British Overseas Territory – Gibraltar.

So here we have the Gibraltarian ECUs, nominal – 2.8. The year of issue of this coin is 1994, mint: British Pobjoy Mint, Tadworth, England.

The Muslim commander Ṭāriq ibn Ziyād captured Gibraltar in 711, and the site was thereafter held as a fortress by all its successive occupiers. The Muslim occupation was permanently ended by the Spanish in 1462, and Isabella I annexed Gibraltar to Spain in 1501. But in 1704, during the War of the Spanish Succession, Sir George Rooke captured Gibraltar for the British, and Spain formally ceded it to Britain under the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.

The Spanish nevertheless made several attempts to retake Gibraltar from Britain, most notably in a protracted but unsuccessful military siege that lasted from 1779 to 1783. In 1830 Gibraltar became a British crown colony. The opening of the Suez Canal, in 1869, heightened British determination to keep possession of Gibraltar, since the Mediterranean was the main route to Britain’s colonies in East Africa and southern Asia.

In the 1960s the Spanish government stepped up its demands for the “decolonization” of Gibraltar. A referendum in Gibraltar in 1967 gave residents a choice of opting either for Spanish sovereignty or for continued close association with Britain; the result was an overwhelmingly pro-British vote.

The new constitution that Britain introduced for Gibraltar in 1969 explicitly reaffirmed Gibraltar’s link with Britain while also granting it full internal self-government. Spain responded by closing its border with Gibraltar, thus depriving the territory of its Spanish trade and a labour force of Spanish commuters. Spain lifted its border blockade in 1985.