Gibraltar finally joined the official list of British cities on August 29, after 180 years in which its status, granted by Queen Victoria, had been overlooked due to an administrative error.
Key points
- The British overseas territory bid to become a city earlier this year as part of the celebrations for Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee, but research in the National Archives established it had in fact been granted city status in 1842.
- Gibraltar has been a British overseas territory since 1713, when it was ceded to Britain under a peace treaty signed following the War of the Spanish Succession.
- A Jubilee competition saw 39 places apply to become cities and eight of them, including Doncaster, Bangor, and Dunfermline, ultimately granted the status.
- City status is often associated with having a cathedral, university, or large population, but there are no set rules for it being granted – it’s awarded by the monarch on advice of ministers.
- It brings little in the way of material benefits.
- Gibraltar is one of only five outside the UK to be recognised. Hamilton in Bermuda, Jamestown in Saint Helena, and Douglas on the Isle of Man were already on the list, while Stanley in the Falklands Islands was among those named for the Jubilee this year.
- Gibraltar, British overseas territory occupying a narrow peninsula of Spain’s southern Mediterranean coast, just northeast of the Strait of Gibraltar, on the east side of the Bay of Gibraltar (Bay of Algeciras), and directly south of the Spanish city of La Línea.
- Gibraltar is a heavily fortified British air and naval base that guards the Strait of Gibraltar, which is the only entrance to the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean. Since the 18th century, Gibraltar has been a symbol of British naval strength, and it is commonly known in that context as “the Rock.”
- This 13-kilometer-wide Strait of Gibraltar also separates Europe and Africa, with Spain and Gibraltar on the left and Morocco on the right.
