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my experience with border control in Gibraltar (foreign car, 2023):

entering: Spanish side: passport scan, UK side: 5 second look

exiting: waving through

That can be a problem for the thousands of people that commute daily.
same experience last year, existing without having to stop was especially surprising
From a purely geographical point of view, it is so absurd that there is even a debate about to which land mass Gibraltar "belongs" to. As a colonialist, I would find it very difficult to justify my own behaviour nowadays.
(I am Spanish, so I might be biased)

I think the twp main problems are not who Gibraltar belongs to, but 1. Gibraltar is that it is kind of a tax haven next to one of th areas of Spain with more poverty and unemployment, which is also one of the main drug entrances of the country. This combibation is explosive and really problematic for the people in the Campo de Gibraltar, especially the youth. 2. The people of Gibraltar must also be sovereign and don't want to belong to Spain, so I think we should respect that.

I think this kind of agreement make a compromise, integrating better Gibraltar with the area, making it possible for the people around to benefit from the Gibraltar's economy, bridging Gibraltar and Spain closer, while respecting the sovereignity of the people of Gibraltar.

However, I must say, a similar agreement could be done with Gibraltat belonging to Spain, which I would consider fairer, but still not the most important point.

I assume you're also in favour of Ceuta and Melilla being given to Morocco over the wishes of the people whos ancestors have lived there for centuries?
The difference of course being that Gibraltar used to be Spanish, while Ceuta and Melilla never have been parts of Morocco. Portugal has more claim to those two enclaves than Morocco ever did.
Ceuta and Melilla are part of Spain since the fifteenth century, same as Granada and way older than the Moroccan state.

I am telling that Gibraltar people should decide which country they want to belong to, same thing with Ceuta and Melilla.

From my quick search, it doesn't at all seem like the majority of the people living in Ceuta and Melilla wish to be part of Morocco.
I mean they said pretty clearly that they should respect the wishes of sovereignty for Gibraltar, so presumably they would also extend the same to Ceuta and Melilla.

I think in a very abstract sense I agree that exclaves like this are weird and it would be cleaner if they didn't happen (Gibraltar returned to Spain, Ceuta and Melilla returned to Morocco), but that's thinking of this as a systems design problem rather than one that cares about people. I recognise that this is not an empathetic view, and my own opinion is worthless and I hold onto it very weakly.

Gibraltar has been part of the UK for over 300 years and the people are all UK citizens. Forcing those people out or seizing the land from them would be the definition of colonialism, yes. And exclaves exist all around the world. Geography has never really meant anything in national terms. Spain has a piece of land on Africa and I don't think they plan on giving that up.
There is one main difference, that makes UN recognizes Gibraltar as a colony and not Ceuta and Melilla: days before Gibraltar was conquered 100% of the people that lived there was moved out. This is why Gibraltar is a colony and Ceuta and Melilla not. So I don't have clear opinion if people in Gibraltar should have auto-determination or not.
>Gibraltar has been part of the UK for over 300 years and the people are all UK citizens.

Is this your standard for whether or not something is colonialism? Do you apply it consistently throughout, even when its inconvenient for you?

I was not talking about any of the points you mention, I was refering to the geographical facts alone. Wouldn't you agree that in general it is kind of silly to claim ownership of a piece of land that is far, far away from your own country?
Whilst I don't disagree, Spain has similar questions to answer about Ceuta and Melilla.
"Ah, but that's different!" I was told when I asked some Spanish people about the apparent hypocrisy of Spanish enclaves.
No, Ceuta and Melilla are not recognized as colonies by UN (see my previous comment about it, and you could add other historic reasons.
And, to a lesser extent, Canary Islands.
I didn't debate that.
It belongs to the people who live there. While you may think places like Point Roberts should be forcibly moved to Canada, or Ceuta should be forcibly moved to Morocco, I'm of the opinion of self determination, as is the global view based on the United Nations, who recognizes self-determination as the right of all peoples to freely determine their political status and pursue their economic, social, and cultural development

That's the same, whether it's Gibraltar, Scotland, Cornwall, the Canary Islands, Ceuta, Taiwan, Falklands, Cyprus, Texas, Point Roberts, Crimea, Canada, Greenland, etc etc.

