Hundreds of people celebrated on Tuesday night into Wednesday morning the demolition of part of the fence separating Gibraltar from Spain, marking the entry into force of an agreement that makes the British overseas territory an enclave of the Schengen area.
The ceremony took place at precisely midnight, the time at which the new treaty took effect. The head of the Gibraltar government, Fabian Picardo, pulled a rope to bring down a section of the fence, to the cheers of a crowd gathered at the border.
The agreement, the result of several years of negotiations initiated after Brexit, eliminates the need for checks on the passage of people and goods between Gibraltar and Spain. The British territory thus joins the European free movement area, from which it had been excluded since the United Kingdom left the European Union.
The physical border between Gibraltar and Spain had existed in various forms for 118 years. Its partial disappearance carries strong symbolic significance for the approximately 34,000 inhabitants of the Rock, many of whom work or have family on the other side of the border, as well as for the thousands of Spanish cross-border workers who travel to Gibraltar every day.
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