End of an era, start of a new one

If ever a reminder was needed that Gibraltar is British, we saw it this weekend as history unfolded before our eyes.

After 70 years of the Queen’s reign - for most of us, all our lifetimes - it felt strange to proclaim God save the King, as if we’d somehow got the words wrong.

On Sunday, as the Governor, Vice Admiral Sir David Steel, read the proclamation from the balcony of his official residence, there was an inescapable sense of a new era beginning as another one ended, but also of continuity.

It was an oath of allegiance first and foremost to the British Crown, a monarchy that spans centuries and provides the constitutional backbone that underpins our society’s laws and institutions.

Here, wrapped in ceremony and tradition, was a physical and visual manifestation of what it is that makes us different from our nearest neighbours.

We bring a unique, cosmopolitan flavour to our Britishness, drawing on roots that reach deep into the Mediterranean and across the Commonwealth.

For those who don’t understand us, it is often mistaken as the echoes of colonialism.

But our Constitution, which provides for maximum self-government under the British Crown, has allowed us to forge a modern partnership with the UK based on mutual respect and the guiding maxim that only the Gibraltarians can decide their future and that of their Rock.

On Saturday, as Gibraltar marked the 30th anniversary of its National Day, a muted celebration in deference to the deceased monarch, Keith Azopardi, the Leader of the Opposition, echoed words more often heard from the lips of Chief Minister Fabian Picardo.

“Our ties with the Royal Family as the Crown of Gibraltar have never been stronger and endure alongside our rights as a separate and distinct people who live in freedom and democracy in the Commonwealth family,” Mr Azopardi tweeted.

On Sunday, as the Governor led Convent Place in three cheers for King Charles III, the hurrahs were solid and resonated loud enough, or so it felt, to be heard north of the border.

Speaking to GBC after the proclamation parade, Mr Picardo spoke of a “seminal moment” that reflected this community’s loyalty to the Crown.

And he said too that he had detected the beginning of “a thawing of our relations with our Spanish neighbours” which he hoped would grow into a new era of cooperation and partnership in which Gibraltarians were respected “for who we are”.

Last week, after the death of Queen Elizabeth II was confirmed on Thursday afternoon, the Chief Minister acknowledged a number of condolence messages from several politicians in the Campo Area.

They included public messages from the Mayor of La Línea, Juan Franco; the Mayor of San Roque, Juan Carlos Ruiz Boix; and the Mayor of Castellar, Adrián Vaca Carrillo, as well as the Partido Popular branch in La Línea.

They were warm messages that expressed solidarity with the Gibraltarians on the death of “their monarch” and, Mr Picardo said, reflected “the reality of our strong human bonds” which had come to the fore in a time of collective grief on the Rock.

But even before the announcement of the Queen’s death, there was evidence on the ground of that thaw in relations pinpointed by the Chief Minister on Sunday, not least in the cooperation witnessed at sea in the response to the OS 35 grounding.

This was a concerted cross-border effort to mitigate the impact of marine pollution that knows no boundaries, one that set aside politics to protect our shared environment.

And yet for all the unity displayed over the past few days as the UK, its Overseas Territories and the Commonwealth came together in grief, last week was also marked by upheaval.

The UK started the week with Boris Johnson as Prime Minister of Her Majesty’s government and ended with Liz Truss in No.10 Downing Street as the head of a government now serving King Charles III.

Throughout her 70-year reign, Queen Elizabeth was a constant influence through the turmoil of the 20th century, providing constitutional stability and wisdom to successive prime ministers and global leaders, drawing, in the latter years of her life, on decades of experience and first-hand knowledge of geopolitics.

After the period of mourning, after the Queen’s funeral and the pomp and ceremony to come in the ensuing days and weeks, King Charles III will be called upon to act as a uniting influence on a nation that remains divided by the politics of the past six years and faces grave economic challenges as winter approaches.

Known for his public interventions on issues close to his heart, prime among them the environment and sustainability, King Charles will seek to approach his new role with the same discretion and moral authority that were the defining features of his mother’s reign.

He has spent his life preparing for this role and the common refrain among those gathered in Convent Place on Sunday was that he will be a good king. Time will tell.

For Gibraltar, the same challenges will remain after the dust settles on the passing of our Queen and the transition to the reign of her eldest son.

The state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II will take place on September 19, a day before negotiating teams from the UK – with Gibraltar – and the EU are scheduled to meet in London for the next formal round of talks toward a treaty on the Rock’s future relations with the bloc.

For now at least, there appears to be no change in that schedule, and the mood music remains positive even if details of the discussions and any remaining areas of disagreement are scant.

Hours before confirmation that the Queen had died last Thursday, Jose Manuel Albares, the Spanish Minister for Foreign Affairs, said treaty talks were progressing “well and correctly” and that the shared aim remained to achieve a “mutually beneficial” agreement that opened the door to shared prosperity

He said too that the coordinated response to the OS 35 incident had demonstrated “that we cannot live with our backs to each other”.

Mr Albares is right. We cannot live with our backs to each other.

But as the weekend’s events have shown, any agreement on the Rock's future relationship with our nearest neighbour and the wider EU must have as a central premise respect for the fact that Gibraltar is British to its core.

Given our often-troubled past, one might be forgiven for dismissing that goal as wishful thinking.

But as we mourn the end of an era and embrace the start of a new one, perhaps there is room too for some hope that the stars may finally be starting to align.