SPANISH ROCK

by Lex Lander

  At a superficial level it was just another town, Main Street much as Main Streets and High Streets all over the Anglophone world. Yet it was like no town I had ever known, Moorish architecture rubbing walls with European. There was a timbre of Englishness – a Marks & Spencer store, policemen in English-style uniforms without guns, pubs by the dozen, red telephone kiosks. The people generally were a mixed bag of fair-skinned Anglo-Saxon and typical Latino, with a proliferation of Asian traders, and the occasional caftan-clad Arab hawking dubious wares. Most curious of all were the ones who looked English yet spoke Spanish and to a lesser extent vice-versa.

  But what struck me above all else in this somehow scaled-down toytown was the hush that hung over it. A good part of Main Street was closed to through traffic and this had to be a contributing factor, but it was the looming massif of the Rock most of all that created this peculiar acoustic effect. It was like being in a church with no roof.

  Like all towns it had its downside: it was grubby in places though litter was not an obvious problem, kept at bay by numerous garbage bins, interestingly sponsored by businesses, and the exhortations to KEEP GIBRALTAR TIDY that leapt at you from billboards. Street acts added colour or lowered the tone, depending on your point of view. Jugglers mostly, a girl in a bowler hat balancing on the shoulders of a guitar playing man was the best of the bunch, if only because she had a good body and was dressed to exploit it.

  The sun wasn’t shining. The cloud clinging to the Rock saw to that. Yet it was warm and humid and many people sported light summer clothes. Some of the bars towards the end of Main Street, where it expands to become Cathedral Square, had tables outside, and I sat down opposite a couple of shaven-scalped skinhead youths, who gaped at me as if I had green skin and a TV antenna sprouting from my skull. By the standards of nowadays, maybe my conventional grey chinos and striped polo shirt marked me out as the oddity, not them.

  I settled for a Kronenberg from the wide selection of beers proposed by the waiter. It was a while coming. The skinheads conversed intermittently in cockney English, remarking on this or that ‘nice bit o’ cunt’, an observation that was followed by some lewd speculation on how the object of their admiration might ‘perform’, given the opportunity.

  After a second beer and some limp, gladwrapped sandwiches, I drifted off towards the dock area. This lay beyond the battlements that extend the length of the town, facing out across the bay towards Algeciras. Towards the old enemy.

  The docks side of the portal through which I passed was painted in black and bore the curious legend RAGGED STAFF GATES. As I wandered along a road named Queensway, more of these captions appeared at intervals along the walls, interspersing the gun embrasures: KING’S BASTION, ZOCA FLANK BATTERY, PRINCE ALBERT’S FRONT, WATERPORT CASEMATES. My cell phone’s Google explained that they were the names given to different gun batteries when Empire was at its zenith. They invoked the noise and the heat of battle, the stink of gunpowder, and the ripple of cannonballs and chain shot cleaving the air. And the cries of the mutilated and the dying. And, yes, the silence of the dead.

  I shook off my macabre mood and walked on past these relics of past glory. Despite an affinity for most things British, the nation’s warlike history was not in my blood.

  The cloud moved off the Rock mid-afternoon and at about the same time I took a taxi tour round the island. We drove past the vast disused rainwater catchment area, on the eastern slope of the Rock, now known as the Great Dune. Water is ever in short supply in Gibraltar, the taxi driver told me, and the reservoirs fed by the catchments used to provide a large part of the community’s needs. Now it mostly comes from a desalination plant.

  On the catchment side of the Rock was Catalan Bay Village, a tiny community dominated by the Caleta Hotel, a multi-storey edifice perched on some rocks at the southern end of the bay.

  ‘You want a room for tonight?’ my taxi driver asked as I disembarked on the Catalan Bay sea front.

  ‘Maybe.’ I crossed his palm with euros. ‘Do you recommend that one?’

  ‘Very nice hotel. Not too expensive, very friendly.’ He made to count out my change; I waved it away. ‘You want me to fix a room for you?’

  I looked across at the hotel and figured it would do.

  ‘Why not? Warner is the name. Tell them I’ll be along about six. And if you’d like to collect me here at, say, five thirty, to take me to my car, I’ll make it worth your while.’

