Shifting perceptions in a post-Brexit landscape

I was taken aback recently by a clip from a big-budget Movistar Plus series called La Fortuna, co-produced by the Spanish company with US partners and based loosely on Odyssey Marine Exploration’s discovery of an undersea treasure in 2007.

Odyssey’s ships were operating from Gibraltar at the time and the treasure, recovered from the wreck of the Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora de Las Mercedes, was flown to the US from the Rock, sparking international controversy and a legal wrangle that was finally won by Spain, which accused the company of illegal looting.

In the series, one of the characters, a retired legionnaire obsessed with Odyssey and Gibraltar, proudly declared “Gibraltar Español” during a conversation with Alex, the young diplomat, and Lucia, the archivist, who are the central roles in La Fortuna.

So far, so predictable. But then came this.

Mulling their conversation with the legionnaire, Lucia describes him as a “facha” who is “nostalgic for our imperial grandeur”, prompting a rebuke from Alex, who asks: “Why call him that?”

“Alex please…Gibraltar Español?” she replies by way of justification.

Alex challenges her, saying the legionnaire was only defending Spain’s interests, to which Lucia replies wryly: “Ah, OK…now I know which party you vote for.”

When was the last time you saw someone described as a fascist in a high-end Spanish TV production for saying “Gibraltar Español”? When was the last time you saw someone on mainstream TV use a reference to “Gibraltar Español” to identify the voting sentiment of another?

Lucia, whose passions in the series lie clearly on the left of the political spectrum, viewed the obsession with Gibraltar as something of Spain’s nostalgic right.

It was a refreshing political interlude in an entertaining plot that pointed to changing perceptions in Spain about Gibraltar, even in popular culture.

But there are clearer signs too closer to home.

The image of senior Guardia Civil officers pinning medals of merit on the lapels of two uniformed officers of the Royal Gibraltar Police during a public ceremony in Tarifa in the presence of top-level dignitaries from Madrid and Andalucia spoke volumes.

Here was institutional recognition in Spain of the cross-border law enforcement cooperation with Gibraltar that we all know exists but which is all too often ignored in tilted Spanish media coverage that prefers to paint Gibraltarians as the baddies.

Not forgetting too the police superintendent from Valencia who used three days of leave to come to Gibraltar to learn about British-style policing. Who would have thought?

These are small but important developments, hard won after years of fighting our corner and making ourselves heard. It doesn’t mean a change in Spain’s stance toward Gibraltar, of course. The age-old, tedious argument that territorial integrity trumps our right to self-determination remains Spain’s official position. But around the edges, that argument is fraying in the light of tangible facts that illustrate a different reality.

The timing of all this is important too, coming as it does against the backdrop of negotiations for a post-Brexit treaty on Gibraltar.

We always, rightly, question where these talks are heading and what the price of a deal will be. But it is worthwhile too remembering how we got to a place where these talks, unthinkable just six years ago, can happen, how it took years of delicate conversations and trust-building to get to a place where the common refrain now from the UK, Spain and Gibraltar is the desire to build shared prosperity for communities on either side of the border. Think about that for a second.

Ironically perhaps, the madness of Brexit has brought the three governments closer in a common sense endeavour focused on our similarities and shared interests, rather than our differences, a process that oddly started under the conservative Partido Popular, blurring even the ideological lines flagged by Lucia in La Fortuna.
Treaty or no treaty, that is already a gain to be banked for the future.

But as perceptions change in Spain, the onus shifts back to us if we are to seize the opportunity that Brexit has presented. This is not about dropping our guard. Gibraltarians, scarred by the past six decades of troubled relations with our nearest neighbour, will never do that. We know where our red lines lie and so does Spain. But our current circumstances require us to analyse these developments coldly, without the emotion that inevitably bubbles up at the slightest provocation.

To do that, we must have confidence in ourselves and a clear understanding of who we are as a community and what we want for our future. Often, that understanding becomes lost in the epidemic of cynicism that seems to have gripped us, fuelled by social media and the pent-up anger and frustration of a year of lockdowns and Covid angst, alongside inevitable weariness with a government halfway through its third consecutive term in office.

The Opposition is right to question the government relentlessly about the process, even though it has offered little insight into how it would have done things differently, or what the alternatives are now. It is right too to urge maximum transparency from the government, even while acknowledging the need for discretion if the negotiations are to prosper.

We need an honest debate about all of this, not just about the detail of the treaty once that emerges, but about the wider issues underlying our present situation. And we need a healthy dose of realism too that acknowledges how we got to this juncture without the usual ‘poor us’ approach we so often slip into because of the past.

The controversy after Spain began stamping the passports of blue card holders springs to mind. It was a decision implemented after the UK stopped recognising EU identity cards as travel documents. Reciprocity is a key ingredient in all of this.

This is the reality of Brexit. This is what we can all expect in the absence of a deal. There’s no point getting upset about it, it’s been on the cards since 2016. Brexit had real impacts that we have so far avoided. But slowly, they are coming home to roost. And it is Boris Johnson and the Brexiteers who must carry the can. For all our Britishness, let’s not lose sight of the fact that, in colloquial terms, they dropped us in it.
As evidence grows of the impact of Brexit in the U.K., so too will that have a knock-on impact on Gib, in perceptions if nothing else. We have tied ourselves to Britain, but there is an inescapable sense that the U.K. post Brexit is not the U.K. we once knew.

Too often we respond impulsively and negatively to anything Spanish. It’s always useful to have a bogeyman to blame. But looked at coldly and dispassionately, Spain has been nothing but pragmatic in its approach to Brexit as it relates to Gibraltar. Yes, we can gnash our teeth and wail about the injustice of the veto and the EU siding with Spain. But what did we expect? The UK, utterly stupidly in my view, chose to leave the club and took us with it. We complained this summer when Spanish police trialled border checks using new technology, but we may just have to get used to it. That’s our reality if we don’t secure a deal, a reality created by a Brexit we didn’t vote for.

We always seem to be on the defensive, defining ourselves by who we are not and what we don’t want, rather than by who we are and what we want for ourselves in the future. We’re not Spanish, we’re British. But we’re not English, less so now that Brexit has unleashed an ugly side to the green isles. We’re British, but we probably have more in common with someone from Valetta or Lisbon or Genoa or, dare I say it, Cadiz, than with someone from Macclesfield or Barnsley.

We’re clear we won’t share sovereignty, but is self-determination always a question of being permanently on the defensive, ready to see off the next threat? Or do we have a plan on how to exercise it and shape our future? Is being Gibraltarian a question of always defensively batting away the other, or are we able to find the confidence to seize the day and say ‘look, this is us, this is where we’re going’ in this shifting landscape?