We can argue about the thresholds needed, the length of time of residence ("squatters rights" etc), the minimum size of a given area, but the principal remains.

If it belongs to the people who live there, why does Britain have any say in their matters?
So if we conquer a place and change the people there, it's the new people who decides? or how we proceed?
We should just overturn the Treaty of Utrecht, that will go well. Why not return the Netherlands to Spain while we're at it?
There are many more places like this, e.g. Point Roberts[1].

> Questions about ceding the territory to the United Kingdom and later to Canada have been raised since its creation; however, its status has remained unchanged.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Roberts,_Washington

Geography is not generally the most important factor. There are legal ownership precedents and then the will of the people who live there first. You can't just say Greenland or Canada are United States because the happen to be close. Or at least you shouldn't.
The British government have a strong, well-established (since ~1950), and arguably inflexible attitude towards "right to self-determination".

Meaning: the people who live in a place get to decide who governs them and their society.

People in Gibraltar, The Falklands, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland all have different wants, needs and asks of the UK, and the UK honours all of them. There are other overseas territories with different relationships, plus the Commonwealth too.

If that ask changes (and in Northern Ireland it likely will in our lifetimes, the others less so), the governance will change.

Sometimes there is an ask for a closer relationship through the British Commonwealth (such as South Africa). Sometimes there is an ask for the UK to go away, thanks but no thanks (such as Malta). Each relationship is handled individually, but through a lens of self-determination. That's the priority in the FCO, in Parliament, in UK media. If a tiny nation wants to be British, the UK will go to war over it despite it making little sense (Falklands). If a tiny nation wants independence despite tactical advantage for UK to keep it, independence will be fought for (Malta happened, Diego Garcia is a WIP - watch this space). Where there is division (Northern Ireland), the majority view is observed, but with democratic and cultural structures created to try and make sure minority views have a voice in that governance.

That said, there is a caveat: observance of treaties tend to over-ride local preference in some cases, so if there is a legal argument to ignore the wishes of the locals, those wishes may be ignored: Hong Kong is the most prominent example of this in recent times (locals seemed to want to stay British, China said the 100-year agreement was up and there'd be no renewal, end of, so China it became).

Diego Garcia is another example, which has got messy because of the Whitehouse not understanding the UK's perverse inclination towards local democracy and the right to self-determination (see also non-UK entities the Whitehouse has not understood well: Greenland, absurd noises about Canada, and so on).

When able, the UK has consistently been committed to restoring governance to a local population's preferred model peacefully since ~1950 (India being the last real mess), and if the people of Gibraltar want to be governed by the Spanish, they'd be governed by the Spanish within ~2-3 years.

The idea that local people should have no say in this because "it's obvious" who "they belong to", is the colonialist notion here. A land isn't about geography. It's about people. It took a long time for the UK to understand this. Eventually they did. Most European colonial powers did. Others are still trying to catch up, it seems.

> The British government have a strong, well-established (since ~1950), and arguably inflexible attitude towards "right to self-determination".

> Meaning: the people who live in a place get to decide who governs them and their society.

Except for Scotland, of course.

Spain ceded Gibraltar under the Treaty of Utrecht.
> After years of negotiation involving Spain, the EU and the UK, the solution has been to align Gibraltar with the European customs union and the Schengen European free travel zone.

> Travellers arriving from countries outside Schengen, such as the UK, will have to show their passports to Gibraltarian and Spanish officials at the territory's airport and port.

So an L for the UK as Gibraltar has again freedom of movement to the EU (that edit: half the British hated so much), and lack thereof to the UK...