  Contract sealed, he roared off in his rusty Nissan. By chance he had deposited me outside a little bar called The Village Inn. Customers, most of them patently tourists, sat at dilapidated tables by the sea wall. I plonked down next to some locals – three youngish men, very Spanish looking, and one much older with more folds in his brown face than a scrotum. They were debating, in oddly-accented Spanish, the boom in property development on the Rock in recent years. They were not in favour.

  ‘I cannot afford anything more than a studio,’ one lamented. This sparked off a chorus of agreement.

  ‘But there is more money to be made nowadays,’ the old man said shrewdly; he had tiny eyes that glinted moistly as if filled with tears. Before him was a glass of pale liquid, probably some local firewater.

  ‘What money? Have I ever seen any of this money? Why am I broke if there is so much money here?’

  ‘Peter is not broke.’

  Peter – the name sat awkwardly with his swarthy features – made a throwaway gesture.

  ‘Business is better this year than last, it is true, but the profits are not so good as they once were. There is more competition now, too many new shops. The Indians are the new rich.’

  The third of the younger trinity looked glum as he said, nodding, ‘If I had my way we would close the border and keep it closed. We do not need the tourists, especially not Spanish tourists. We are better off without them.’

  I signalled a waiter who had just emerged from the bar and ordered a Kronenberg beer in Spanish. This brought me to the attention of the man Peter, who was nearest to me. He stared, but out of curiosity not rudeness, and I twitched the corners of my mouth at him to show I wasn’t hostile.

  ‘You are English, señor?’ Before I could reply he went on to say: ‘You speak Spanish well.’

  ‘Thanks for the compliment. I live in Malaga.’

  The other three heads were tugged in my direction.

  ‘I hope you won’t hold that against me,’ I said, adding, ‘I couldn’t help overhearing your comments just now.’

  The old man studied me, shielding his eyes against the sun, now dipping behind the Rock.

  ‘You like the Spanish?’

  ‘As much as I like any other race. There’s good and bad in all of them.’ ‘Hmm.’ The old man fingered the lapels of his black waistcoat, a venerable

  garment, much frayed around the pockets. A fob watch chain was looped across his chest.

  ‘It is the thin end of the wedge,’ Peter grumbled. ‘I remember when we had a guard on the frontier, now he is long since gone. The Spanish Government makes more and more demands. Soon they will be given unrestricted access to our airport. Also, they insist that their people should not have to pass through immigration and passport controls. What do you think of that? Why should they have such special treatment? Even the British are not exempted from normal immigration procedures. It is bad enough that we must let in their tourists and their workers –’

  ‘To steal our jobs,’ the man who had bemoaned his lack of funds chipped in.

  ‘Right, Louis, right. They take the food from the mouths of our babies.’

  ‘Don’t you think you’re exaggerating their impact?’ I said mildly, risking an uproar.

  Peter swung round on me, his black eyebrows drawn together to meet across the bridge of his nose, his Latin temperament surfacing.

  ‘I mean to say,’ I went on, smiling so as to keep the temperature low, ‘there’s not much sign of poverty here. The beggars you were talking about just now are from across the border, aren’t
they?’

  ‘What can you know about our country?’ the fourth man sneered. ‘A foreigner!’

  ‘You’re right, I don’t know much. But I’ve got eyes. Britain has brought a lot of prosperity to this place.’

  ‘Not for much longer,’ Louis said, tapping the side of his nose. ‘Changes are afoot.’

  ‘Independence?’ I said, and the three younger ones nodded. The old man hooded his eyes.

  ‘It might be the answer. Then again you might be too weak to survive without British money and a British presence. It’s a tough world out there. You need a patron.’

  ‘Britain will still be our patron,’ Peter said loftily, ‘even when we are independent.’

  It sounded smug but he was probably right. Untying the strings was one thing, discarding the apron altogether was an altogether greater risk.

  It occurred to me that I could easily be in the company of paid-up members of this GIBESTÁ organisation, or at least sympathisers. It might be smart not to appear anti at this stage.

