'We lost Brexit. We won the future.'

by Chief Minister Fabian Picardo

I remember the morning of the 24th June 2016 as if it were yesterday.

The night before, Gibraltar had spoken with one voice. By 96 per cent, we voted to remain in the European Union. We were the first to declare in the entire referendum. No community voted more decisively. And no community had more at stake.

But as dawn broke over the Rock, we knew that our voice, clear and united as it was, had been drowned out. The United Kingdom had voted to leave. And that meant Gibraltar, against the overwhelming wishes of our people, would leave too.

Brexit was not our choice. It was not our doing. But it became our challenge.

Within days, the vultures began to circle. Señor Margallo spoke of the Spanish flag flying over the Rock, closer, he claimed, than ever before. My answer then is my answer now and forever: “No way, José.”

Because the people of Gibraltar have made our choice, freely and democratically, time and time again. And no referendum result anywhere else on earth could ever change that.

What followed was a decade that tested every sinew of this small nation of ours and challenged me, Joseph Garcia and our teams like never before.

We faced Clause 24 of the EU’s negotiating guidelines, the attempt to hand Spain a veto over our future. I called it then what it was: discriminatory and unfair. We fought it, hand in glove with the United Kingdom, and we prevailed.

We secured the assurance of successive Prime Ministers that the United Kingdom will would only negotiate with the EU arrangements Gibraltar was comfortable with. There would be no pressure or betray in the wings.

We agreed the Gibraltar Protocol and the Memoranda of Understanding. We prepared, with a heavy heart, for the hardest of exits, whilst never abandoning our pursuit of a better outcome. We left no stone unturned.

And on the 31st January 2020, we lowered the flag of the European Union at our frontier, solemnly and in sadness, to the strains of the Ode to Joy. That night, I told you we faced a historic rupture. We did. But even in that darkest of moments, I knew that our history lights the way to our future.

Eleven months later, on New Year’s Eve 2020, we reached the in-principle agreement that changed everything. We went so close to the wire that all of us involved in the negotiation felt that wire cutting into our flesh. But we got there. A framework for a treaty that could deliver fluidity at our frontier whilst leaving our sovereignty absolutely untouched.

Then came the negotiation itself.

Nineteen formal rounds. Brussels and London. Madrid and Málaga. Prime Ministers and Foreign Secretaries changing faster than the seasons. Moments when a deal seemed within touching distance, only to slip away. Moments when many said we should simply give up.

And in the middle of it all, the pandemic.

The virus did not pause because we had a treaty to negotiate. We stood up the Nightingale at Europa. We created the golden hour so our elderly could walk and swim in safety. We asked our people to accept curfews unseen in Europe since the end of the Second World War. And our people, magnificent as ever, responded, as Gibraltar became the first country in the world to vaccinate its entire adult population.

But we also paid the cruellest of prices. We lost 113 of our loved ones to that dreadful disease. I said then that I would never forget them. I never will.

And still, masked and distanced and by video link, we negotiated.

Because doing it quickly was never what mattered. Doing it right is what mattered.

There were those who said it could not be done. That little Gibraltar could never secure its own bespoke deal with the European Union. Well, little Gibraltar faced that Goliath not with a slingshot but with reasoned argument and with Great Britain on our side.

And on the 11th June 2025, at the Berlaymont in Brussels, we concluded the political agreement that became the Treaty on Gibraltar and the European Union.

This year, the work of delivery has been done. All 1,018 pages of the draft Treaty were published for every citizen to read. Our Parliament debated it and backed it unanimously. We passed the law to implement it. Legal opinions from some of the most eminent lawyers in the land, including a former Chief Minister, confirmed what I have always told you: the Treaty makes no concession of sovereignty whatsoever.

And on the 1st April 2026, all 27 Member States of the European Union unanimously approved it.

And now, in these very days, we watch the fence come down.

The fence that Spain never recognised but that Franco closed. The fence at which our parents and grandparents were separated from friends, from family and from loved ones. The fence that was designed to break our spirit and succeeded only in forging it. Franco’s steel gates attracted nothing but rust. Today, at last, they attract the demolition crews.

That scar, that faultline, can be gone forever as a barrier to movement, human relations and business opportunities.

In a matter of days, the Treaty will begin to apply. The queues that have stolen hours from our lives, from our frontier workers and from our visitors will become a thing of the past. Gibraltar residents will cross without stamping, without the Entry/Exit System and without ETIAS. The 15,000 frontier workers on whom so much of our economy and theirs depends will keep coming, with their rights protected. Our airport will open to flights across Europe. And the physical barriers between us and the Campo will be gone.

Let me be equally clear about what this Treaty does not do.

It does not touch our sovereignty. Not one grain of our land. Not one drop of our water. Not one breath of our air.

British sovereignty, jurisdiction and control over Gibraltar remain exactly as they were. The first hand on the gate remains a British hand. The first check is a British check. Who enters Gibraltar, who lives here and who works here remain decisions made in Gibraltar, by Gibraltar.

That was the reddest of our negotiating lines. It was never crossed. It never will be.

And this Treaty is not a favour granted to us. It is a future built by us. It opens the door to a genuine area of shared prosperity across the frontier, where cooperation defeats confrontation, where our neighbours in the Campo rise with us and not against us, and where the relationship with Spain can finally be re-set for the generations to come. We reach out our hand in friendship. We do so with our sovereignty intact and our heads held high.

And I have lived this decade, like so many of you, not just as a Chief Minister but as a father.

When the referendum happened, my boys were small and my daughter was not yet born. She has never known a Gibraltar inside the European Union. Today there are four children in my life, my own three and a fourth who has brought new joy to our home. Life did not stand still at home whilst we negotiated abroad. This decade has brought change and challenge in my own life too, as it has in so many of yours.

And that is precisely why I never gave up. Because every hour at that negotiating table was an hour spent building the Gibraltar our children will inherit. For my children and for yours. For our children. And for theirs.

My dear fellow Gibraltarians, think of how far we have come.

The siege generations stood firm. The evacuation generation clawed its way back to its beloved Rock. The referendum generation stood up to a dictator with nothing but a pencil and a ballot paper. And now the reluctant Brexit generation, the generation that was dragged out of Europe against its will, has secured a future our children will inherit with confidence and with pride.

Ten years ago, we were facing isolation. We answered with endeavour, enterprise and endurance.

We did not fail. We did not falter. We did not blink.

And so, as the barriers fall, we remain what we have always been and what we will always be. Still standing. Still delivering. Still British. Still, and forever, the people of this Rock.

Red, white and blue. Red, white and proud. Red, white and free. Forever.