GIBRALTAR has renamed its airport Sir Joshua Hassan Gibraltar International Airport after the territory’s first Chief Minister just one week before a treaty signing that will see Spanish police and customs enter the terminal.
Fabian Picardo announced the renaming in his Budget address to the Gibraltar Parliament on Tuesday, tying it to the wider treaty that opens Gibraltar’s skies and terminal to Spain for the first time in decades.
“Sir Joshua Hassan was the father of the Gibraltarians and one of the towering figures in our history,” Picardo said.
“It is entirely fitting that Gibraltar’s gateway to the world should carry the name of a man whose life’s work was dedicated to protecting our people, defending our identity and building the Gibraltar we are all proud to call home.”
Hassan was Gibraltar’s first Chief Minister, serving four terms over more than 20 years.
He resigned in 1987, in the wake of an earlier Spain-UK agreement on shared use of the airport, and died a decade later, in 1997.
The treaty’s aviation chapter opens Gibraltar’s airport to EU carriers for the first time in decades, work that could eventually bring scheduled flights from Spanish cities such as Madrid and Barcelona, though no specific route has yet been confirmed.
A joint venture company, set up between the Gibraltar and Spanish governments, will select and supervise whichever commercial operator runs the airport day to day.
Inside the terminal itself, Spanish Policia Nacional officers will staff a new dual-checkpoint facility spanning the border — nicknamed the ‘Schengen shack’ — carrying out a second passport check straight after Gibraltar’s own officers complete the first.
The EU’s much-maligned biometric Entry/Exit System (EES) will be active to record fingerprints and facial scans of those arriving from outside the bloc.
Spanish customs officers will also work inside the building, on a separate lane reserved for non-residents on what is legally the Spanish side of an internal border drawn through the terminal.
Picardo himself once resisted the very idea of sharing the airport.
Speaking to GBC in May 2024, after Spain’s foreign minister Jose Manuel Albares said ‘joint use’ of the airport had already been agreed in negotiations, Picardo said the term would be ‘unacceptable’ to Gibraltar and argued instead for what he called ‘enhanced use’.
Two years on, Spanish police and customs are due to start working inside the terminal from July 15.
Picardo used the same Budget speech to confirm a date Gibraltarians have waited years for.
The UK-EU treaty on Gibraltar will be signed in Brussels on July 14, with Picardo and the Deputy Chief Minister travelling to attend.
“Even as I speak, the ink is being prepared for a signature that generations of Gibraltarians longed for and never lived to see,” Picardo said.
READ MORE: Spain begins tearing down border infrastructure with Gibraltar as frontier opening gathers pace
Ahead of the signing, Picardo will lay a concordat in Parliament — a side-agreement that guarantees Gibraltar the right to hold a referendum if it ever wants to terminate the treaty.
He called it a ‘double lock’ on consent, tying the UK’s powers under the deal to what Gibraltar itself agrees to.
Then, just a day later, on July 15, the land border with Spain stops functioning as a hard frontier for the first time in over 300 years, and routine passport checks at the crossing end for good.
Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez is expected to visit the frontier at La Linea de la Concepcion on July 13, two days before the changeover, alongside his foreign minister, Jose Manuel Albares.
The developments were all announced in what will be Picardo’s final Budget as Chief Minister.
He has led Gibraltar’s Government since 2011, delivering 16 Budgets in total, and used Tuesday’s near four-hour address to reflect on his tenure.
He said he was ‘letting go of the reins of office’ as he thanked his predecessor and GSLP mentor Sir Joe Bossano.
The Budget also confirmed a series of other changes landing in the months ahead.
The minimum wage rises from £9.50 to £10 an hour (around €11.70), up 85.2% since 2011, taking annual earnings on a 39-hour week to £20,280 (about €23,730) — the first time the figure has passed £20,000.
The state pension age for men falls from 65 to 60, matching the existing threshold for women, benefiting around 1,400 men at a cost of £8 million (roughly €9.4 million).
Nicotine pouches and SNUS are banned outright, and new legislation will bar tobacco sales for life to anyone born after 2009.
A new Transaction Tax replaces Import Duty from July 15, starting at 15%, rising to 16% next year, and settling at a rate matching the EU’s lowest VAT rate — currently 17%, in Luxembourg — within three years.
The RAF base next door will carry on exactly as before — the one part of the airfield the new treaty does not touch.
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