  ‘Can I get you a drink?’ I said, to give emotions a chance to cool and to consolidate the opportunity created.

  The old man put away what remained of his in a single hurried swallow. Louis called the waiter and orders flew across the table.

  Even with the sun now sunk behind the upper rock it remained warm. The breeze that scoured the side of the Rock from north to south was benign. I stripped off my windbreaker and hung it over the back of the chair. Peter, Louis, and their colleague, introduced to me as John, wore only cotton shirts and shorts.

  ‘What is your name?’ Peter demanded.

  It might have been wiser to use my alternative identity of John Henley, but I didn’t have long enough to figure out the implications, so I stayed true to my real self.

  ‘André.’

  ‘This is your first name?’

  ‘Yes.’ I didn’t volunteer my last name.

  ‘André?’ He hesitated, gently massaging the point of his chin between thumb and forefinger. ‘It is a French name, is it not? And you speak English with a bit of an American accent.’

  ‘I was raised in Canada. My mother was a Quebecer.’

  ‘Ah.’ John frowned, maybe unsure whether that made me friendly or not.

  ‘Anyway, we accept you as an honorary Englishman,’ Louis said magnanimously.

  I thanked him tongue in cheek and turned my head towards the old man. ‘You have not been introduced, señor. Do you wish to remain anonymous?’

  He gave another of his cackles. ‘No, no. My name is Eduardo. They call me El Jefe. I am their unofficial counsellor – though they rarely take my counsel.’

  El Jefe, meaning the chief. ‘It’s an honour to meet you, Jefe.’

  He tendered a magisterial bow of the head, acknowledging my words of respect.

  ‘Do you think the frontier should be closed again?’ I asked El Jefe, so far reticent on the subject of the Spanish incursion.

  ‘Closed or open, it makes no difference. If the Spanish decide they must have Gibraltar at all costs they will simply walk in and take it.’

  A minor furore broke out among the younger men. They all started talking at once. I kept out of it. This was a debate I wanted to hear run its natural course.

  ‘We will never let them walk in!’ Fair-haired John, the quietest of the three, spat, with the vehemence of a zealot. ‘They walk in here over my dead body; yes, and the body of my wife and my unborn child. What do you say, Peter? And you, Louis? Where do you stand in this?

  ‘Alongside you,’ Peter said with such quiet simplicity that I knew instinctively that he was sincere. Louis murmured agreement, then said, ‘I have no wife and children to offer as sacrifices, but if I had, and it must be, then I would offer them. I would defend Gibraltar to the end.’

  El Jefe was unmoved by these fiery declarations. His old head wagged in gentle dissent. He wouldn’t see seventy again, yet his faculties had not conspicuously dimmed with age. His hair was thin, lying in wisps along his scalp, the skin underneath mottled and dead-looking. The eyes, those tiny chips set wide apart over an eagle’s beak of a nose, blazed with the fires of nihilism. Here was a sometime fighter who was still, I sensed, for all his calmness and air of acceptance, a fighter.

  ‘It will not happen though,’ Louis said, sounding resigned, even disappointed. ‘The days of Franco are no more, and the mentality of Spain’s leaders owes nothing to him. Look at Sanchez. Can you see him leading Spain into a war? Hah! They are trade unionists. Spain is a member of NATO and of the European Union. They bang their drums but it is all bluster. They have enough problems with Catalonia.’

  El Jefe had listened in pursed-lips silence to the boastful rhetoric and the reasoning of Louis.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said, his voice pitched low, his lower lip trembling a little. ‘I hope you are right, but I am not so sure.’

  Chapter Seven

  The boom-boom-boom of the drums was reminiscent of a Loyalist march I had once witnessed during a stopover in Belfast. A slow-time percussion, rising and falling, coming unstoppably nearer. The stride of passers-by checked and their ears cocked in the direction of the sound. Then, for the most part, they moved on, went about their business. Only a very few stayed where they were, to await developments. Two men standing close to me jabbered at each other in fast Spanish, punctuating each remark with a nervous snigger. From them I learned that the drums portended a demonstration staged by GIBESTÁ to present a petition to the Governor against Gibraltar accepting Spanish rule.

