Gibraltar Writers on the Border

The border with Spain—its tensions, its queues and its unique role as an entry point for people, languages and cultures—has been a rich source of inspiration for Gibraltar’s writers. They have repeatedly drawn on this historically conflicted boundary as a setting for their short stories, novels, poems and plays and represented it as a line that is physically marked by fences but also, in a deeper sense, as a psychological barrier and a marker of our community’s identity. They have felt that, to capture the Gibraltarian experience, one must incorporate what the border means to us and how it has shaped our lives.

In 2023, the local publishers Patuka Press released an anthology of local literature dedicated to the theme of ‘borders and boundaries.’ Twenty-two writers contributed pieces that ranged widely from borders as politically significant dividing lines between countries to borders as less tangible social boundaries.

Gabriel Moreno, in his preface to the anthology, wrote: “Gibraltar’s intrinsic nature is riddled with borders and boundaries and it is no surprise that this subject has inspired so many diverse, exhilarating, surreal, violent, funny, captivating, reflective and emotional literary pieces for our Patuka Press pamphlet.” He also noted that writing about these themes might “perhaps exorcise our unique and sometimes traumatic relationship with borders and boundaries.”

With the removal of border controls on the 15th July, as part of the UK-EU Treaty, Gibraltar enters a new phase. Border queues will no longer be part of our collective experience and the increased, unfettered movement of people and goods might drive shifts in our language, identity and culture over time. 

To better understand this, we caught up with a handful of local writers to ask them what the imminent changes mean to them and how the frontier has influenced their work.

One of the contributors to the Borders and Boundaries Patuka issue was Jackie Anderson—she submitted a short story that explored the experience of a woman who strikes up a passionate affair with man from La Línea. Jackie says the border is an “ever-present boundary” in her life, both “physically and metaphorically.” 

She adds: “The border emerges in my writing subliminally if not always explicitly. With border controls being lifted, I am interested to see whether new themes associated with the invisible aspects of the border, such as cultural, language, social and political differences emerge in my writing, which tends to pick up my own internal responses to external contexts.”

The fictional characters that populate the pages of local literature have crossed the border to escape, to pursue romantic affairs or to engage in illegal activities like smuggling. Writers have also focused on the political aspects by composing poems about border queues and protest verse against Spanish restrictions. In some of the novels of M.G. Sanchez, characters walk or drive around Gibraltar in the thick claustrophobia of the closed frontier years (1969-1982), whereas other authors have described the sense of freedom felt when the gates opened and Spain was suddenly accessible to Gibraltarians. 

Humbert Hernandez, whose works include the novel Luciano and the short story series Historias de Gibraltar, said: “Most people who have read my works must be aware that a great number of my stories and my novel deal with cross-border relations at a personal level., the operative word there is 'personal'.  In my work the interpersonal relationships themselves are the real protagonists. The tales are set either in Gibraltar and end in the hinterland or they start in one of the towns in the Campo and end in Gibraltar.”

Humbert says that he has presented border lives and tales in an unfiltered manner: “I have tried to deal with these subjects without sugaring the pill in any way by portraying the virtues and the sins on either side of the border at the ground level of human relationships. In my view, the individual primes in importance over political considerations, so long as each side preserves its way of life, its cultural roots and its political status quo.”

Asked about what the Treaty holds for Gibraltar and our neighbours, he says: “Now that the Treaty is coming into effect and the border controls are to be removed, we find ourselves in a novel situation. We are all aware that change, of whatever kind, is generally painful and the situation at the frontier means a great change, but I am hopeful that the change with redound on benefits for both sides. There always exist the niggling fears that the removal of the border fences will become a free-for-all and we will suffer some sort of invasion, but this lies more in our imagination than in reality. I remember my parents speaking of their young days when the border fence did not exist and controls were much more lax than they became later and yet we survived to tell the tale. I think from an economic, social and especially from a cultural point of view we all stand to gain.”

