IT WAS a risky time for a first visit to Gibraltar. "The British government continues to stand by Gibraltar. Gibraltar is not on the table as a bargaining chip," thundered the local free sheet, 7 Days. "Britain refuses Caruana's request for royal navy reinforcements" according to another Costa del Sol freesheet, Sur. Peter Caruana is Gibraltar's chief minister and wants the royal navy to help the Gibraltar police to patrol the waters around the Rock after a series of "incursions" by the Spanish Guardia Civil.
Caruana’s plea to London got the brush-off. British foreign secretary William Hague, replied through a spokesman: “The royal navy is already present and their role is well-defined already.” Well thank goodness for that. Now we can safely join the hundreds of other tourists who visit the Rock daily for duty-free booze, cigarettes and perfume without being shelled by gunboats.
I also want to see the famous Barbary apes who are “actually tail-less monkeys” or more accurately, macaques. “We recommend that you do not carry any food or touch these animals as they may bite,” is the official advice. You can say that again.
Jason Biggs, the star of American Pie, had to abandon his Gibraltar holiday last year following an attack from a monkey who presumably did not know who he was.
A British family on holiday was attacked by a pack of the monkeys. The father and mother were bitten and scarred trying to protect their two sons. “There were about five or six of them and they were extremely strong. I was afraid for our lives both from the attack and the steep drop,” Mrs Castro told a British newspaper. The doctor told them there was no need for anti-tetanus injections as all the monkeys have been “vaccinated”.
There is “a maximum fine of £500 for feeding the animals,” but as I strolled along Main Street, as far below “Apes Den” as you can get, a couple of them suddenly appeared and grabbed a packet of crisps from a Japanese tourist. The lure of packaged food has been bringing the monkeys downtown, as it were. One of them jumped in a window of the Caleta Palace Hotel and attacked a guest. Not good publicity for the hotel when it was splashed over the web.
There is a tradition that the British will only leave the Rock when the apes go. British sailors are supposed to have brought them there in 1704. Winston Churchill was so worried during the second World War that the apes were dying out that he ordered that “the establishment of the apes should be 24. Action should be taken to bring them up to this number and maintain it thereafter”.
The order was faithfully carried out. Today there are almost 200 and they are all named at birth. But in 1967 they were also in decline. Tourists were ruining their diets by feeding them sweets but they were living in two sexually imbalanced tribes on the upper Rock.
The “Middle Clan” had too few males while the “Queen’s Gate” tribe had too few females. This led to a curious correspondence between the then Commonwealth Relations Office and the Governor of Gibraltar, Sir Gerald Lathbury, which the BBC unearthed at the National Archives.
The Sir Humphrey of the Commonwealth Relations Office sent the governor a telegram in verse beginning: “We’re a little perturbed about the apes, /After studying their sizes and their shapes. /As we see it, at first glance /There seems at least a chance /Of some lesbianism or sodomy or rapes.”
The top civil servant wondered if the governor could “get up a party for the apes who feel het up, when the bachelors from Queen’s meet the Middle Hill colleens . . . and a new pack is set up.” The governor rose to the occasion, penning a reply which assured London that: “As long as we have Joe (born at Queen’s Gate in 1958)/ No female ape need pine/ Or lesbianate.”
Joe today would be a sprightly 52-year-old and may well be chatting up the “colleens” at Middle Hill when he is not relieving tourists of their snacks.
Molly Bloom, who of course grew up as a seductive colleen in Gibraltar, had her own theories about the apes who figure in her famous soliloquy. Musing about Saint Michael’s cave, a deep grotto in the Rock, Molly says, “I’m sure that’s the way down the monkeys go under the sea to Africa when they die.”