Almost a decade after Brexit, Gibraltar is entering a new era. As stipulated in a thousand-page treaty published on 26 February, which sets out the terms agreed by the UK and EU, Spanish guards will check the passports of travellers entering the Rock, as the British Overseas Territory (BOT) is known, and the 0.7-mile chain-link fence separating it from Spain will be dismantled.

Though the treaty requires ratification by the European and British parliaments, it is expected to be provisionally in place from early next month. It is the long-awaited result of an agreement made last year between Spain, Gibraltar, the UK and the EU. According to Fabian Picardo, the Rock’s chief minister, it will remove ‘the physical barriers of a bygone era of friction’.

The removal of what Spanish foreign minister José Manuel Albares has called ‘the last wall in continental Europe’ will have enormous symbolic importance for Spain. Madrid has never renounced its sovereignty claims over the Rock and says that Britain’s occupation of the isthmus – the thin strip of land connecting Gibraltar with Spain, on which the airport is located – is ‘illegal and contrary to international law’. Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s Socialist prime minister, is soon expected to visit the Campo de Gibraltar, as the neighbouring area of Andalucía is called, to commemorate the historic removal of the fence. The treaty published last month does not........

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