The End of a Modern Borderland

This chapter discusses the post-World War II reconfiguration of ethno-religious relations that put an end to the modern trans-Gibraltar borderland society as it had developed over the previous century. Jews and Europeans departed Morocco in haste in the 1950s, their safety increasingly uncertain. Spain waged a protracted campaign to recover Gibraltar from Great Britain, closing the border by 1969. Although the effort failed, it put an end to Gibraltar’s role as a hub for traffic and circulation around the Strait for over a century. New currents of migration brought Africans northward, making Spain substantially multiconfessional for the first time in its modern history. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the new regional conjuncture and some remarks about the historical changes and continuities over the previous centuries.