Border Between ‘the Rock,’ Spain Will Open

If all goes as planned on Wednesday, a fence that has shaped life on “the Rock” for more than a century will lose much of its power. Gibraltar and Spain are set to drop routine land-border checks under a post-Brexit deal that pulls the British territory into the EU’s Schengen free-travel zone and customs union, reports the BBC, effectively turning the frontier into an internal Schengen crossing. For the roughly 15,000 Spanish workers who commute in daily—and the Gibraltarians who rely on them—that could mean the end of rush-hour lines and a major shift in daily life. It is, in the words of the Independent, “the biggest change since Spain ceded the Rock to Britain over 300 years ago.”

“The fact that there is a border between us is ridiculous,” says one Spanish woman who bikes over the border every day to her job in Gibraltar. “I don’t think a fence should separate people from one place and another.” The move is provisional and the EU-UK agreement still needs approval from both the UK and European parliaments, but leaders on both sides frame it as an economic and political reset, not a sovereignty change.

Gibraltar’s chief minister calls it “a huge change” that will bring seamless movement of people and goods and more visitors; the mayor of neighboring La Línea, where unemployment nears 30%, predicts a historic boost for a town deeply tied to Gibraltar’s economy. The trade-off: Gibraltar must now comply with EU rules on goods and introduce a new transaction tax of up to 17%, changes that local businesses say could add costs and paperwork even as they welcome the end of border uncertainty.