NO ‘CRAIC’ IN CRACK

According to the Campo de Gibraltar drugs association ‘Alternativas’ the financial crisis is having its effect on consumption.

Cocaine is being shunned in favour of heroin – so says data from the Spanish government and National Police – Guardia Civil sources.

Apparently cocaine was becoming a more popular drug but the street price means its popularity is falling. I guess the fact that it is traditional that you snort it through a tube created from a bank note doesn’t help in an economic crisis.

Francisco Mena, president of ‘Alternativas’ told my esteemed colleague Brian Reyes at the Gibraltar Chronicle that the trend of switching from cocaine to heroin is causing deep concern because it is regarded as one of the most addictive and damaging narcotics.

Heroin has always horrified me because I could never understand how somebody could stick a needle in their arm for kicks. However it appears that I’m old school as heroin is now in tablet or snorting form.

There are those of us who have been tempted by drugs because they are a social buzz in the same way as alcohol – so cocaine, hashish and various pills are passed around the dining table or taken in clubs.

However there is also the very different reality of the habitual drug users, who live in poor conditions, have no work, no stable family environment, no hope – just hopelessness - where the daily high comes from the end of a needle.

This is not a hidden society. If you live in the Campo de Gibraltar it stares you in the face in the slums of La Línea and Algeciras and the poor homes of every town and village.

Crack users are in every community but for them there’s very little ‘craic’ to be enjoyed!

(For some interesting blogs on drugs visit Brian Reyes Gibraltar Newsletter at the links section).

I’M NOT FAT I’M ANCRAM

The election season is about to descend upon us – this time it’s a European affair for the parliament. The polls take place between June 4 and 7 (European unity? The nations can’t agree over what day to vote).

Gibraltar it appears is to be visited by two big names from the Conservative Party. Michael Ancram will meet the Chief Minister and the Governor and then hold a reception at the Garrison Library on April 22. At some unspecified date William Hague will descend on the Rock.

The Gibraltar Chronicle describes Michael Ancram as a “heavyweight”. That he may be but I don’t think a person’s size should be brought in to the equation - indeed I was for many a year happily low-chested. “Big hitter” or “big beast” are the phrases we now use for those who play a major role in the British political parties.

Oddly the Tories only have a role to play in the politics of Gibraltar at the European elections. Whilst there is a Liberal party aligned internationally to the British Liberals, and the GSLP has socialist roots, there are no Rock Tories except every four year.

Gibraltar rather bizarrely votes in the South West England Constituency so whilst the Rock’s GSLP and Liberal supporters have allies in Labour and the Lib-Dems, there is no natural Tory constituency. So Ancram and Hague will have their work cut out sifting the Tories from the other chaff.

Of course the chance to vote Tory will be timely for Gibraltarians. Ancram and Hague, with the former leader playing a more major role, could within a year be members of the British Government.

In theory a Conservative Administration is more likely to defend Gibraltar’s interests more strongly – but Llanitos haven’t forgotten that it was Margaret Thatcher and Sir Geoffrey Howe who in 1984 saddled them with the Brussels Process that opened up the current route for Spanish ambitions over sovereignty. Gibraltarians have long memories and it will be hard work getting a Tory vote from this rocky place.

CARRACAO: RIGHT AND WRONG ON GIBRALTAR

The PSOE senator, José Carracao, has been speaking out again on Gibraltar. He does so as his party’s foreign affairs spokesman. As a former mayor of Jimena and president of the association of town halls of the Campo de Gibraltar, it is a subject he feels some confidence in tackling.

Of course I cannot view Carracao’s statements as a Spaniard – although Spain is my home, nor as a Gibraltarian – although I have written a weekly column about the Rock for 15 years. My opinions have to be as a Briton and hence it leaves me some what uncomfortable.

First he states that Britain’s interest in Gibraltar is purely military. Here I have to agree. Britain took the Rock in a military assault in 1703 and it was under the later Treaty of Utrecht that Spain ceded Gibraltar to what is now the UK in perpetuity. It is only in very recent years that the Governor of Gibraltar has ceased to be a military commander and the Rock has basically been a military fiefdom with little British interest in the rights of the native Gibraltarians. Indeed it is only now that the Rock has been freed from its colonial status, although views differ on that.

The importance of the Rock as a military base has decreased over the years but suddenly becomes strategic again when an emergency breaks out from Argentina to the Near East. However it did not stop British Premier Tony Blair along with his then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw seeking to do a deal with Spain by forcing the Rock to accept joint sovereignty. Certainly the opposition of Gibraltarians carried some weight but the real clincher was the Ministry of Defence that would not accept its bases being under a joint flag – and one has to wonder what input the USA made on this issue given that its nuclear subs and warships are frequent visitors.

