EU, UK remove Gibraltar border fence

The thousands of people who cross daily between southern Spain and the British territory of Gibraltar will no longer be crossing a physical border, after a specific new freedom of movement deal between the European Union and the United Kingdom came into effect at midnight on Tuesday.

Gibraltar — and its strategic fortress — has been in British possession since 1713, and is at the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula, close to where the Mediterranean Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean.

Over the centuries, Spain has regularly expressed territorial ambitions toward it, which has sometimes led to strained relations with Britain. In 1969, Spain's dictator Francisco Franco shut the crossing entirely, a closure that remained for 13 years, meaning the only alternative way in and out was a daylong sea crossing.

In the 2016 referendum on the UK's membership of the EU, Gibraltar, which has a population of 38,000 people, voted 96 percent in favor of remaining in the bloc.

The majority decision to leave, and the prospect of a hard border between the UK and EU, requiring passport checks, posed a major problem for the UK government as almost half of Gibraltar's workforce come in from Spain each day, and this has taken years of delicate negotiations to resolve.

At midnight on Tuesday, with many Spaniards still celebrating their team's World Cup semifinal win over France, the last fence was removed and the physical border was no more, with crowds crossing freely in either direction.

"It has taken four years of patient, complex negotiation, but the outcome speaks for itself," said Maros Sefcovic, European commissioner for trade and economic security.

"It is a very special feeling to see a fence come down," he said.

The border town of La Linea de la Concepcion and its surrounding area is one of the most deprived parts of Spain, with particularly high unemployment, meaning that access to Gibraltar is vital for the local economy.

"This is something historic; we've had a border fence since 1908," Juan Franco, mayor of La Linea, told the BBC.

"You have to realize that for an average company in this town, a third of its income is from clients in Gibraltar," he said.

Fabian Picardo, Gibraltar's chief minister, said one of the key things that has defined the past eight generations of Gibraltarians is the restrictions at the frontier.

"Business will now be able, in Gibraltar, to see a footfall increase, which is not going to be restrained by a potential queue on the way in or frontier queue on the way out," he said.

To maintain security, the removal of the physical barriers will be compensated for by a major increase in surveillance cameras and facial recognition technology used at entry points.

"The fortress has become a digital fortress now," Picardo said.

julian@mail.chinadailyuk.com