Richard Ford’s visit to Gibraltar in 1845

“The “Main, or Waterport street,” the aorta of Gibraltar, is the antithesis of a Spanish town. Lions and Britannias dangle over innumerable pot-houses, the foreign names whose proprietors combine strangely with the Queen’s English. “Manuel Ximenez-lodgings and neat liquors.” In these signs, and in the surer signs of bloated faces, we see with sorrow that we have passed from a land of sobriety into a den of gin and intemperance: everything and body is in motion; there is no quiet, no repose, all is hurry and scurry, for time is money, and mammon is the god of Gib., as the name vulgarized, according to the practice of abbreviators and conquerors of “Boney.” The entire commerce of the Peninsula seems condensed into this microcosmus, where all creeds and nations meet, with nothing in common save their desire to prey upon each other; adieu the formal highbred courtesies of the Don, the mantilla and bright smile of the dark eyed Andaluza. The women wear bonnets, and look unamiable, as if men were natural enemies, and meant to insult them. The officers on service appear to be the only people who have nothing to do. The town is stuffy and sea-coaly, the houses wooden and druggeted, and built on the Liverpool pattern, under a tropical climate; but transport an Englishman where you will, like a snail, he takes his house and his habits with him. Those who settle on the Rock, civil or military, know but little of Spain beyond Sn. Roque, and in this only do they resemble Spaniards, who seldom know, nor care to know, anything beyond their own town or district.”

Image: Market Scene, Gibraltar. 22nd April, 1876. Illustrated London News.