A British Overseas Territory and city located at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, bordered to the north by Spain (Campo de Gibraltar). The landscape is dominated by the Rock of Gibraltar, at the foot of which is a densely populated town area, home to some 38,000 people (estimate), primarily Gibraltarians.

Gibraltar has been inhabited since Prehistory. Around 950 BC, the Phoenicians founded the nearby town of Carteia and used a cave in Gibraltar as a shrine for several centuries, as did ancient Greeks and Romans, who considered the "Rock" one of the Pillars of Hercules in the legend of the creation of the Strait of Gibraltar by Heracles. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, it was part of the Visigothic Kingdom of Hispania for three centuries, until a Berber expedition led by Tariq ibn Ziyad landed near Gibraltar in 711 and went on to conquer most of the Iberian Peninsula for Islam. In 1160, a permanent settlement with a castle was built by the Arabs. From 1274, the town was fought over and captured subsequently by several Arab and Christian dynasties until it was captured by the Kingdom of Castile in 1462. In 1704, Anglo-Dutch forces captured Gibraltar from Spain during the War of the Spanish Succession. The territory was ceded to Great Britain in perpetuity under the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. It became an important base for the Royal Navy, particularly during the Napoleonic Wars and World War II, as it controlled the narrow entrance and exit to the Mediterranean Sea, the Strait of Gibraltar, which is only 14.3 km wide. This choke point remains strategically important, with half the world's seaborne trade passing through it.