monkeys outside which the guide calls his family.
We encountered monkeys at the
entrance of the gate. Our guide told us that most guides introduced monkeys to
the visitors in a way that annoys him as he said, being a zoologist, he didn’t
think it’s fair on the monkeys. They would usually advise tourists to be
careful because the monkeys are aggressive. And as he said he always cautioned
people to be aware of what they do, for the monkeys may bite them and because
humans do the wrong thing.
He told us also that there were
three golden rules with the monkeys.
The first is that under no
circumstances should one touch the monkeys, for they don’t like being touched.
Secondly, one should not stare
into their eyes for they take this as a sign of aggression. And lastly for the
ladies he warned, to never forage in our bags for they would steal the bags. As
he was driving and talking to us, a monkey suddenly came onto the van and as he
wound the windows down, the monkey touched his hands and shook her hands with him as he joked that it
was his girlfriend, that the monkeys are
not aggressive but very playful, to prove his point. He repeated his three
golden rules and reiterated that we should take heed of his warnings, as he
gave us tickets and left us to go inside the cape and admire the beauty within.
The entrance was on the left and
exit was up above, which was fascinating.
Now there were over three hundred
monkeys on the rock, which was too many for such a small place like Gibraltar.
There was enough food but not enough territory. These animals feed on fifty six
plants on the rock but still they go into town. Why? It’s because there is
enough food but not enough territory there.
The three hundred monkeys are divided
into eight families and the strongest families pushed the weakest families into
town. These animals find their food in town. They go into people’s apartments
and eat everything, mess up everything and eventually find their way into the
fridge and devour everything.
They have all got a letter and a
number inside their hind legs. The letter tells you what group they came from
and the number is the individual within that group. And why the identification
numbers? This is because they go into town and sometimes, it is quite difficult
to get them out of these apartments, hence the identification.
If they are not identified that
way, and they are brought back from town and put into any family, he or she
will be killed. So it is necessary to identify them for repatriation into the
family and also by marking them, the zoologists can keep a check on them and
know the numbers that are alive or dead, and whether they have given birth or not. So a history is kept on every
single animal.
Inside the rock was just
incredible and as my friend said when she was asked about her experience inside
the rock, “the atmosphere was incredible and truly amazing as you can see the
natural creation, the natural beauty of the rock. It was also an experience
that was truly unforgettable, every corner you turn, you see something
completely different. It’s definitely worth coming here. Make that one of your
goals.”
The natural chandeliers as I
called the hanging rocks were fantastic, and I felt like spending the whole day
and night inside.
It was like being into another
planet, transported into a world of wonder and
Further down the slope was the
station of the cable car, which you can use to travel from the town to the
summit in six minutes and six seconds to return! The guide jokingly recommended
the journey because he said it’s memorable.
According to our guide, the road
we were travelling on was a two way system, about two years ago with parking
included which he said was not funny and I can imagine how terrifying it was.
And of course we saw scratches on the wall which he jokingly said were made by
tourists trying to get off the bus for their safety!
The drivers in Gibraltar drive on
the right instead of on the left like in the UK, even though they are British.
We saw a big building on the
right, which used to be the old hospital in Gibraltar. We saw the new one
earlier on. The old hospital has been converted into an old people’s home. It’s
called St Bernard’s hospital.
When the Spanish expelled the
Moors out of Gibraltar in 1462,on St Bernard’s Day, which was the 24th
of August and St Bernard’s became the Patron Saint of Gibraltar and further
down was the first Catholic church that was built during the British
occupation. It was built by the money donated from a very rich Italian family
called the Scandella family. Their son became the first Bishop of Gibraltar,
John Baptist Scandella and further down on the left was a typical British
telephone box but as the guide explained, it’s tropical one not typical because
it only works when it’s sunny! He was joking.
We then headed to the northern
side of the rock of Gibraltar and saw the first tunnels that were reconstructed
there first. They were completed only after the great siege in 1781 was over,
nevertheless these tunnels were extensively used during the Second World War
and a few more tunnels added to them to add up to the 35 kilometres of the
tunnels that are now in Gibraltar.
There we also saw the Spanish
town of La Linea which translates as the line as the guide said but the line to
what? It’s because it was the frontline and this was how the Spanish army would
have been attacking Gibraltar by land and hence the great siege was created on
the northern side of the rock to protect it.
The town of La Linea was a
hundred and nine years old, prior to that, it would have been was just the
frontline to attack Gibraltar. And as we turned on the right hand side we saw
the western end of the runway.
This airport is very peculiar; we
went across it on the bus that morning. It was built during the Second World
War for the war effort to be able to invade North Africa and to stop the
Germans from advancing.
Lots of tunnels were constructed
during the Second World War. All the rubbles that came out of those tunnels
were used to construct the airport. So during the Second World War, the thirty
thousand allied soldiers that were posted to Gibraltar were waiting to be given
the go ahead for the invasion of North Africa. They were waiting for the
completion of the airport and once it was completed, they launched the attack
successfully.
We saw the entrance to the 2
golden tunnels where the invasion of North Africa was planned by three
Generals; two British and one American. The two British were General Mason
Macfarlane, the Governor of Gibraltar and General Montgomery and the American,
General Eisenhower who later on became the President of United States.