Britain wants normal relations with Spain in the EU and is frustrated by the Gibraltar problem constantly rearing its head. If it hadn’t been for the military importance of the Rock the British Government would like to dump Gibraltar like a shot and to hell with its 30,000 inhabitants.

Although there is much song and dance about Princess Anne visiting Gibraltar this week, she was also there in 2003; the Queen and the Duke have stayed well clear. This is a British colony but there is simply no way its monarch would visit or rather be allowed to – compare that with the actions of the Spanish Royal Family who frequently visit Ceuta and Melilla and cock a snoot at the anger of Morocco.

Carracao then goes on to say that he believes Britain is acting cynically in defending Gibraltar’s right to self-determination when it handed over six million Hong Kong residents to China in 1997 and moved 3,000 people forcible from Diego García in 1972.

On Hong Kong he is wrong because unlike Gibraltar where the Treaty of Utrecht gives the Rock to Britain in perpetuity the hold on Hong Kong was purely on a lease basis. The lease was up, so that was it. On Diego García Carracao is right – Britain behaved disgracefully towards its inhabitants, as it has towards the Ghurkhas and as it has in the past towards Gibraltarians and would again if the population wasn’t European and street wise enough to haul the British Government over some very hot coals.

It could be that Gibraltar’s long term future lies not with Britain or Spain but with Europe. The move in that direction will come from Gibraltar’s new wave of politicians who are waiting in the wings to take over in the coming years. However it was that wily old fox, the former chief minister and current leader of the GSLP, Joe Bossano who first pointed me in that direction. Several years ago he told me that he thought the long term future of Gibraltar might lay in a Europe in which Spain had divided on regional lines – the Basques, Catalans etc. As Joe Boss has indicated that he will step down sooner rather than later it will be left to his successors such as Fabian Picardo and the leader of the European looking Liberals, Dr Joseph Garcia, to tread that path.

MAJOR GATEWAY FOR DRUGS

Both the US State Department and Francisco Mena of Alternativas have sounded the alarm over the Campo de Gibraltar being used as a major gateway for drugs to be introduced in to Spain and wider Europe. Well I say sounding the alarm but really they have only been restating what we knew anyway.


The State Department in a report on the global drugs menace has stated that organised criminal networks have turned Spain into a major gateway for illegal shipments of cocaine and cannabis.

The report went on to state that Spain is the principal stepping stone for Europe-bound shipments of hashish from Morocco and Algeria, adding that Gibraltarians are involved in this trade. “Hashish trafficking is controlled by Moroccan, British, and Portuguese smugglers and, to some extent, nationals of Gibraltar and the Netherlands.”


At the same time Francisco Mena of the anti-drugs organization Alternativas has warned of a marked increase in smuggling activity over the past few months. In an interview with El Faro newspaper he stated that tighter controls in other areas coupled to the impact of the economic crisis was prompting smugglers to focus once again on the Campo de Gibraltar and its surrounding areas.


The Guardia Civil reported an increase in seizures of hashish in the area covered by the Algeciras Command last year, including significant amounts confiscated in the ports of Tarifa and Algeciras. Mena believes that the figures for 2009 will also be high.


It is the view of Alternativas that many people were returning to smuggling as a means of riding out the economic downturn and rising unemployment. Mena explained: “The economic crisis that we are currently living through means that trafficking drugs is often seen as a way out. People are returning to this as a means of earning a living.”


Of course there have been century long traditions of smuggling both in Gibraltar and the wider Campo area. What started out as tobacco smuggling has now generated in to hashish and harder drugs. Fishing communities have also often sought to increase their income by using their boats and knowledge of the sea to bring in illicit goods.


You could have a healthy debate (pun intended) on whether tobacco or hashish was better for you and your health. Today drugs go hand in hand with organized crime. Yet it would have been a brave man or woman who attempted to stop a tobacco mule train as it headed from the coast along the back tracks to inland Spain.


In books I have read on Jimena details are given of smugglers going down to La Línea, staying overnight in ‘posada’ on the calle Gibraltar and returning next morning with the mules loaded up with tobacco. The residents of Jimena would then keep a watch for them and cause a diversion for the Guardia Civil if they were seen in the area.


I lived in an old house on one of the back lanes between the coast and Gaucín and there were four holes in the wall for shotguns to be poked through to ward off bandits. Antonio, who lives further up that lane, bewitched his teenage daughters one day by telling them his grandmother had been the local “Godmother” of the smugglers!


Which just goes to prove that old habits die hard.