Winston Churchill Avenue

Winston Churchill Avenue
Security barrier at the intersection of Gibraltar Airport runway and Winston Churchill Avenue (looking north).
Route information
Maintained by Government of Gibraltar
Length:	1.5 km (0.9 mi)
Highway system
Streets in Gibraltar

Winston Churchill Avenue is an arterial road in the British overseas territory of Gibraltar.

It is the only road in and out of the territory, connecting it with Spain. Once the customs are crossed, the avenue becomes the dual carriageway (Spanish: Autovía) CA-34 (former national road N-351).

Description

The northern end of the road starts at Gibraltar's border with Spain and passes Gibraltar International Airport at Victoria Stadium, which is Gibraltar's major sporting venue. The road intersects the airport's runway at surface level; movable barricades close when aircraft land or take off. In 2009, the Government of Gibraltar announced that a new highway will be built in order to avoid motor vehicles crossing the runway avoiding congestion. The new road, a dual carriageway, will link the customs checkpoint with Devil's Tower Road, crossing the east end of the airport runway underground, through a 350-metre tunnel.^[1]

In 1988, the then-Shell petrol station located on the road was the scene of a British military operation known as Operation Flavius. On the 6 March, a Special Air Service (SAS) group were trying to arrest a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) team made up of Danny McCann, Seán Savage and Mairéad Farrell. These three planned to kill members of a British military band with a car bomb outside the Governor of Gibraltar's official residence, The Convent. The SAS team mistakenly believed that the three were armed and that they were capable of remotely detonating an explosion while they were making their way to Spain on foot and shot them on sight, killing all three. The legality of their deaths was challenged in the European Court of Human Rights (see McCann and Others v. the United Kingdom), but it was eventually ruled that the deaths were legal.^[2]

A time-lapse photomontage showing multiple stages of a Monarch Airlines Airbus A320 aircraft taking off (moving right-to-left) from Gibraltar Airport, located at the northern end of Gibraltar. Also visible in the center is Winston Churchill Avenue, the only street joining Gibraltar to Spain. As can be seen, the road intersects the airport runway, so consequently it has to be closed every time a plane lands or departs.

References