Due to the fact that we speak Spanish many people throughout the world automatically assume that we are Spanish, whilst others, when they hear us speaking in English, wonder from which part of the UK we come from.

Gibraltar is a British dependent territory on the Southernmost tip of Europe, our nationality is British, however, we are neither English nor Spanish, we are Gibraltarians. Our descendants, many from Genoa, Malta and other European countries, settled here shortly after it was conquered from Spain in 1704. This mixture of cultures is probably the reason why, unlike people in many other countries throughout the world, Gibraltarians know not of racial or religious discrimination.

Sometimes we are referred to as Llanitos (pronounced "Janeetos") instead of Gibraltarians, no one seems to know exactly when such a terminology was first used, however one of the theories is that, years ago, when the English military population was very much higher than it is today, and due to the fact that John is quite a common English name, the Spaniards would refer to the native Gibraltarians as "Jannis" a mispronunciation of Johnny, which, with the passage of time, got transformed to Llanito.

Gibraltar attracts thousands of tourists from all parts of the world, there are daily flights from the UK and cruise liners from all parts of the world make Gibraltar one of their favorite port of call. Amongst the many tourist attractions one which non want to miss are the famous Rock Apes, these playful creatures roam freely on the upper rock.

Other sites certainly worth visiting are, St. Michael's Cave, the Moorish Castle, the Upper Galleries, a trip on the cable-car to the top of The Rock, Europa

Point, where the famous Lighthouse has been safely guiding sailors for centuries on their passage through the Straits of
Gibraltar, and of course Catalan Bay, a picturesque fishing village on the eastern side of The Rock.

However, for those preferring to do a bit of shopping, Main Street certainly has a lot to offer. Watches, cameras, jewelry, cosmetics, cigarettes, wines and spirits, hi-fi, and a very long etc., of course, all duty free, thus it is no wonder that, as well as tourists from other nationalities, hundreds of Spaniards come over daily on bus tours specifically to shop in Gibraltar.

For those with an interest into the origins of mankind, it must be pointed out that a number of years before the Neanderthal Man was found in Germany, a skull

Other more recent settlers where the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the Ancient Greeks and the Romans. The Moors occupied Gibraltar, or Jebel Tarik, as they named it, from 711 to 1309, between 1309 to 1333 it was it was occupied by the Spaniards, to be conquered again by the Moors in 1333. Spain again occupied The Rock from 1462 until 1704 when it was conquered by the British.

Gibraltar has for decades been of strategic importance as a military, naval
and airforce base and played a major role during World War II, the Gulf
war and the Falkland Islands crisis. Obviously the UK Government has
always shown great concern for the welfare and safety of it's inhabitants,
proof of that was shown during the last world war, when Gibraltarian

women and children were, very much against their wishes, evacuated to other countries, whilst the men, most of whom in those days worked in HM Dockyard, had to remain in Gibraltar. At the time not only was it considered necessary by the British government to tear families apart, but by evacuating most of them to London, placed the lives of Gibraltarian women and children at risk. It must be pointed out that it was thanks to members of the Gibraltar Legislative Council, led by the late Sir Joshua Hassan, that Gibraltarians were able to return after the war, since it was the UK government intention not to return Gibraltarians evacuees back to their homeland.

A more recent example where, once again, the UK Government showed how much it cares for our welfare and safety occurred just over a year ago, when the Nuclear Submarine, H.M.S. Tireless suffered a serious leak in its nuclear reactor whilst on exercise in the Mediterranean and, in spite of huge protests from thousands of Gibraltarians, decided to have it repaired in Gibraltar instead of repairing it in the UK. It must be pointed out though, that security measures where so efficient that a group of Greenpeace activists managed to board the submarine, fortunately it was a group of Greenpeace activists, and not a group of terrorists.

Access to many parts of Gibraltar containing military installations is naturally restricted, however many other places, like most of the Upper Rock, a restaurant in Main Street, a swimming pool or a beach on the western side of The Rock, to name but a

few, used to be out of bounds for Gibraltarians and could only be enjoyed by members of the forces and their families. Discrimination used to exist even in toilet facilities in HM Dockyard, where there used to be toilets shared by Gibraltarians and Spaniards and other toilets for the Englishmen.

Gradually such discrimination has been decreasing and little by little we have been gaining back our own land, with, thanks to public pressure and protest demonstrations by the Voice of Gibraltar Group, Western Beach being one of the, should I say, most recent acquisitions.

Spain has never accepted the fact that Gibraltar has been British since 1704 and has for decades imposed all sorts of restrictions with the sole purpose of making life for Gibraltarians as difficult as possible. Tourists and the younger generation might get the impression that the Spanish border situation is something that has just been going on since the reopening of the

Spanish border in 1985, however that is not so, prior to the Spanish border closure, the situation was very much the same, with the harassment and traffic queues of one or two hours when going to or returning from Spain being quite common.

When General Franco died and Spain became a democratic country, many of us thought that the Spanish government's attitude would change, but time has proved how wrong we were.

The UK and Spain have for the past couple of years been maintaining talks concerning our future, the main items on the agenda being the sharing of sovereignty over Gibraltar. The fact that Spain claims sovereignty over our land, however absurd that might sound, is nothing new, they have been doing so ever since they lost it 300 years ago, but what is really disgusting, shameful and treacherous is that the UK Government headed by Tony Blair, ignoring the the wishes of 30,000 British Gibraltarians who have never had any desire of they themselves or their homeland becoming part of Spain, entered into joint sovereignty negotiations with Spain.

As Sir Winston Churchill stated during his speech in the House of Commons on June 4th 1940:

"We shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender".