The land that time forgot

Union Jacks, English pubs and chaps wearing blazers ÿ Gibraltar seems like a throwback to a different era. But, is reality finally catching up with the disputed territory?

I was 24 years old when I last visited Gibraltar. We started our journey at the air terminal in Cromwell Road, west London, now the site of a giant Sainsbury's. We had flown on a huge BEA aircraft. It wasn't Gibraltar we'd been after; no, we were Morocco-bound, Nina, Peter and I, but in those days it was cheaper to fly overnight to Gibraltar and then take the ferry to Tangiers.

In 1968 British travellers were allowed to take no more than £50 abroad – a sum which, though it went further in those days than today, was still a pittance to take on holiday. (Peter and Nina took the regulation amount; but when he got rolled on his first night on the beach, Peter was delighted to find that I had secretly smuggled an extra £30 in my suitcase).

We had booked ourselves into a vile Gibraltarian hotel, where we had to sleep three to a room, and, to pass the time before the Tangiers ferry left, we walked around the dismal British colony in the morning. Our memory was of fences painted in red, white and blue, Union Jacks hanging from every window; even gardens had been planted in England colours – with white alyssum, red geraniums and blue lobelia.

It was, as Nina remembers, the "most frightful place, full of elderly blokes in white shorts and naval shirts, cheery bobbies, red pillar-boxes, and all dominated by Main Street, a mixture of Tottenham Court Road and Blackpool, which was lined with a mixture of electrical and camera shops, English pubs advertising fish and chips and mushy peas, models of Beefeaters and stuffed Gibraltar apes". The nationalism depressed us then – but the Gibraltarians could hardly be blamed, because the following year Franco closed the borders and Gibraltar was isolated for 17 years until the frontiers were re-opened.

In those days, of course, we couldn't get out of there quick enough. Tangiers was amazing. Nina met her first husband, and got married to him a few weeks later, carried into the reception area on a huge golden plate; I found a taxi-driver boyfriend called Habbadi, and Peter had a series of young men who would melt into the morning the moment us girls appeared.

Treading the same ground more than 30 years later I found the situation almost completely reversed. Instead of staying at a beastly three-bedroom hostel, I put up at the Rock Hotel, a wonderful piece of Thirties architecture, all polished brass and palm trees, with a swimming pool and a man playing Gershwin on a piano in the restaurant. I was following in the footsteps of such illustrious – and poignantly dated – guests as Sir John Mills, Winston Churchill, Errol Flynn, Anna Neagle, Trevor Howard, the Prince of Wales and Moira Shearer.

Main Street has been pedestrianised and, except on the days when the tourist ships come in and about 5,000 football fans are disgorged on to the streets to buy gin at £5 a litre (no duty and no tax), goggle at Barbary apes and queue to go to the top of the Rock by cable car, the place has enormous Fifties charm.

When I asked about the hot news of the moment (putting aside the hottest which is, of course, whether Gib remains British or not), which is whether women can serve on juries – so far they are all-male – I was told: "Of course we have equal rights here!" The genial bloke who was speaking wore a blazer bright with brass buttons, a huge silk spotted handkerchief bursting from the pocket. "As long as the women know that the men are best! Ho! Ho! Ho!"

But because you know it's all going to change, that the Gibraltarians, with their weirdly old-fashioned views, are a dying race, that they are no longer a threat – as they appeared to us in the Sixties – they appear rather magnificent, still soldiering along in their splendidly non-PC way, like some tribe that's been cut off from civilisation, suddenly discovered in the Amazonian jungle. And in a way they can get away with it, because Gibraltarians themselves are a mixture of British, Italian, Maltese and Portuguese and Genoese, with a strong Muslim, Hindu and Jewish contingent.

When I was there in the Sixties, this society represented everything I hated. But now I look back on the scene with a kind of dippy sentimentality, because, whether it remains British or whether it's incorporated into some kind of Spanish rule, Gibraltarian life cannot last. American and British television is blared into every household – and it is very strange to watch Have I Got News For You, walk out and buy a beer with English pounds in the Prince of Wales pub, walk into the blazing sunshine, past Monsoon, the Body Shop and M&S, and then saunter through the frontier into Spain in a matter of minutes.

Gibraltar's Senior Citizen's Club, which announces on the door that "Visiting Senior Citizens are Welcome" seems charming, rather than ridiculous, and even one of the newspapers, VOX, which has as its masthead: "Established since 1956. For Law and Order without Fear or Favour", appears touching rather than threatening. News of the day may be that a derelict car is still derelict after five weeks.

A trip to the once-exotic Tangiers, however, is no longer nearly as exciting as it was in the Sixties. The souk has been cleaned up. The men wear European clothes, and the women increasingly, too. The glamour has gone, along with the cockroaches.

Far better to stay in Gibraltar, visit the Barbary apes, go out with the dolphins and, in the evening, nip down for a G and T at La Bayuca restaurant, run by Johnnie and Tita, who've been on the go since 1964. The immensely glam old Johnnie is rumoured once to have had an affair with Ava Gardner, and you can see why.

The walls are lined with photographs of Lew Hoad, the Duke of Edinburgh (admiral of the Gib yacht club), Jack Hawkins, Anthony Quayle, Deborah Kerr, Chris Chataway and Bill Cotton. After your third drink you're wondering whether the whole thing shouldn't be filmed in black and white, whether Fanny and Johnnie Cradock might suddenly pop out of the woodwork, whether you shouldn't really be discussing the merits of Honkers and KL and, a bottle of wine later, swearing that before you go home you'll jolly well buy a Union Jack, drape it from your home in London and damn the natives.