They said it quietly. They said it admiringly. They said it poolside at weathered hotels and at breakfasts at cafes over churros. They said it in Facebook groups. They said it for small talk. They said it at pubs named after Britain’s dead heroes and in the libraries of the mansions off Main Street. They all said it. Journalists and politicians. Lawyers and businessmen. Ordinary Gibraltarians. They said it before I even asked, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Gibraltar is a dictatorship.”
I went to discuss Brexit. The referendum was a decade ago, and nowhere voted Remain like Gib: 19,322 versus 823. In a way, the territory got what it wanted: the treaty on its future relationship with Europe was only agreed last year, and still hasn’t been adopted. For 3,640 days, Gibraltar has all but Remained. I asked people about leaving, but talking about Brexit brought other subjects to their minds.
The deal with the EU is the last significant thing that Fabian Picardo, Gibraltar’s Chief Minister, will do in office. At the end of this year he will quit, after running the place for 15 years. People on the Rock were in the mood for reflection.
“There’s your metaphor,” says Craig Sacarello, Gibraltar’s Shadow Business Minister. We are at Vinopolis, a bar on the central town square. He looks up and to the right at the office of Hassans, the territory’s biggest law firm. Tall, ivory and pristine. Nearly touching the sun. Then he looks down and to the left, across the square, at Gibraltar’s short and stubby parliament. Closed for the month because of a dodgy lift.
Sacarello calls Gib a “barristocracy”; lawyers from Hassans have its politics wrapped up. Picardo is a partner on sabbatical, and so is Gemma Arias-Vasquez, the Minister for Health who led Gibraltar’s Remain campaign and will likely succeed Picardo as leader of the Gibraltar Socialist Labour Party (GSLP). Nigel Feetham, the Minister for Justice and Trade who will become “Vice Deputy Chief Minister”, is another partner on sabbatical.
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