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Columbus set sail on his first voyage AUGUST 3, 1492, with the Nina, Pinta and the Santa Maria. He explained how the Spanish monarchs approved his plan: "... And ordained that I should not go by land (the usual way) to the Orient (East), but by the route of the Occident (West), by which no one to this day knows for sure that anyone has gone." Why did he seek to find a sea route to India and China? Because 40 years earlier Islamic Ottoman Turks closed off the land routes. The background to Columbus' voyage goes back to the...

In many ways, the last surviving Neanderthals are a mystery. But four caves in Gibraltar have given an unprecedented insight into what their lives might have been like. Forty thousand years ago in Europe, we were not the only human species alive – there were at least three others. Many of us are familiar with one of these, the Neanderthals. Fossil evidence shows that, towards the end, the final few were clinging onto survival in places like Gibraltar. In recognition of this, Gibraltar received Unesco world heritage status in 2016. ... "They weren't just surviving," the Gibraltar museum's director of...

The US justice department has issued a warrant to seize a detained Iranian oil tanker, a day after a judge in Gibraltar ordered it to be released. The Grace 1 supertanker, which is carrying 2.1m barrels of oil, was detained on 4 July on suspicion of illegally transporting oil to Syria. A last-minute legal attempt by the US to keep the tanker detained was rejected by Gibraltar on Thursday. Iran previously called the detention of Grace 1 an "illegal interception".

Iran is slowly taking off its gloves and has dropped its mask in the widening confrontation with Western countries and Israel. After the United Kingdom (UK) seized an Iranian tanker with oil bound for Syria on July 4, the Iranians embarked on a piracy campaign against British and other vessels in the Persian Gulf. The tanker, Grace 1, was carrying 2.1 million barrels of oil when it was detained by British Marines and will stay in Gibraltar for another month, a court in the British colony decided last Friday. Iran called the British action an “act of piracy” and again...

Iranian media report that a British flagged oil tanker has been seized by Iranian forces. Iran claiming that the tanker was seized for violating maritime regulations.... Iran stated its intention in recent days to respond to the seizure of one of its tankers by the UK. Earlier Friday the Supreme Court in Gibraltar granted a 30-day extension for detention of the Iranian oil tanker.... The Pentagon making it official Friday that US forces are going to Saudi Arabia.... Amidst all the controversy surrounding them, its been almost forgotten that Congresswoman Ihan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan are...

LONDON/DUBAI, July 5 (Reuters) - An Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander threatened on Friday to seize a British ship in retaliation for the capture of an Iranian supertanker by Royal Marines in Gibraltar. "If Britain does not release the Iranian oil tanker, it is the authorities' duty to seize a British oil tanker," Mohsen Rezai said on Twitter. The Gibraltar government said the crew on board the supertanker Grace 1 were being interviewed as witnesses, not criminal suspects, in an effort to establish the nature of the cargo and its ultimate destination. British Royal Marines boarded the ship off the coast...

A court in Gibraltar has ruled the ship can be detained for a further 14 days. Iran later summoned the British ambassador in Tehran to complain about what it said was a "form of piracy". Mohsen Rezaei said...: "If Britain does not release the Iranian oil tanker, it is the authorities' duty to seize a British oil tanker." Gibraltar said there was reason to believe the ship was carrying Iranian crude oil to the Baniyas Refinery in the Syrian Mediterranean port town of Tartous. The territory was initially able to detain the ship for 72-hours, but Gibraltar's Supreme Court granted...

1 of 6 A view of the Grace 1 super tanker i near a Royal Marine patrol vessel in the British territory of Gibraltar, Thursday, July 4, 2019. Spain's acting foreign minister says a tanker stopped off Gibraltar and suspected of taking oil to Syria was intercepted by British authorities after a request from the United States. (AP Photo/Marcos Moreno) MADRID (AP) — Authorities in Gibraltar said they intercepted Thursday an Iranian supertanker believed to be breaching European Union sanctions by carrying a shipment of Tehran’s crude oil to war-ravaged Syria. A senior Spanish official said the operation was requested...

The prestigious international journal Quaternary Science Reviews has just published a paper which has involved the participation of Gibraltarian scientists from the Gibraltar National Museum alongside colleagues from Spain, Portugal and Japan. The results which have been published come from an area of the Catalan Bay Sand Dune. This work started ten years ago, when the first dates using the OSL method were obtained. It is then that the first traces of footprints left by vertebrates were found. In subsequent years the successive natural collapse of sand has revealed further material and has permitted a detailed study including new dates....

