Founding of Gibraltar

Gibraltar, the rocky promontory at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, has been fortified and settled since antiquity and takes its name from the Arabic Jabal Tariq, the Mountain of Tariq, after the commander who landed there at the start of the Muslim conquest of Spain. In the Middle Ages it passed between Muslim and Castilian hands. An Anglo-Dutch fleet captured it during the War of the Spanish Succession, and Spain formally ceded it to Britain in the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. It withstood a long siege in the late eighteenth century and became a key naval base guarding the entrance to the Mediterranean. Spain has continued to claim it, though residents have repeatedly voted to remain British.

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