Letter to Obi-wan Kenobi

Dear Obi-wan,

Only you can save our community.

We are about 100k people living in a region blessed with sun and surrounded by the wonderful blue of the Mediterranean. Our community is not recognised by politicians and has no officially recognised borders. Our community has no name but we will call it La Gibranea for now. We live in the area from Europea Point in the South of Gibraltar to Santa Margarita in the North West. Including Campamento to the East but not as far as San Roque in the North. We are a single community. We live, love, work and die together but we are confused. Our community is divided and we need your leadership Obi-wan.

In La Gibranea we are even confused about what language to speak. For example, you will often hear “Spanglish”, an unwritten hybrid of Spanish and English. We are also confused about how to exchange goods for money; there are three currencies but where can we spend them? We are confused about everything: where to pay our taxes, buy our houses, send our children for education and our elderly for care. And we are very confused and frustrated about how to travel. Every morning we engage all conceivable forms of transport to carry ourselves across the hated border that divides us.

Floating ants

Like the senators in your Republic Obi-wan, the elected powers are too obsessed with themselves to see that we are adrift like the ants in this picture. Those elected are meant to help us but they cannot because each is strung to competing sovereigns. Obi-wan, you cannot understand our community when you are looking outside in. Viewed from the perspective of a nation state, La Gibranea does not make sense and this is the root of all our problems.

We need a new power to rule us and time to resolve our destiny. We need to create a new, transitional state with a mandate for a ten year rule. We need La Gibranea to be governed with a three-way sharing of power between Gibraltar, Spain and the UK. Each in equal measure.

During this time we need all the children born in La Gibranea to be granted dual nationality. We need a single currency. We need trade agreements to disincentivize the smugglers and proper recognition for our bi-lingualism. But most of all we need to abolish the border. We need to join the Schengen Agreement and establish freedom of movement through the introduction of an integrated transport system. These problems cannot be solved by the current leadership. Please Obi-wan, help bring balance to our community and recognise the state of La Gibranea.

Thank you.