ReachExtra
Reach Alcance Edition 7
LA LÍNEA DOESN’T EXIST
The latest Brexit episode suggests that La Línea doesn’t exist. It is only likely recognized – as it always has been as a badly urbanized area in the shadow of the Rock that has been growing or shrinking according to historical events and it has been given a strategic name, even if the people who slowly occupied it over time have not. These people live in close proximity to a population where the majority of people have shown more solidarity with La Línea than their own compatriots and leaders.
While this town, depressed by institutional neglect , commemorates the nightmare of the frontier closure in 1969 – one that left so many tracks in the mud – even now the spawn of anger come out to retake the same old narrative of imposition and force to in order to inflict new wounds.
La Línea doesn’t exist because, in reality, it is as if it were a random hologram within ministerial offices and, because it has cried out a thousand times for special attention in terms of raising living standards and for the rights that it wishes to share with the rest of the country and yet, the only answers have been lies and silence. And, because of this, the town suffers as if it were in a permanent situation of indigestion brought about by abuse and neglect.
Gibraltar is making a great effort to achieve a trade relationship with La Linea and some companies could have even settled in the municipal area of La Linea with the benefit that this would have meant for all of us. However, some of them, such as the gaming companies, have crossed the Strait and set up in Ceuta, while others are lured by the tax advantages offered by Luxembourg or Malta.
Meanwhile, the mayor of La Línea, like his predecessors screams until he is hoarse but no one pays attention, and the business community is in the dark and is worried not just at the lack of opportunities but also the prospect that existing commercial activity will be impaired by the danger of job losses and difficulties in access through the frontier with Gibraltar.
La Línea exists, but it is almost as if it is did not.
