Gibraltar Stories: What's on the Rock's mind?

Strolling arm-in-arm along City Mill Lane, the people of the Rock have only one thing on their minds, says Dominique Searle. So look out Spain - and Hain

The sun is bouncing off the cobbled streets, and the Jewish community in their Shabbat best are gathered outside the Cathedral of St Mary the Crowned, gossiping and exchanging anecdotes of the week as the Christian majority stroll from shop to café.

Saturday morning is the one point in the week where Gibraltar almost forgets that it is a 300-year-old problem. Almost everyone is in town. Moroccans weave in and out of City Mill Lane, and old Mr Dalli, who used to parade with a "Save the Dolphins" placard (from the Spaniards, of course), is now calling for Gibraltar to be saved from a sellout by Britain.

A dozen pensioners known as the "lower House of Assembly" are gathered in the piazza below the local parliament building. Amid their buzz, the word "Hain" is grunted from time to time. Peter Hain, the Minister for Europe, is one of the chief villains as Gibraltarians suspiciously watch the British and Spanish governments discuss the question of sovereignty over the Rock.

A fortnight ago Michael Ancram, the shadow foreign secretary, came for his second walk down Main Street, where elderly gentlemen to this day stroll arm in arm and everybody knows they will meet somebody. He was delighted to discover in November that everybody in Main Street knew him and wanted to talk to him.

A Spanish MP asked privately last September, when it began to look as though Britain would retreat from full sovereignty over Gibraltar, "I assume that Blair has got the Opposition fully on side for this process?" It was a good question: while it is true that the Brussels process, which invited Spain to talk about sovereignty, was a Conservative Party creature, the Tories now say they never expected things to get this serious.

When the actual Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, was here last month, 50 policemen had to defend him with life and limb as he crossed the 50 yards from the office of the Chief Minister, Peter Caruana, to The Convent, where the Governor resides. Both buildings used to be religious institutions linked by a tunnel, but the underground passage, unfortunately, was flooded on this occasion.

Mr Ancram enjoyed the company of Mr Caruana on his stroll, but not Mr Straw. As the Spanish say: "Tell me whom you walk with, and I will tell you who you are."

¿ Last week the Voice of Gibraltar, one of our more radical lobby groups, castigated Governor David Durie for "not standing up for the people", and suggested – in what came close to a symbolic call for UDI – that at Thursday's Ceremony of the Keys, the keys of Gibraltar should be handed to the Chief Minister instead of Mr Durie.

Nothing happened – Gibraltarians have at least a grudging nostalgia for the parades – but it's hard to think that the job of Governor here can have any attraction at all. A week earlier Mr Durie came under similar flak from the Women's Association, for criticising the abuse that had been hurled at Jack Straw.

If it goes ahead, the initiative by Tony Blair and Jose Maria Aznar, the Spanish Prime Minister, will certainly break the almost symbiotic relationship which existed between Britain and Gibraltar – but that is cracking up anyway. However, the local population will, one way or another, have its say.

As one slightly confused reader wrote to the local paper recently: "If the British don't give us what we want, we will have to go down the route of Mohamed Ghandi!"