When Spanish civil servants got wind that someone was sweeping up the priceless treasure of a 200-year-old frigate from the ocean floor, it triggered a real-life escapade full of naval pursuits and secret airlifts - like something from a comic book adventure. And that is what it has now become, after one of those suit-and-tie sleuths convinced Spain's best-known graphic novelist that together they should tell the tale of the modern-day treasure hunt. In 1804, a British fleet opened fire on the Spanish ship Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes, causing the death of 250 people of the 300 on board...

nearly half a decade ago, U.S. Special Operations Command with the help of U.S. Military Sealift Command began the task of quietly turning a modern roll-on, roll-off cargo ship into a highly customized, mobile special operations mothership and sea base. *** The question of how a vehicle so big and unique could simply disappear for years on end is what prompted our investigation. Upon reviewing satellite imagery, it was clear that ship left its pier in Mobile sometime between mid 2015 and early 2016. *** Over the next year and a half, the Ocean Trader's AIS transponder only popped up...

Spain will not set as a condition in Brexit talks that it recovers Gibraltar, its foreign minister said in a Sunday interview that could ease tensions over the disputed British territory. Nestled on Spain’s southern tip, Gibraltar has been under British control since 1713, but Madrid has long wanted it back. Authorities in the tiny rocky outcrop fear Spain will influence complex negotiations between the EU and Britain to leave the bloc to try and gain authority over Gibraltar. But in an interview with Spain’s conservative daily ABC, Alfonso Dastis said he didn’t want to “jeopardize” the deal by demanding...

Spain is planning to use its Brexit veto over Gibraltar to tell the Rock how to run its economy, leaked documents have revealed. Madrid wants to end what it describes as the Rock’s “unjustified privileges”, according to reports of a leaked Spanish foreign ministry document. Spanish officials said Gibraltar’s low-tax status effectively means it enjoys “unfair competition” and has vowed to crack down on the “tax haven”. They will also demand a “new accord” over flights into Gibraltar’s international airport. Fabian Picardo, Gibraltar’s chief minister, accused Spain of holding “neo-colonial ambitions” over the territory. …

Spain said today it had stepped up border controls with Gibraltar under a scheduled move by the EU’s Schengen zone. The announcement comes amid rising friction over the British territory caused by Brexit. The interior ministry said it had intensified controls at the crossing point to Gibraltar, a rocky outcrop in Spain’s southern tip, in line with rules introduced on Friday for boosting security on the Schengen perimeter. […] The new rules coincide with a flare-up of tensions surrounding the rocky outcrop, which Spain ceded to Britain in 1713 but wants back. The European Union, reacting to Britain’s decision to...

British Prime Minister Theresa May on Sunday insisted that she would "never" allow Gibraltar to slip from British control against the wishes of Gibraltarians as the issue took centre-stage in early Brexit wranglings. May told Chief Minister of Gibraltar Fabian Picardo that "we will never enter into arrangements under which the people of Gibraltar would pass under the sovereignty of another state against their freely and democratically expressed wishes." Her comments came as Spain pledged it would not close its border post-Brexit with the 6.7-square-kilometre (2.6-square-mile) British overseas territory on the southern tip of Spain.

In what was widely hailed as a victory for Spain, the EU said Spain must have a say over whether any deal after Brexit applies to the British territory of Gibraltar, over which London and Madrid have rowed for 300 years. “After the United Kingdom leaves the union, no agreement between the EU and the United Kingdom may apply to the territory of Gibraltar without the agreement between the Kingdom of Spain and the United Kingdom,” the guidelines released by EU president Donald Tusk say. The tiny British overseas territory on Spain’s southern tip has long been the subject of...

The Royal Navy fired flares to warn off a Spanish patrol boat approaching an American nuclear submarine off Gibraltar. The fast patrol boat HMS Sabre fired warning shots across the bow of a Guardia Civil vessel as it twice tried to cut across the path of USS Florida during an incursion into Gibraltar’s waters. Gibraltar says Spanish vessels regularly stray deep into its territorial waters and the Foreign Office has attacked the incursions as provocative. But defence sources said it was rare for a Royal Navy vessel to fire flares and it had only happened a couple of times in...

The Mediterranean Sea as we know it today formed about 5.3 million years ago when Atlantic Ocean waters breached the strait of Gibraltar, sending a massive flood into the basin. > But exactly how the waters cut their way through and how long it took them to do so wasn't known. >

A Spanish research team, using 3-D reflection seismology, has for the first time mapped the geomorphological features of the Ebro river basin 5 to 6 million years ago. The images obtained show that the surface analysed is today 2.5 or 3 kilometres below the sea bed. "The results shed light on the way in which the sea level fell during the Messinian (between 5.33 and 6 million years ago), and imply that the subsequent inundation of the river margins happened extremely quickly," says Roger Urgeles, lead author of the study and a researcher at the Department of Marine Geology of...

Research has revealed details of the catastrophic Zanclean flood that refilled the Mediterranean Sea more than five million years ago. The flood occurred when Atlantic waters found their way into the cut-off and desiccated Mediterranean basin. The researchers say that a 200km channel across the Gibraltar strait was carved out by the floodwaters... show that the resulting flood could have filled the basin within two years. The team was led by Daniel Garcia-Castellanos from the Research Council of Spain (CSIC)... Using existing borehole and seismic data, his team showed how the flood would have begun with water spilling over a...