Guest Blogger––Thomas Mogford, "Gibraltar––An Introduction"

Every other Sunday is our day for Guest Author Postings by mystery writers who base their stories in non-US settings.  We think it a great way of introducing our readership to new experiences and places.  We’re honored to have with us today Thomas Mogford, a fellow reformed lawyer (but he’s a nice guy) I had the great pleasure of sharing a panel with a few weeks back at CrimeFest in Bristol.

Thomas studied Modern Languages at Oxford University and holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Law from City University, London.  His first novel in the lawyer Spike Sanguinetti series set on Gibraltar, Shadow of the Rock, was shortlisted for a Dagger award in the UK for best new crime writer of 2013. The sequel, Sign of the Cross, was shortlisted for the eDunnit award in 2014. The third, Hollow Mountain, was published in the UK in April, and has already been called 'a classic detective story' by The Sunday Times. Thomas lives with his family in London. www.thomasmogford.com, #ThomasMogford

Welcome, Thomas.  And thank you.

Jeff

‘As safe as the Rock of Gibraltar’ – or so the saying goes. For centuries Gibraltar has been a symbol of impregnable strength, its silhouette still used today as the logo for one of the largest American insurance companies.

But the strange truth is that the Rock of Gibraltar is not solid at all. Its Latin name is ‘Mons Calpe’, ‘Hollow Mountain’, as its interior is honeycombed by hundreds of natural passageways and caves. One of these, Lower St Michael’s, is so large it contains an underground lake, which the Romans associated with Charon the ferryman, believing that Gibraltar marked the entrance to Hell. Interlinking these caves are thirty-three miles of hand-bored tunnels, built to provide defence against the besieging Spanish. There are more miles of road inside the Rock of Gibraltar than out. In World War II, further caves were constructed inside the Rock to house the entire civilian population should Hitler decide to invade (he didn’t – his greatest tactical mistake, according to Goering). Hospitals, bakeries and warehouses lie eerily rotting inside. The mighty 1400-foot high limestone mountain has a hollow belly.

This sort of paradox is a regular occurrence in Gibraltar. The first time I visited, fifteen years ago, I did so with certain preconceptions. I knew it was part of the Iberian peninsular, and had belonged to Spain until the British captured it in the early eighteenth century. I knew there were Barbary apes living wild, and that the British military still used it as a stronghold, hence the alleged plot by the IRA to detonate a bomb, which resulted in the killings of three of its members in 1988. Union Jack flags were waved, warm English beer was drunk, the sun shone. I thought I would be in for an odd, if not particularly edifying, visit. I was wrong.

The first surprise was the locals. I’d assumed they’d be Spanish or British. Maybe half and half. But a simple glance at the shop names on Main Street revealed something different. Caruana, Isola, Sanguinetti… the most common surnames were Italian. What was a bunch of Italians doing in a disputed British territory at the southern tip of Spain? It turns out that, after the British captured the Rock in 1704, the Spanish population literally fled for the hills. The garrison needed people to service its needs, so immigration was encouraged from elsewhere in Europe. The Genoese were the Mediterranean’s most accomplished sailors – Christopher Columbus the most famous –  so in they flowed, and their descendents form the largest ethnic group among the 30,000 locals today.

What about the military? The sight of the Rock as you approach could hardly be more pugnacious – rearing like a lion against the Strait of Gibraltar and the flat Spanish plains beyond. Comprising just two and a half-square miles – the same size as Hyde Park in London – but as tight and compact as a prize-fighter. The flanks of its bone-coloured limestone are pockmarked with cannon embrasures; the street names of the city which clings to its side bristle with military history – Horse Barrack Lane, Devil’s Tower Road, Casemates Square. On closer inspection, though, the barracks and depots have been converted into offices and luxury apartments. The King’s Bastion that once protected the seaward approach to the Rock is now a leisure centre, complete with bowling lanes and ice rink. Since the end of the Cold War, the military have scaled down, and Gibraltar has had to find income from other sources. Taxes have been lowered, high finance has arrived, and the city now swarms with lawyers, hedge fund managers and online gaming firms.

The Barbary apes, then – surely they wouldn’t mess with expectations? After all, Winston Churchill promised that as long as the apes remained on the Rock, Gibraltar would stay British. He even had replacements drafted in from North Africa to keep the numbers up. The apes are there all right – you don’t even have to catch the cable car to the reserve on the Upper Rock to find them. So assured are they of their existence that they make regular sorties into town, where they raid bins, steal sandwiches from tourists, and generally swagger about with the insouciance of a bachelor party. And yet… Barbary apes? It emerges they aren’t apes at all, but monkeys – Barbary macaques with tails so stubby they were nicknamed apes. Not only are they misidentified but no one knows for certain how they got to the Rock. Some say in a hidden underground tunnel from the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. Others that they’re the descendants of pets kept by the British garrison. Another Gibraltarian enigma.

And the flag-waving? The Union Jacks certainly fly liberally – draped from the windows of cheap government housing flats, from public buildings, from the peak of the Rock itself. Graffiti that wouldn’t be out of place in Unionist bastions of Belfast colours the backstreets.

The assumption is that the Gibraltarians love Britain as it shields them from Spain, and that the British love Gibraltar as an example of the bulldog spirit they hope characterises their nation’s finer qualities. Yet this has not always been the case – on at least four occasions, most recently under Tony Blair in 2002, the British government has considered disposing of Gibraltar.

Her military use has faded, and the souring of relations with Spain has always represented a thorny issue. The problem for the British government is the loyalty of the Gibraltarians. According to the UN Charter for self-determination, if the locals vote to stay British, then British they shall stay. At a time when Scotland is debating whether to become independent, some would say that Whitehall should be pleased by Gibraltar’s steadfastness. Yet the idea of the Rock of Gibraltar being ‘safe’ is misrepresented. The threat to their existence is what makes the residents wave the British flag so fervently.

Intrigued by the Rock’s contradictions, I decided to try and capture them in a book. Lawyers are everywhere in Gibraltar, and as I trained as one, a lawyer seemed the ideal protagonist. Spike Sanguinetti came into being – and his  third adventure, Hollow Mountain, published in April 2014 in the UK, comes out August 5^th in the US.

Sunday Guest Blogger—Thomas Mogford