Word: gibraltarism
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Pescado & Chips. Gibraltar's original inhabitants all fled when the British first landed. Most of today's "Rock scorpions," as Gibraltar's 24,000 natives proudly call themselves, are not of Spanish ancestry but are descended from the Jewish, Maltese, Genoese and Moroccan immigrants whom the British encouraged to settle there. A tough, cocky breed, the citizens of Britain's only European crown colony speak breakneck English and a kind of cockney Spanish, follow British soccer as avidly as the bullfights, and pride themselves on their stiff upper lips, the view from their...
...Gibraltar's main - and almost only -street is a delightful omnium-gatherum of the civilizations that have passed its way since Hercules rent Europe from Africa and made the Rock one of his Pillars. On the soft Mediterranean air, jasmine and mimosa mingle with the aroma of frying pescado and chips; from back alleys float shreds of flamenco music, tourist twist and the dogged strains of Methodist choir practice (Rock of Ages is a Gibraltarian favorite). Helmeted native bobbies impartially ogle vacationing English shopgirls, off-duty African belly dancers, and the Midwestern matrons among the 240,000 visitors...
...fortress - one that might have been designed for the nuclear age. It is manned by 1,000 men of the Royal Air Force, some 700 Royal Navy personnel, and two companies of British soldiers. The troops, men from the Middlesex Regiment, provide a colorful guard for the governor, train Gibraltar's draftees, and keep ready to support the island's civil authorities in any emergency that might arise. The limestone Rock is a rabbit warren of caverns linked by 25 miles of deep-hewn tunnels. Unsinkable, indestructible, the bastion has not once fallen to its foes...
...ancient superstition holds true, Gibraltar will be British just as long as it is inhabited by the famed Barbary apes that somehow found their way there from Morocco. In 1941, after Hitler promised to deliver the Rock to Franco in return for Spain's wartime support, word reached Winston Churchill that the simian population was dangerously depleted. The Prime Minister cabled back: STRENGTH OF ROCK APE PACK TO BE KEPT UP AT ALL COST. It was - and the cost was high indeed. For every ape smuggled onto the Rock by Franco's soldiery, the British handed over...
...Like Gibraltar, the tiny, barren is lands of Malta have always been at the crossroads of history. There, 15 centuries before Christ, the Phoenicians set up a trading colony. In 60 A.D., the Apostle Paul found haven on a rocky beach near Valletta after his ship wreck, and in 1565 the Turkish invasion fleet was driven off by the Knights of Malta. More recently, during World War II, the Maltese withstood almost daily bombardment by Axis planes, kept Britain's crucial Mediterranean sea lanes open. For 35 centuries invaders came, ruled, and were swept aside by new invaders...