The Calpe Conference 2025: A personal view Part Three

This is the third in a three-part series on this year’s Calpe Conference.

By Dr Alex Menez

The final day began with a talk by Gianluca Giorgio Falzon, Curator at the Malta Maritime Museum and doctoral researcher at the University of Malta.

He noted that Thomas Finlayson’s published research had highlighted the “challenges of maintaining a fortress community under siege conditions,” adding that “a comparable study of Malta has yet to be undertaken.”

Gianluca drew “comparisons with Gibraltar to better understand Malta’s internal securities and defence vulnerabilities.”

Insights relating to geographical and strategic constraints, enemy reconnaissance, other factors, and “the immense challenges faced by Malta’s government and Local Defence Committee in maintaining control under the siege… were made possible through a composite of documentary sources” from British, Italian, and Maltese repositories.”

He explained that his findings “suggest that fundamental social, cultural, geographic, and strategic differences between Gibraltar and Malta significantly influenced the nature and quality of enemy intelligence.”

Next on was Dr Chris Grocott from the University of Leicester, who has to study Gibraltar’s history continued throughout his career, specializing in the history of Gibraltar’s economy and industrial relations from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries.

He explained that there had been a radical difference between “Gibraltar’s civilian governance before and after the Second World War.”

Prior to the war, Gibraltar operated a “small state with little by way of housing, no trade union legislation, practically no social security, and little by way of local democracy.”

After the war, he noted, Gibraltar adopted an approach to local government that was based “upon the ideas contained in the 1942 Beveridge Report, which paved the way for the British welfare state.”

Changes were rapid and “much of the preparation for this seismic shift in Gibraltar’s local government was put in place in just the two final years of the war.”

The next presentation was by Thomas Finlayson whose work was mentioned by Gianluca Giorgio Falzon in the first talk of the day.

Thomas is an esteemed historian and researcher who, over decades, has published extensively on Gibraltar and associated subjects.

Educated at the Gibraltar Grammar School and Edinburgh University, then at Moray House College, Edinburgh, he embarked on his teaching career.

After teaching for twenty-five years in the UK and Gibraltar he was appointed Gibraltar Government Archivist in 1984.

His presentation, The evacuation: a life-changing experience, detailed a segment of history of immense interest.

He noted that with the outbreak of war in 1939, the “entry of Italy and doubts abouts Spain’s position would clearly put Gibraltar on the front line of action… what was to become of the 20,000 civilians living on the Rock?” There would be evacuations to French Morocco, the United Kingdom, Madeira, and Jamaica.

Thomas explained that “by the year 1944, the talk was of repatriation. A process which was to linger on until 1951,” concluding that “after so much that was planned some good came.”

“The Gibraltarians had suffered displacement from their homes, separation from their families; some of them had endured years of waiting to a return to normality but when that came, Gibraltar was a much better place in which to live.”

Following lunch, the next presentation was by Professor Geoffrey Plank, an independent scholar from the United Kingdom and a historian of the British Empire.

He used Dwight Eisenhower’s quote when the Americans arrived in Gibraltar in November 1942: “the Allies possessed, except for the Gibraltar Fortress, not a single spot of ground in all the region of western Europe.”

Geoffrey explained that it was not Gibraltar’s position within Europe that attracted the Americans; “Gibraltar’s strategic value at that moment stemmed entirely from its proximity to Africa.”

He described the importance of “Gibraltar’s location on a dividing line between continents and at the intersection of the Mediterranean and Atlantic Worlds,” and noted that the “American decision to enter the so-called European theatre of the Second World War via North Africa had a profound impact on one of that war’s greatest legacies,” identifying this as “the process of decolonization around the world.”

To understand local development in Gibraltar “and their wider implications,” he held, “it is necessary to pay attention to the nearby African shore.”

The final presentation was by Professor Yasmin Khan from the University of Oxford.

The Second World War, and others, continue to be of great interest to military researchers. Yasmin noted that “social historians have added much new scholarship in recent years to understanding the Second World War as an imperial and global phenomenon.”

Research aspects, and assessments of these include “access to food and resources, the opportunities for profit and loss, and histories of mobility and migration.”

There are also the ways “in which the war affected ordinary lives around the Empire,” and these, she mentioned, are now better understood than ever.

“Taking Gibraltar as a pivotal point, facing towards both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean worlds, and beyond,” she spoke of the “ways in which new histories of the Second World War are adding to our sense of how Britishness and British involvement in the war effort can be conceptualized in broader ways.”

Following the final talk, Professor Geraldine Finlayson thanked everyone involved with the conference: Christian and Bernard Wright who are responsible for the renovation and restoration of the World War II Tunnels, the Gibraltar National Museum conference team, sound and light technicians, caterers, conference chair, speakers, and audience. The conference had been a great success.

There had been around seventy people in the audience each of the days, with, on the first day, an additional sixteen students from Westside School.

Leaving after the conference, I contemplated on the presentations, a segment of history that was described and assessed, and discussed through numerous questions and answers from the audience and speakers.

Many would have thought about that segment of history and what they may have known from their family members, friends, and themselves.

The conference, and its location, brought to the fore thoughts of the past and for some, fresh thoughts, all of which should not be forgotten.