Gibraltar Emoji & Symbols

The Gibraltar flag emoji 🇬🇮 is not a single picture in Unicode. It is two regional indicator letters, G and I (Gibraltar's ISO country code), which phones and apps draw together as the flag. Flags for every country and territory became emoji in 2015. On a system without flag support, such as Windows' own emoji font, you see the letters GI instead; the text is the same, so it still shows as a flag on the reader's phone.

The flag is a wide white band over a narrower red one, with a red three-towered castle in the middle and a golden key hanging from its gate. It comes from the coat of arms granted to Gibraltar in 1502 by Spain's Catholic Monarchs, Isabella and Ferdinand: the castle is the castle of Castile, and the key says that whoever holds Gibraltar holds the key to the Mediterranean. The motto on the arms is Montis Insignia Calpe, "the badge of the Rock of Calpe", Calpe being the Rock's ancient name. There is no castle-and-key emoji, so people paste the flag itself, 🏰🔑 beside it, or its colours as hearts ❤️🤍.

Gibraltar symbols: the Rock, the apes and the Levanter

The Rock of Gibraltar 🪨⛰️ is a limestone ridge 426 metres high that rises straight out of the sea at the southern tip of Spain. The ancient Greeks and Romans counted it as one of the two Pillars of Hercules 🏛️, the gate to the Atlantic; the other pillar is a peak across the Strait in North Africa. On days with an east wind a long banner of cloud, the Levanter ☁️, forms over the summit and hangs above the town while the rest of the sky stays blue.

Gibraltar's most famous residents are its Barbary macaques 🐒🐵, the only wild monkeys in Europe. Everyone calls them apes, because they have no visible tail. Legend says that as long as the apes stay on the Rock, Gibraltar will stay British, and during the Second World War Winston Churchill ordered their numbers to be topped up. They live on the Upper Rock, reached on foot up the Mediterranean Steps 🥾; the cable car 🚡 is closed for refurbishment until its expected 2027 reopening. They have learned to unzip bags and pockets for food; feeding them is against the law. Inside the Rock are dozens of kilometres of military tunnels, from the Great Siege Tunnels cut in the siege of 1779 to 1783 to the Second World War, and St Michael's Cave, whose great hall is used for concerts 🎶. At the southern tip stands the Europa Point lighthouse ⛯.

The national bird is the Barbary partridge 🐦, a North African bird whose only home on mainland Europe is the Rock. Each spring and autumn hundreds of thousands of birds of prey 🦅 and storks cross the Strait here, and dolphins 🐬 feed in the bay, where boats from the marina go out to watch them.

Gibraltar pound symbol £ and the euro

Gibraltar's currency is the Gibraltar pound (code GIP), issued by the Government of Gibraltar and worth exactly one pound sterling. It is written with the same sign, £, and divided into 100 pence, so prices look just as they do in the UK. British notes and coins 💷🪙 are used side by side with the local ones, which carry Gibraltar's own designs, but shops in the UK do not take Gibraltar notes, so visitors spend them before they leave. Most shops and restaurants on Main Street also take euros € 💶, usually at their own rate.

On a UK keyboard £ is Shift+3; on Windows anywhere it is Alt+0163 and € is Alt+0128 (or AltGr+4 on a UK layout), on a Mac with a UK layout £ is Shift+3 and € Option+2, and in HTML they are £ and €. Gibraltar charges no VAT, which is why Main Street 🛍️ is busy with day visitors from Spain and cruise passengers 🛳️.

Spanish spelling in Gibraltar: ñ, á and ¿ ¡

English is Gibraltar's official language, used in government and schools, but the street speaks Llanito: Andalusian Spanish and English switched mid-sentence, with words from Genoese, Maltese and Hebrew, the languages of families who settled here. Gibraltarians call themselves Llanitos too. The 2022 census counted 37,936 usual residents. Separately, CLDR's literate, functional population estimates are about 24,000 for English and 15,000 for Spanish; English–Spanish code-switching is common. In Spanish spelling, you'll see: ñ (as in mañana), the acute vowels á é í ó ú that mark stress, and the inverted marks ¿ and ¡ that open a question or exclamation: "¿Qué pasa?"

On a UK Windows keyboard AltGr plus a vowel types á é í ó ú directly; ñ is Alt+0241 (Ñ Alt+0209), ¿ Alt+0191 and ¡ Alt+0161. On a Mac press Option+E then the vowel, Option+N then n for ñ, Option+Shift+? for ¿ and Option+1 for ¡. On a phone, hold down n, a vowel, ? or ! and pick the letter. Our Spanish and English collections have the full alphabets.

Gibraltar National Day and the emoji people send

Gibraltar National Day is 10 September. It marks the referendum of 1967 🗳️, when Gibraltarians voted 12,138 to 44 to keep their link with Britain rather than pass to Spain. The whole town turns out in red and white ❤️🤍: flags with the castle and key on every balcony, painted faces, balloons 🎈 and a day of speeches, music and parties 🎉. The emoji people post is simply 🇬🇮❤️🤍, often with "Happy National Day".

Christmas 🎄 is celebrated the British way with the Spanish one alongside it: on 5 January the Three Kings 👑 parade through town handing sweets to children. Military tradition is still part of town life: the Royal Gibraltar Regiment performs the Ceremony of the Keys 🔑, recalling how the fortress gates were locked each night during the Great Siege, and the Changing of the Guard 💂 outside The Convent, the Governor's residence. The Gibraltar Music Festival 🎤🎸 has brought big-name acts to Victoria Stadium.

Gibraltar food, the runway and everyday emoji

The national dish is calentita 🫓, a thin bake of chickpea flour 🫘, olive oil and pepper often attributed to Genoese settlers; its fried cousin is panissa. Rosto 🍝 is pasta in a tomato sauce with beef, and torta de acelga 🥧🥬 a pie of Swiss chard and egg. The British side is just as present: fish and chips 🐟🍟, a cup of tea ☕ and a pint 🍺 in a Main Street pub, red postboxes 📮 and police in British-style helmets 👮.

Gibraltar's airport is famous for one thing: its runway crosses the pedestrian and cycle route to the Spanish border. Traffic lights 🚦 and barriers stop pedestrians and cyclists when aircraft use the runway ✈️🛬; the Kingsway tunnel now carries regular car traffic 🚗 beneath it, while pedestrians and cyclists can still cross at the surface to the frontier 🛂. Unlike the UK, Gibraltar drives on the right, as it has since 1929. 🏖️☀️ is for Catalan Bay and Eastern Beach on the Rock's sunny side, and ⛪🕍🕌🛕 for a town where the cathedral, centuries-old synagogues, the mosque at Europa Point and a Hindu temple stand a short walk apart. In football ⚽ Gibraltar became a UEFA member in 2013 and joined FIFA in 2016, and in 2019 it hosted the Island Games 🏅.