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Paper short abstract

Gibraltar, a peninsula frequently misnamed an island, shows how islandness is political and affective. Amid Brexit and an enduring Anglo-Spanish sovereignty dispute, this paper examines how Gibraltarians rework insularity and national self-determination in relation to Europe and the British State.

Paper long abstract

Although Gibraltar is geographically a peninsula, it is often experienced and imagined as an island territory. As a small (6.8 sq km) British Overseas Territory that “breaks away from the Iberian Peninsula and becomes an island unto itself” (David Alvarez 2000), Gibraltar is frequently misidentified as an island in everyday speech. Dalia Munenzon (2016) describes Gibraltar as a “continental island” due its geopolitical and geomorphological separation from its hinterland. Gibraltar’s participation in the Island Games, even hosting it in 2019, further exemplifies how “islandness” is not simply a geographical fact, but also an affective condition shaped by historical, political, and infrastructural conditions.

As a non-sovereign territory, Gibraltar’s political self-determination remains constrained by the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht which would affirm Spain’s enduring territorial claim if Britain withdraws. While referendums in 1967 and 2002 overwhelmingly rejected Spanish sovereignty, Brexit has come to intersect with the long-standing Anglo-Spanish dispute. A recently announced UK-EU agreement proposes to remove land border infrastructure and effectively incorporate Gibraltar into the Schengen Area, raising the prospect of diminished territorial insularity through projects of European integration.

Drawing upon two years of ethnographic doctoral fieldwork, this paper examines how Gibraltarian nationalism and political self-determination are being rearticulated amid anticipation of shifting border regimes. Preliminarily, it proposes that the Brexit conjuncture constitutes a moment in which forms of insularity are reworked as Gibraltarians negotiate and imagine political futures in relation to Europe and the archipelagic form of the British State - the UK and its overseas territories.