Gibraltariens

Gibraltarians (Spanish: gibraltareños, colloquially: llanitos) are an ethnic group native to Gibraltar, a British overseas territory located near the southernmost tip of the Iberian Peninsula at the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea. Some Gibraltarians are a racial and cultural mixture of the many immigrants who came to the Rock of Gibraltar over 300 years. Following its capture by an Anglo-Dutch force in 1704, all but 70 of the existing inhabitants of Gibraltar elected to leave with many settling nearby. Since then, immigrants from Britain, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Morocco, Menorca, and India have settled at Gibraltar, as have Sephardic Jews from North Africa. Most Gibraltarian surnames are of Mediterranean or British extraction. The exact breakdown (including non-Gibraltarian British residents) according to the 1995 Census was as follows: Genoese and Catalans (who arrived in the fleet with Prince George of Hesse-Darmstadt) became the core of Gibraltar's first civilian population under Habsburg Gibraltar. Sephardi Jews from Tetouan in Morocco, who had previously been suppliers to English Tangier, began supplying fresh produce to Gibraltar in 1704. Jews in Gibraltar by 1755 together with the Genoese in Gibraltar formed 50% of the civilian population (then 1,300). In 1888 construction of the new harbour at Gibraltar began to provide an additional coaling station on the British routes to the East. This resulted in the importation of Maltese labour both to assist in its construction, and to replace striking Genoese labour in the old coaling lighter-based industry. Maltese and Portuguese people formed the majority of this new population. Other groups include Menorcans (due to the links between both British possessions during the 18th century; immigration began in that century and continued even after Menorca was returned to Spain in 1802 by the Treaty of Amiens), Sardinians, Sicilians and other Italians, French, and British people.