Gibraltar is technically British. And also… kind of not. That's the thing nobody really prepares you for.
You cross a border from Spain, walk across an active airport runway to get into town — an actual runway, with flights landing over your head — and then suddenly you're surrounded by red phone boxes, Marks & Spencer and signs in English. But turn around and the Spanish coast is right there. Africa is visible from the top of the Rock on a clear day. And somewhere between all of that, your brain starts doing this little confused shimmy trying to figure out where exactly you are.
That's Gibraltar. A 6.8 square kilometre British Overseas Territory that has spent centuries refusing to be simple about anything.
I'd been curious about it for a while. One of those places that sounds almost absurd on paper — a tiny rock of land that Spain still technically claims, that the UK has held since 1713, that voted 96% to remain in the EU and still ended up outside it anyway. The politics alone could fill a book. But I wasn't going for the politics.
I went because places that don't quite fit anywhere usually have the most to say.
