Gibralter

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After my jog along the dark restless sea, as vivid stars fled the seeping flame of the sun, I drove to the hinterland, where fuzzy umber and sage hills shook free from housing developments. There is no indication for Gibralter at the lower tip of the continent, since it was granted to England forever by a 1704 treaty and has irritated the Spanish ever since. Spain was finally forced, as a condition for entering the European Union, to resume diplomatic relations. On the Spanish side of the border is La Linea, where we parked on the advice of a French expat, as long lines of cars waited endlessly to cross the little line. We crossed the border right away on foot, through a passport control into Britain, over an airport runway, toward the foot of the 400 meter Rock of Gibralter. It is like the approach to Mont St. Michel, but here you are in a shabby left-behind sort of modernity, with the forlorn quality of an expat, and swamped with rampant, tasteless construction. At the walls of the Casement, a military looking concrete and rock defended shopping mall, are cartoonish reminders of the British Empire. Main St. is a string of charmless shopping. The prices, say the guidebook, are not even good, though it's duty free.

As we passed Trafalgar Cemetery where its eponymous dead lie, macaques shook the olives from above, and a cheeky female swung down the vines to sit next to us, till a guide, irate as if he were her own father, threatened to throw things at her. We went up the Rock by cable car, while macaques scampered below. At the station a few giant elders greeted us and posed against the horizon. An Indian man on the terrace reached into his backpack, and a little macaque bounded past him, snatching a bag of chips right out of the backpack. Everywhere they posed, essentially begging. A family below took turns hugging their tiny sparse-haired baby with his jutting ears, and rather forcefully grooming each other. They ran the show and they knew it, lining up on walls, peeing on rooftops, planting themselves in our way.

We walked through the natural preserve of the rock among eucalyptus and pine past a feeding point for the apes, where Germans fondled them. The maca hugged their babies and picked fights with each other. We came to St. Michael's cave--we had eaten some ghastly food at the cable car station, told that there was no other to be had, but here was St. Michael's Pub! St. Michael's cave is a fantasy of swirling stalactites and stalgmites, now used for concerts, once made into a hospital, where much of archeological interest including Neanderthal skulls have been found (by forced labor! The Captain lost his job.) Some soldiers have disappeared in these caves, or perhaps deserted.

Then we walked the road past another ape sanctuary and up and down past private homes in the exotic forest, to an entrance to the siege tunnels, dug over centuries, their large ventilator windows now fitted with cannons. 80 km of tunnels house barracks, hospitals, military offices--Eisenhower planned the invasion of North Africa from here. What we thought were caves, seen from the ground, are embrasures and military positions used in at least 10 sieges.

A little further was a reconstruction, with manniquins, of life under the 18th c. Great Siege. Poor Georgie the Drummer is being flogged, as he had been many thousands of times over 14 years. The vegetarian Captain Eliot was ordering people to grow vegetables amidst much starvation.

At the edge of the Rock's portals, a 13th c. Moorish castle stands, with tunnels beneath and gardens around its base, with the king's bathing rooms, and a prayer room with a vaulted ceiling, dedicated to a commander who had drowned trying to take the castle back, his body strung up by the Arabs as an example. Later his own son recovered the castle and his father's body, and buried him decently.

Unfortunately, the photos I took have been lost.My camera was subsequently stolen in Barcelona. I tried downloading photos from Wikicommons and ended up with an infected computer! Which photo did the dirty work, I don't know, but I suspect it was a demonic monkey from Gibralter!  So, disk fully erased and restored with the loss of a month's work. I ask you, dear reader, to be content with my words and your own imagination!