New era for Gibraltar with removal of 118-year-old border controls with Spain
Every weekday morning, Shilpi Chotrani rides her bicycle from her home in the Spanish town of La Línea de la Concepción to Gibraltar. It's a short journey, but it means crossing an international border. A British Overseas Territory of around 40,000 inhabitants, Gibraltar has border control for those entering and leaving. That means that during the morning and afternoon rush hours, when around 15,000 Spaniards who work in the territory cross the frontier, there can be long, time-consuming queues. "The fact that there is a border between us is ridiculous," says Chotrani, who has a job in human resources in a Gibraltarian shipping and tourism company. "I don't think a fence should separate people from one place and another." Behind her, the 1,400-foot-tall Rock of Gibraltar is shrouded in early-morning cloud. Perched at the southern tip of mainland western Europe, it is just nine miles from Morocco, at a point where the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea ...