Introduction: The Intersecting Boundaries of Europe, Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic World

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>The introduction highlights Gibraltar’s importance as a widely recognized monument marking the intersecting boundaries between Europe and Africa, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. Shortly after the Castilian conquest of Gibraltar in the fifteenth century, the newly arrived Christian townspeople built a shrine to the Virgin Mary at the southern tip of the peninsula, a place later Spanish writers described as “the last place in Europe.” Since antiquity, Gibraltar’s location had carried mythical significance. Ancient Greeks and Romans recounted how the hero Hercules, sent on a mission to the end of the Earth, discovered an isthmus linking Africa and Europe. He destroyed it, leaving Gibraltar and an adjacent peak in Africa as the only remaining fragments of the demolished land bridge. The introduction explains how adopting a geographical perspective placing Gibraltar at the edge of Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic helps make sense of the territory’s entire history from antiquity to the present.</jats:p>