profile
T
ito Benady has worked steadfastly in researching the early history of Gibral tar. He writes in English and Spanish as he feels it is important to place a Gibraltarian view of our history before a Spanish audience. He is universally regarded as one of Gibraltar’s leading historians and is always happy to suggest avenues of research to those engaged in writing about Gibraltar. He is a bookish man who is never happier than when researching esoteric stories about Gibraltar, he’s also a book publisher and owner of The Gibraltar Bookshop. In 2001 he was awarded the MBE for his work on the history of Gibraltar and his contribution in encouraging interest in Gibraltar’s heritage. Tito was born in 1930 in Gibraltar and his first memories are of living in Governor’s Parade and watching the impressive Sunday parade by the Scottish regiment at St. Andrew’s Church; since then the swirl of the bagpipes evokes these happy memories. At the start of World War II his grandparents took him to Casablanca on the Gibel Desa but had to return on a dirty cargo ship following the expulsion of the Gibraltarian evacuees from French Morocco. During the fortnight at home he remembers the French Vichy air raid which killed a nun. His parents then opted to spend the war in Madeira and they sailed to this beautiful island in the Royal Ulsterman. He has happy memories of Madeira where he attended a school organised by the Gibraltar government where untrained teachers were led by Nigel Powell, a fighter pilot in the First World War — all very makeshift but better than nothing. It could not have been all bad as he passed with credit the Overseas Junior School Certificate and even passed a paper on the Old Testament which he had taught himself as there was no teacher available in this subject. As school finished during the summer at 1.30 the more intellectual pupils such as Isaac Benyunes, Sol Seruya, Arturo Sene and the brothers Payas gathered at the municipal library and read the 1929 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He thinks that over a period of years this work of reference was read from cover to cover and having a naturally retentive brain remembers to this day much of what was hungrily devoured. In Madeira there was never any possibility of the evacuees forgetting their roots; talk of
Tito Benady MBE:
A Passion for our Past Gibraltarian Tito Benady has lived most of his life outside Gibraltar and now lives part of the year in Grendon, UK, spending long periods on the Rock. However, since boyhood he has had a passionate interest in the history of Gibraltar. He is an advocate of dialogue with the Spanish Government as the way to resolve the Gibraltar issue — a view which, at times, made him highly unpopular on the Rock but he never wavered and was happy to place his views before the electorate as a member of the PAG party in the 1980 election. He is also a journalist, author, lecturer and political commentator.
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GIBRALTAR MAGAZINE • AUGUST 2010