Tourism in Gibraltar

[9] To make room for the expected flood of visitors' cars on Gibraltar's crowded roads, 1,000 old vehicles were rounded up and pushed off the cliffs into the sea at Europa Point at the southern tip of the territory.

[10] Despite this drastic measure, parking spaces were in critically short supply as over 1,000 vehicles per day entered Gibraltar after the reopening of the border.

[8] The territory enjoyed a retail, accommodation and catering boom, though it came at the price of chronic traffic problems and threats to the environment, notably disturbances to the macaque and bird populations.

[11] The number of macaques grew very rapidly as a result of (illegal) feeding by tourists, which also led to an increase in aggressive behaviour as the monkeys came to associate humans with food.

The problems culminated in 2008 with the Government of Gibraltar ordering the culling of a rogue group of monkeys that was breaking into hotel rooms and scavenging in bins in the Catalan Bay area.

The cull was protested by researchers and animal rights campaigners but was justified by the Government on the grounds that the overly aggressive monkeys would frighten tourists and cause damage to the economy.

[12] The running-down of the British military presence in Gibraltar in the 1980s and 1990s forced the territory's Government to carry out a major shift in its economic orientation, with a greater emphasis on encouraging tourism and establishing self-sufficiency.

The newly elected Chief Minister, Peter Caruana, pledged to revive Gibraltar's faltering economy by expanding the tourist trade.

The small size of the territory means that there is an acute shortage of land for expanding tourist facilities and major pieces of infrastructure such as the Gibraltar airport.

Smuggling between Gibraltar and Spain remains a source of tension between the two governments and occasionally leads to long delays for vehicle traffic crossing the border during Spanish Civil Guard crackdowns.