ABSTRACT
This chapter describes some central features of the sovereignty dispute concerning Gibraltar. It looks at three other sovereignty disputes, ongoing and resolved, namely Hong Kong, the Falklands/Malvinas, and Ceuta and Melilla, the Spanish territories in Northern Africa. The chapter focuses on self-determination and United Nations decolonization practice, and that will pick up some of the themes. As a territorial dispute between two European Union member states, Gibraltar, in spite of some unique features, shares common alities with other territorial disputes. The status quo in Gibraltar today is the legacy of dynastic aspiration for maintaining a balance of power in European affairs among the French Bourbons and the Austrian Habsburgs, and it is also a product of British imperialism. The great difficulty in many sovereignty disputes is, of course, that there is a lot of emotion and politics involved that often exceed the economic or political importance of the particular territory concerned.
