As Gibraltar is simply a large rock (two square miles of Jurassic limestone) - a British colony on the Southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula - everybody, the monkeys included, are in close proximity. Squished together, hugging the steep cliffsides.

The monkeys have hands remarkably like humans, but their behavior is much more monkeylike. "You think their hands would be rough like dog paws," Jane says. "But it's like holding a human hand. They are like baby hands."

Ernest invites us to his shaded hut. His accent is more international than the other Gibraltarians we meet. Their English is perhaps the strangest on Earth, sounding sinister, Cockney and Spanish, Arabic and cartoonish all at once. When a bartender at one of the dozens of fish and chips parlours says, 'You want two lagers?', it comes out like this: "Yeh whan twah walagas?"

Ernest gives his own explanation for the origin of the monkeys, "They were brought over here in the year 1311 by Arabs. This was an outpost for them at the time. In 1704, when the British first came to Gibraltar, there were only 11 or 12 monkeys on the peninsula. The British Consul wanted to increase their number. Slowly they were cared for and reared by the military "

“So you’ve seen a lot of change?” Jane asks Ernest.

“Yes, you could say this. When the Germans were expected to come into Gibraltar and bomb, I was eight years old, and the women and children were evacuated.”

“So did the Germans ever actually bomb Gibraltar?” I ask. The notion seems absurd, but then the whole point of this rock is its role as a British garrison; a naval foothold in the Mediterranean.
“Oh yes. The Germans and Italians.”
“Where did you go?” Jane asks.
“11,000 of us were evacuated to Britain, and 4,000 to Jamaica. I spent four years in Jamaica."
"And how did you start taking care of the monkeys?" I ask.