Multilingual Gibraltar, which was founded over two years ago with the main objective of countering language loss, has welcomed the Government of Gibraltar´s Heritage Street Name Signs project. 

A statement continued: “With an ever increasing member base of two hundred plus and an overwhelming positive response from the community to our pro-multilingualism message we could never have dreamt of a more reassuring start to what will no doubt be a long and arduous journey to preserve and hand down to future generations our unique multilingual heritage.

“Ever since the launch of our association we have counted with the support of the then Minister for Culture the Hon Dr. John Cortes, and more recently as well with that of  the current one the Hon Christian Santos. We must further acknowledge the help and support that we have received from Cultural Services. Indeed, it is extremely reassuring that the government is delivering on its 2023 manifesto commitment to ‘keep our spoken heritage and our Llanito language alive’. The Llanito exhibition put together by Gibraltar National Archives in collaboration with Cambridge Professor Laura Wright, a highly recognised historical linguist, and in which our association was also significantly involved, is yet another government initiative to promote multilingualism. In fact, the contents of this exhibition demonstrate that multilingualism has always formed an integral part of Gibraltarians’ DNA, but unfortunately this is currently dwindling at a very hasty pace as a result of language loss. We take this opportunity to make a public appeal for this exhibition to be permanently displayed for everybody to have access to this very important aspect of our intangible heritage.

"With the purpose of giving visibility to our very own spoken language, that which  most adult Gibraltarians still use on a day to day basis to communicate with each other, but unfortunately less and less so with children, that two years ago we approached Minister Cortes in his capacity as Minister for Heritage and proposed that our unique language have greater visibility in our streets. This is when the Heritage Llanito Street Name Signs project was born. It was very enthusiastically taken on by the Ministry for Heritage whose staff must be congratulated for carrying out  a thorough and exhaustive process to identify and corroborate the street and place names using primary sources and in collaboration with local historians and focus groups composed of general members of the public. They were also very fortunate to count with the advice of Professor Wright, who has previously done a lot of  sociolinguistic research on street names in different cities including Gibraltar, and who voluntarily offered her services as a linguistic consultant for the project. As a result of all the hard work and passion for local history, heritage and language that has gone into this project, both present and future generations of Gibraltarians will be able to effortlessly  access an important part of our linguistic heritage as they walk through the streets of our historic Rock in the same way as is already the case for our historical built environment. Additionally, this initiative contributes a further element to what we offer those tourists who arrive on our shores in the hope of discovering a unique place with a culture and charm of its own which clearly distinguishes it from the surrounding area.”

According to the project lead, Government Archaeologist Dominic Lopez, ‘Through this initiative, we aim to recover the memory and legacy of our streets—those that our parents, grandparents, and ancestors once walked and named. By doing so, we honour their memory, respect our heritage, and celebrate the cultural fabric that defines Gibraltar. Our goal is to transition these street names from the intangible to the tangible, ensuring that future generations continue to recognize and appreciate this part of Gibraltar’s history.’ Some of these names are still in everyday use today such as ‘La Batería’, ‘El Qwari’, ‘La Caleta’, ‘Calle Real’ or ‘La Cuesta del Rock Hotel’, but others used by our parents or grandparents have now fallen into disuse such as ‘El Martillo’, ‘La Cuesta de Mr. Bourne’, ‘Calle Cuarteles’, ‘El Viaducto’ or ‘Mar de Levante’. On the other hand many of the names will actually allow us to take a step back into the Gibraltar of the 19th and 18th century when our ancestors had very different names for the places and streets that we tread on today. There is a whole part of our social history to discover and which until now has only been the preserve of the printed page.

“UNESCO in its 2003 Convention for Safeguarding the Intangible Cultural Heritage recognises language as essential in transmitting cultural practices and social rituals as well as traditional knowledge. As stewards rather than owners of this heritage we have a duty to preserve it for future generations. This project does exactly that and we consider it a crucial step in achieving our main goal of passing on the multilingual legacy that we were handed down by past generations of Gibraltarians to those which are still to come.”