There we saw the entrance to the
World War 2 tunnels. It was from there that they planned the invasion of North
Africa and there again we saw part of the airport, which was the western end of
the runway and there was also the oldest building on the rock; The Moorish
castle or the Tower of Homage. It was built in 1160 by the Moors, destroyed by
the Spaniards in 1309 and rebuilt by the Moors in 1333 and we could see all the
battle scars around it and the British flag has been flying on that castle for
the last three hundred years.
The guide also said that while
walking one afternoon, after his bird watching session, he noticed four Spanish
men taking off the British flag and replacing it with the Spanish one. He then
called the police on his mobile phone and the men were arrested for breaching
the peace. They spent one week in prison directly below the British flag flying
above.
The Italian influence can be seen
in the buildings in Gibraltar, the typical Italian shutters on the window and
further down on the left, the Italian balconies made of rod iron.
We saw a building that retained
it’s Italian name, Juan de Gambino and on the same side was a beautiful
Georgian stone building which is the old military library and in it’s forecourt
was one of the oldest tree on the rock. It is a dragon tree from the Canary
Island which is 700 hundred years old and then we saw the second oldest
newspaper in the world, the chronicle, established in 1801, second to the Times
in London.
Church of Scotland (St Andrews
Church) was on the right, similar to the Church of England. We also saw a
school and parents collecting them.
As Gibraltar is small, children
used to walk to school and back but as the guide said, today children are
spoilt; they are collected in cars and driven to and from school.
In front was the Governor’s
residence. He has maximum authority because he represents the Queen appointed
to Gibraltar by the British government and he deals with the foreign affairs
and defence.
The building used to be
Franciscan Monastery, built in 1560 and on the right was the old Registry office, where John Lennon and Sean
Connery got married but not to each other!
There was also the residence of
the Duke of Kent, father of Queen Victoria, the only Royal Governor, Gibraltar
ever had. On the right was the Church of England built in 1825, modelled on an
Arabic building known as the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity.
Further on the left was an air
raid shelter building built in 1939 and on the right was one of the four
Synagogues in Gibraltar known as the Flemish Synagogue, built in 1828 and is
the most important one on the rock and was next to a bank.
We caught a glimpse of the
Catholic Cathedral through a lane, converted to a Cathedral by the Spanish in
1462, prior to that the building would have been a Mosque.
On our left was the British First
World War memorial and is flanked by two guns from the Crimean War.
And on our right, we saw more of
the typical Genoese shelters and balconies. But the Italian influence goes a
bit further for although, they speak both English and Spanish in Gibraltar,
within the Spanish, they still retain few Italian words.
The First American World War
memorial was on the left which commemorates the corporation between the British
and the American navy during the First World War erected in 1932 within
Gibraltar’s city walls for the longest Orange Bastion named after William of Orange,
William the 3rd of England but he was Dutch.
On the right was Casemates Square,
the main Square in Gibraltar leading on to main Street and it’s a nice relaxing
place today. But in the olden days, public executions were carried out there.
And then the big stone building
just to the right was the military barrack only sixty years ago and now used as
a shopping centre and as we went over the bridge to the right was the Spanish
wall below the British which was built above it going all the way to the top to
the Moorish Castle.
So the three Authorities were
defending Gibraltar wall very well, manifested in one defensive wall. The
defensive walls are known locally as The Northern Defences.
There was an old military
hospital which was converted to a luxury apartment. The hospital played a vital
role during the Second World War, in the invasion of North Africa and all the
casualties from the war were to that hospital.
Property in Gibraltar is very
expensive; nearly as expensive as properties in central London and the reason
being that land is very limited on the rock.
There are many cultures and
religions living together in Gibraltar and they all live in relative harmony
and as he said Gibraltar should be used as a role model for the rest of the
world
There is also a small detachment
of Scottish on the rock and for that reason, there is a pub in the corner which
he called the Scottish Embassy and as he said jokingly, it’s always busy on
Friday evening on the rock with Scottish discussing the future of Scotland with
a bottle of whisky.
A monkey suddenly appeared, as we
slowed down in a corner on the road.
There was the old military
hospital which was converted to luxury apartment. The hospital played a vital
role during the Second World War in the invasion of North Africa and all the
casualties from that war were taken to that hospital.
The guide from Calypso Tour took
us back into town, waved us goodbye as he left us near a shopping mall in
Gibraltar.
We did some more sightseeing in
town, had lunch, visited shops and bought presents for our friends and families
back in London
We spent the whole day in
Gibraltar. It was magical.
Property in Gibraltar is very
expensive, nearly as expensive as properties in central London and the reason
being that land is limited on the rock.
The shopping malls are similar to
the ones in London and you can find most of the famous brand names there.
Electrical goods are cheaper than
in the UK and food was fresh and cheap. Some of my friends in the group were
treated to a sumptuous Moroccan meal!
The people in Gibraltar were very
friendly.
As we were ready to leave
Gibraltar, the coach driver and the original guide that was with us from the
beginning of our tour, told us to leave the bus and all our presents inside the
coach as we approached the customs because they have to search the coach to
make sure we are not carrying items that are more than the required limit,
especially cigarettes and alcohol.
It was fantastic and we had
plenty of opportunity to take pictures, at every sight we visited.
