In 711AD Tariq ibn Ziyad, the Muslim governor of Tangier, landed at Gibraltar to launch the Islamic invasion of the Iberian Peninsula. The Rock has carried his name ever since: Jebel Tariq (Tariq's Mountain).
Castilla wrested the Rock from the Muslims in 1462. Then in 1704 an Anglo-Dutch fleet captured Gibraltar during the War of the Spanish Succession. Spain ceded the Rock to Britain in 1713, but didn't end military attempts to regain it until the failure of the Great Siege of 1779-83. Britain developed it into an important naval base.
During the Franco period, Gibraltar was an extremely sore point between Britain and Spain and the object of much diplomatic angst: the border was closed from 1967 to 1985. In 1969, Gibraltarians voted by 12,138 to 44 in favour of British rather than Spanish sovereignty, and a new constitution gave Gibraltar domestic self-government.
Today Spain's offer to Gibraltar of autonomous-region status within Spain is still on the table, but both the British and the Gibraltarians continue to reject any compromise over sovereignty. The British garrison was withdrawn in the early 1990s, but the British navy continues to use Gibraltar as an important base in its Mediterranean operations.
Gibraltar History
