Simon Courtauld

Why Gibraltar needs its hunt back

One institution used to bind together the Spanish and the English. Only a museum remains

issue 01 November 2014

The British overseas territory of Gibraltar, or, as some would have it, the wart on the bottom of the Iberian peninsula, is not an exciting place for a holiday. You don’t go for the food (mostly English pub grub and pizzas), or the nightlife (there isn’t any) or the beaches (overcrowded, with sand imported from the Sahara). But there are a few interesting legacies of three centuries of British occupation of what was known in Greek mythology as one of the Pillars of Hercules.

In the Trafalgar Cemetery, containing the graves of those who died in Gibraltar following the battle, a typical inscription records the death in December 1805 of an officer of the Royal Marines ‘after having suffer’d several Weeks with incredible Patience and Fortitude under the Effects of a severe Wound receiv’d in the great and memorable Sea-fight off Trafalgar’.

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