YGTV’s article series continues - each month, David Sanchez will review military visits to the Rock. Drawing on his in-depth knowledge and photographic skills, the articles will provide readers with valuable background facts to the aircraft and vessels that pop into the Rock.
By David Sanchez
As the second month of 2020 came and went, it was a very lax, if not to say boring month for military movements on the Rock. As shall be seen, the main incident involving defence affairs came not from a visit (wanted or unwanted) but from a news headline that vanished into the ether as soon and as completely as it appeared.
I remember vividly, like most of you will, when smartphones didn’t exist. Nothing was smart other than a three piece suit. Remember polyphonic ringtones and snake? I remember when people started using smartphones; in Gibraltar they weren’t commonplace until a while after everywhere else. I remember a time, when I was a kid, when ‘America’ was this mythical place at least ten, twenty years ahead of the rest of the world. Of course, I didn’t know Japan, China and Korea were a thing, and Gibraltar was ten, twenty years behind the rest of the world anyway. Then came smartphones. Surprisingly late, if I may add. In 2011 Blackberry Curves were a thing and it wasn’t maybe two years until young people weren’t using Nokia brick phones anymore. Smartphones were (and some still are) expensive pieces of technology, and like everything Gibraltarians weren’t moving at the same pace as elsewhere. I remember a time when mIRC was a thing, then MySpace, then Bebo and finally Facebook. I even remember when Facebook was a thing. Today Facebook isn’t a thing; partly because their CEO (The Zucc) is a weird robot, but also because children don’t have attention spans like we used to. Facebook’s other ventures Instagram and WhatsApp are where it’s at in 2020, and in the strange bubble that is Gibraltar they do particularly well.
YGTV’s article series continues - each month, David Sanchez will review military visits to the Rock. Drawing on his in-depth knowledge and photographic skills, the articles will provide readers with valuable background facts to the aircraft and vessels that pop into the Rock.
This March, our community will be in the final phase of one of the most polarising but necessary debates of human history. For the UK, the debate was polarising up until the 1960s. Before Franco, Spain legalised abortions in the 1930s, before legalising it again more than 30 years ago. Alas, our time happens to be now. In 2020, it is also time to learn how to be allies.
YGTV’s article series continues - each month, David Sanchez will review military visits to the Rock. Drawing on his in-depth knowledge and photographic skills, the articles will provide readers with valuable background facts to the aircraft and vessels that pop into the Rock.
