The next in the Gibraltar National Museum’s lecture series will take place this Thursday, 13th January, at the John Mackintosh Hall at 7pm.

The speaker, Dr Jennifer Ballantine will give a lecture entitled “The Overlaid Past: The Politics of Space and Memory in Gibraltar’s ‘Doubling’ Street Naming Principle.”

This lecture looks at the way in which traditional street names persisted in Gibraltar even when they posed a threat or resistance to the implementation of official street names. The urban centre of Gibraltar became imaginatively mapped by Gibraltarians though their local knowledge of these streets and through the use of a linguistically and culturally codified naming principle. Services personnel and English settlers found this street name system impenetrable. Having two ways of naming streets generated tensions.

To illustrate these differences, Dr Ballantine shall be drawing upon a number of street name lists produced in different historical eras. A number of these names became necessary as navigational guides to assist non-locals in finding, and therefore accessing, streets in Gibraltar’s city centre. The lists also draw attention to the limitations inherent in a colonial-style mapping when it was overlaid by the mapping held by Gibraltarians. The result, not only led to a doubling of names but also to the presence of “two Gibraltars”.

Entry is free.