A rich linguistic heritage
2013. Gibraltar, Casemates Square. Meeting by a member of Unite the Union, the main trade union in Gibraltar, to celebrate the 1st May. The union leader addresses the audience in the local speech of Gibraltar or ‘llanito’. He finishes by telling a joke about the 2008 economic crisis: «Un hombre amenaza a una señora: "¡La bolsa o la vida!". La señora le responde ‘muy tranquilamente’: "Llévate la bolsa mi' ‘arma’, porque la vida está ‘joia’» («A man threatens a woman: "Your money or your life!". The woman calmly answers: "Take the money love, cos life’s a fucking mess"»). And he makes his farewell in English with an Andalusian accent wishing everyone a good day. Photograph: Beatriz Díaz Martínez © Beatriz Díaz Martínez

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A rich linguistic heritage

At the beginning of the Second World War the population of Gibraltar was evacuated to safer British territories. The British Government was surprised to discover that these families «spoke, thought and lived in Spanish». Vicenta López, who worked as a servant in Gibraltar in the late 1940s remembers: «Many llanitos spoke Spanish amongst themselves not just with the women from La Línea who were servants in their houses. The British military, however, couldn’t speak Spanish. So people who worked with them learnt some English».

In the 1970s, following the closure of the border, English gradually replaced Spanish as the main language for communication. Spanish is still the mother tongue or one of the main languages for communicating for the older generations in Gibraltar, and is the majority language for the cross-border workers.

Cross-border relations meant different linguistic loans in both directions. The local speech of Gibraltar or llanito is based on Andalusian, and employs literal translations from English and the so-called «code switching», while incorporating words from other languages such as Genoese, Hebrew, Arabic, Portuguese and Maltese. Many words and expressions from llanito are used in La Línea or in the whole region. Furthermore, in La Línea they use many specific words deriving from English and the other languages that were spoken in Gibraltar.