The Embattled Rock

. . . I love to see a regiment pass in review the first time I saw the Spanish cavalry at La Roque it was lovely after looking across the bay from Algeciras all the lights of the rock like fireflies or those sham battles on the 15 acres the Black Watch with their kilts in time at the march ast the 10th hussars the prince of Wales own or the lancers O the lancers they're grand . . .

So mused Molly Tweedy Bloom in her celebrated life-affirming soliloquy, which closes James Joyce's Ulysses. Probably the most famous citizen of Gibraltar, fictional or otherwise, Molly today would find the free and easy ways and the regimental glamour of her hot-blooded youth in the 1890s to be vastly changed. On the Spanish side, in the little border towns of La Roque and La Linea, the Spanish cavalry has given way to commonplace infantry and militiamen, while on Gibraltar itself the Black Watch and the Lancers are only a memory, currently being replaced by the Middlesex Regiment. The 15-acre parade ground has become an airfield, while Britain and Spain are engaged in more than a sham battle over the Rock.

Smugglers' Den. The weapons are economic blockade and psychological pressure. At issue is Spain's rankling sense of being the only European nation with a foreign colony on its soil. This anachronism must end, says Madrid, and Gibraltar must be returned to Spain, to which it belonged in 1704, when a sudden British-Dutch attack captured the fortress in three days.

Spain took its problem to the U.N. Special Committee on Colonialism, and in its report last October the committee suggested that Britain and Spain engage in private talks about Gibraltar. Within 24 hours Generalissimo Francisco Franco ordered the blockade begun, calling Gibraltar a den of smugglers. On that point Franco was quite right. As a free port, Gibraltar has long been a haven for such contraband as whisky, cigarettes and radios, which are then often smuggled into Spain.

Part of Franco's blockade consists of withholding labor from the Rock. Even before the dispute, Madrid stopped giving new work permits to Spaniards for Gibraltar jobs, and in ten years their number has fallen from 14,500 to 9,000. Some 800 Gibraltarians living on the mainland were recently ordered to leave Spain and to return to the colony. Traffic across the border is now slowed to a crawl by Spanish customs guards, who take a full hour to examine each car; scarcely 14 a day are cleared.

Stretched Blood. The blockade is hurting. The snail-pace behavior of the customs guards has crippled tourism. Gibraltar has tried to take up the slack with public-works projects and by passing laws to permit tax havens for small industry as well as Panama-style flags-of-convenience for shipowners.

The 24,500 Gibraltarians are a hardy and tough-minded race whose blood lines stretch to every Mediterranean port from Genoa and Malta to Athens and Alexandria; many, like Molly Bloom herself, are descended from Spanish mothers and British soldier fathers. Though Spanish is the common tongue and the Gibraltarian palate approves fiery paella and wine, the citizens want no part of Spain's political system or sovereignty. Instead the elected members of the Legislative Council, led by Chief Member Sir Joshua Hassan, want full internal self-government in a free association with Britain. And they want Britain finally to take countermeasures against the Franco squeeze.

Zooming Jets. Last week eight British jet fighters paused at Gibraltar en route to Norway. To the Gibraltarians' delight, the jets, in a show of force, zoomed round and round the Rock, made low passes over the water off the Spanish coast. Britain may well be prepared to offer two concessions to Spain: a crackdown on the smuggling annoyance, and a guarantee that no matter how much self-government the Rock obtains, it will never become a base for any hostility toward Spain.

But London will not knuckle under to harassment. In the nuclear age, Gibraltar's strategic importance has sharply diminished, but the symbolic value of the fortress known to Homer as the Pillar of Hercules remains. Said one British official: "We'll keep the Rock if we have to supply it by airlift until the Spanish cut out this nonsense."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.