Gibraltar

Gibraltar is a very small place by the sea.

A giant rock rises up in the middle of it. Houses, roads and a harbor squeeze in around the bottom of the Rock.

Gibraltar is a tiny territory at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, next to Spain. Its whole area is only 6.8 square kilometers, and most of it is taken up by the steep limestone Rock of Gibraltar.

Spain ceded Gibraltar to Great Britain in 1713, under the Treaty of Utrecht. Its official language is English, it uses the pound, and it has its own government led by a Chief Minister. Its Statistics Office gives a population of 37,936, and in 2025 another 14,112 people who live outside Gibraltar worked there.

Gibraltar covers 6.8 km² at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, dominated by the limestone Rock. Ceded to Great Britain by Article X of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, it has its own government headed by a Chief Minister, uses the pound sterling alongside the Gibraltar pound, and has English as its official language. In a 1967 referendum Gibraltarians voted to remain British; relations with Spain were strained, and the border, closed in 1969, did not fully reopen until 1985.

The Statistics Office's key indicators (August 2026) give a population of 37,936, alongside 32,206 employee jobs and 14,112 frontier workers who live outside Gibraltar (2025). Visitor arrivals reached 6.7 million in 2025, about 177 visitors for every resident.

The Rock has caves where Neanderthals lived long, long ago.

There are also long tunnels dug inside the Rock, and an old castle on its side.

In the steep cliffs on the eastern side of the Rock are four caves, Gorham's Cave Complex. Neanderthals used them for more than 100,000 years. Scientists found that they caught birds and sea animals for food, used feathers as decorations and scratched patterns into the rock. The caves are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Gibraltar also has a Moorish Castle and Moorish Baths, from more than 750 years of Muslim rule, and tunnels that soldiers first dug into the Rock's north face during the Great Siege of 1779 to 1783.

UNESCO's Gorham's Cave Complex comprises four caves in the limestone cliffs of the Rock's eastern side, with archaeological and paleontological deposits recording Neanderthal occupation over more than 100,000 years. They hold rare evidence of Neanderthals eating birds and marine animals, using bird feathers and making abstract rock engravings, dated to more than 39,000 years ago, evidence that has shaped debates about Neanderthal cognition. UNESCO notes the caves are vulnerable to sea-level rise and flooding.

The Gibraltar National Museum lists surviving structures of the Muslim period: parts of the Line Wall, the Moorish Castle and the Moorish Baths, now inside the museum building. During the Great Siege, soldier artificers under Sergeant-Major Henry Ince dug the first tunnels into the Rock's solid north face, and in the Second World War a huge tunnel system was built inside the Rock.

Monkeys called Barbary macaques live on the Rock.

They are wild, so people must never feed them. People food can make the monkeys sick.

Gibraltar's most famous residents are its Barbary macaques, known locally as Rock Apes. The Government of Gibraltar says they are the only free-ranging wild primates in Europe, and in Europe they live only on the Rock. They may have been there since the 8th century.

Feeding them is against the law, with a penalty of £500. Food from people upsets their diet and can cause illnesses such as diabetes. Wildlife experts and vets look after their health and count how many there are.

The Barbary macaque (Macaca sylvanus), locally the Rock Ape, is described by the Government of Gibraltar as the only free-ranging wild primate in Europe, with a European range restricted to the Rock, where it has possibly been present since the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula from 711. The Gibraltar Ornithological and Natural History Society (GONHS) and the Gibraltar Veterinary Clinic manage the population for the government, monitoring well-being and numbers.

Feeding macaques is illegal, with a £500 penalty, because treats disrupt their diet and can cause diseases such as diabetes. The National Museum adds that the large white limestone blocks of most of today's city walls and bastions were set in place in the 19th century.