It's really ridiculous how little discussion there was about places like Gibraltar and Northern Ireland before the Brexit vote.

Looks like NI voted ~55% remain and Gibraltar ~95% remain, but too bad, England voted ~53% leave, so screw all you little overseas territories with actual land borders who are most directly impacted.

As someone from one of the territories mentioned, it was frustrating in the run-up to the referendum, and immediately after it, watching the local media try to get the view of English voters as to how they thought that was supposed to work.

The impression I got was leave voters either thought it would all work out somehow, or that they cared so little about the non GB territories to the point that they felt they didn't need to address to question.

And places like London, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, York, Warwick voted 60% to remain but still got taken out. Places like Oxford and Cambridge were over 70% remain.

What should have happened was the ability for any person to retain their European citizenship, or if under 18 choose on their 18th birthday. Then the remainers would not have had their rights stripped away.

The catch being if more than 50% of adults took this up, then the UK would not leave.

> It's really ridiculous how little discussion there was about places like Gibraltar and Northern Ireland before the Brexit vote.

> Looks like NI voted ~55% remain and Gibraltar ~95% remain, but too bad, England voted ~53% leave, so screw all you little overseas territories with actual land borders who are most directly impacted.

Most people only care about things like that when they're on the losing side of a vote. When they win, the attitude is "fuck you, we won, comply."

See: the total lack of respect from urban US voters/politicians for the different social policy preferences rural areas often want.

> freedom of movement to the EU (that the British hated so much)

A generalisation that only applied to, at most, 52% of the voting British public

> at most, 52% of the voting British public

Indeed. And, At a point in time ten years ago. In voters who skewed older.

See the Voter Flow diagram: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1pj8kzd/voters_and_...

The UK will eventually demand the return of freedom of movement of people and goods, for exactly the same reasons as it entered the EU in the first place. Might take another 20 years though.
Looks like we have a lot of British "nationalists" leavers downvoting everything here. I mean, you comment is basically a fact: Brexit implied losing Schengen, it was part of it from day 0. Putting back Gibraltar in Schengen is a defeat for Brexit supporters.

EDIT: not Schengen, sorry, although I'm pretty sure I just used my national (European) ID to go to London many many years ago and not my passport.

> Brexit implied losing Schengen, it was part of it from day 0. Putting back Gibraltar in Schengen.

Gibraltar isn't going into the Schengen, it's just going to follow all of the rules of the Schengen area. It's always(?) required a passport check anyway. It's definitely semantics, though!

> EDIT: not Schengen, sorry, although I'm pretty sure I just used my national (European) ID to go to London many many years ago and not my passport.

You could travel with ID cards pre-brexit. The Schengen area has _no_ checks on the borders, so you don't even need an ID card. (However, the place you're travelling to/from may require you to carry one).

The UK was not in Schengen when it was a member of the EU.
It'd be even easier if Gibraltar is returned to Spain to whom it belongs.
It would also be great if Ceuta and Melilla returned back to Morocco, and if Western Sahara in turn gained its independence from Morocco.

As an aside, I have always found it ironic how Spain continuously whines about Gibraltar while doing the exact same thing to Morocco. At the very least, Spain was smart/lucky enough to lobby the UN early on to not include Ceuta and Melilla in the decolonization list.

In that context America should be given back, Alaska should be given back, Australia should be given back... the list goes on.
Not according to the people who live there. Or in fact, Spain, who ceded it to the UK hundreds of years ago.

Or do you think Spain has a legal right based on geographic proximity to enforce a culture on those people despite existing treaties, laws, culture and democracy?

Bad precedent for the Falkland Islands... Chagos and then Gibraltar, would force the Falklands issue to be addressed more seriously, and that would be extremely unfair, since the argentine moot argument it's a mere chauvinist temper tantrum, fueled by generation after generation of propaganda conditioning by failed governments.
What about Ceuta and Melilla?
Russia says the same thing about Ukraine.
The Basque region wants a word...