Rebecca Calderon, a local writer who recently wrote a play to mark the Bloomsday celebrations last month, said: “I like huge moments in history, and we are living in the midst of one now. The opening of the frontier is massive. Some have only ever known hostility between Spain and Gibraltar, but before the Franco dictatorship the entire Campo area was one interconnected social and economic region. I look forward to witnessing and writing about this exciting change.”

Slam poet and Madrid-based university professor Jonathan Teuma, whose spoken word performances often involve code-switching and cutting remarks about politics, said: “The Gibraltar-Spain border features very prominently in my work. It appears very directly in poems such as Mi Pequeño Cabreo, which commemorates the closure of the border in 1969 and documents how this traumatic event affected both Gibraltar and La Línea, as well as Me Presento and Tongue Switching, which both deal with our identity as a people and factor in the effect that the border has had on that. Furthermore, being the constant that it has been, the seemingly immovable barrier and line of defence to and from the external world, the frontier has conditioned my world view and in consequence poetry in ways that probably seep into most if not all of my poems, from the overtly political ones to the ones that deal with matters that at first glance do not appear to have anything to do with the border, including those on love and friendship.”

Jonathan says that, with some reservations, he is happy to see the border come down: “While somewhat concerned at the extent to which Spanish police agencies will be allowed to operate on the Rock, I am overjoyed to see this barrier fall. I think that on balance the benefits will be overwhelming and everyone, from cross border workers, to musicians, artists, actors, writers and average citizens will be able to avail themselves of the commercial and cultural fluidity that this historic event will bring.”

He believes the removal of controls robs Spain of an opportunity to apply pressure on the Rock: “At a political level, the removal of this barrier incapacitates the chokehold that authorities in Madrid could previously apply to our economy, and at a cultural and linguistic level it will hopefully breathe new life to our dying use of both Spanish and Llanito, both heritage and historic languages of our community.”

Marisa Salazar, a local writer who contributed four short, impressionistic poems bout the border to the special Patuka issue, says that, in her experience, she was “always determined to make the best possible use of frontier queue waiting time,” calling this a “conscious defence mechanism in the face of misuse of power.” Marisa says she’d read, play word games with the Spanish number plates and pay close attention to what was going on around her.

She continues: “One strategy was to observe and record, in as few words as possible, what was happening at that precise moment. I’d watch people in the neighbouring cars, wind-blown palm trees, birds, flags, growing heat, which queue moved faster, and the shuffle between one retention area to another. I’d even question the fairness of allowing the same number of cars through from each lane, without taking into account the width of the loop. As a result, I wrote a fair amount. Writing became resistance. Unpolished words that bring back vivid memories: snapshots of my experience at the frontier.”

Contemplating the comprehensive changes that are just around the corner for Gibraltar and the surrounding Campo, she says she feels ‘gratitude’: “A huge thank you to all the powers, seen and unseen, that made this happen. I especially remember the people—born on either side—who spent a lifetime enduring hardship caused by frontier controls: families, friends, workers, and the burden carried by our political leaders. It is an extraordinary achievement. I feel immensely privileged to witness this historic day. From then on, I will rechristen the area in my mind: from the frontier to simply the border, though I’m still searching for a suitable Spanish word.”

The final writer we approached for a comment was singer-songwriter and poet Gabriel Moreno, whose work has recently explored the possibilities of the Llanito language and the complexities of Gibraltarian identity. He comments: “The frontier has featured in my work as a form of entry point into the different aspects of my identity. The border is that space where Spain and England meet, that door into polar sides of Gibraltarian literature: the Hispanic and the Anglophone.”

Gabriel also feels a slight ambivalence about the radical shift ahead: “Now that the border will be opened I feel both trepidation and excitement. Philosophically, I have always believed in a romantic notion of a world without flags and frontiers but, in practical terms, and in terms of my literature, I cannot help but feel a little uneasy about the removal of the dividing lines which have marked our sense of self for so long. On the other hand I know we just fear change and to progress we must remove the borders of our potential to become more than an isolated peninsula. This is also the case in regards to our writing: if we are to evolve we must be part of the Iberian literary peninsula and hopefully reach the English speaking world too.”

Pic: Alex Menez