  ‘On a Sunday they should be in church, not clogging up the streets,’ the man nearest to me said to his neighbour, and they both chortled, as if at a smutty joke.

  I had found myself in a square called Convent Place, sharing with a dozen or so others an oblong of shade thrown by the Gothic-style porch over the entrance to the Governor’s residence – known as The Convent from its monastic origins. It was only a few minutes before noon and warm with it. The sentry standing under the porch, rifle at the slope, gave no sign of having heard the approach of the marchers. He was as solid as the pillars supporting the porch. The rifle would not, of course, be loaded. Neither were the two naval cannon flanking the entrance to the building. They were symbolic. Brits set a lot of store by symbolism. As if it were bullet-proof.

  Crowds were forming on all sides of the square, jostling for vantage points. A throb of excitement was in the air and a strange quiet had fallen, belying the increase in numbers. Now the drums had entered the street; the steady, controlled boom …. boom … boom drowned all other noise.

  Several more policemen had congregated under the porch. None of them carried guns, but riot sticks dangled from their belts for all to see and be afraid.

  The advance guard of the procession consisted of three policemen: an officer between two constables, marching out of step, an emaciated blue line. The officer had an Alsatian on a chain leash. As they passed, a small dog popped out from between the forest of legs at the roadside and scampered across to the Alsatian, yapping deliriously. The Alsatian, displaying a natural canine interest, slowed. A jerk on the leash reminded it of its duty and, casting a last wistful glance at the other dog, it fell back in step.

  The front ranks of the marchers themselves were coming into sight around the corner to enter Main Street. Necks craned, mine included.

  ‘That man’s got a sword,’ said a little girl sitting astride her father’s shoulders, pointing at a man walking alone, dressed in a ceremonial uniform of pale grey, not dissimilar from the old Confederate Army livery, except that the piping was dark blue, not gold. On his head was a dark blue beret. No insignia or badges of rank, just the sword, a sabre of some description, in an ornately-wrought scabbard.

  The man was big and wide of shoulder, and conveyed an instant sense of presence. The hair below the beret was all silver, and his moustache was in perfect harmony, though his features in contrast were almost unlined. He passed by at a funereal pace, and the first rank of his followers, twelve
drummers in three rows, drew level with my section of the crowd. Apart from the lack of sword they were identically attired to their leader. Their faces like stone, they beat the drums with strap pads, twirling the pads in between strokes. Visually too, they harked back strongly to the Belfast Protestant parades. Behind the drummers came two men bearing a banner, unsurprisingly emblazoned with the GIBESTÁ motif which consisted of indigo lettering forming the shape of the Rock, on grey. They were followed by a woman – young, black hair falling to her waist, her uniform making no concessions to her sex. She carried the movement’s standard, also grey, hanging slackly in the still air.

  A gap of some twenty metres separated the flag carriers from the next section of marchers, a hundred or so uniformed men and women, in ragged order but exuding a proud defiance. There was no segregation of male from female; the ratio was about three to one, and the average age looked to be in the twenty-five to thirty-five range, though I spotted a couple of grey heads and at the opposite end of the scale a boy who couldn’t have been more than twelve.

  Last of all came the civilians, the less-committed supporters. A dense phalanx of humanity, several hundred strong for sure. The majority were young. I thought I spotted Peter, my new acquaintance from yesterday, but a head bobbed in front of me and blocked my view at a crucial moment.

  From the authorities’ angle it was a sobering show of solidarity in favour of an independent Gibraltar. That so many out of a civilian population of some thirty thousand were prepared to declare publicly for independence was some achievement for such a newly-created movement. Powerful political factions have arisen out of humbler beginnings.

  ‘Where are they going, daddy?’ the little girl on her father’s shoulders asked.

  ‘To church,’ her father replied shortly and facetiously.

  ‘Which church? Is it St. Mary’s? Can we go too?’

  ‘No. Be quiet.’

  As the tail of the column plodded by under the harsh sun a wiry spectator beside me muttered ‘Bravo,’ and elbowed through the fringes of the spectators to tag on to the column, a volunteer off to fight in the trenches. Somebody cheered, sporadic clapping broke out.