Status: Active — post-opening update. The UK–EU treaty covering Gibraltar was signed on 14 July 2026 and began provisional application on 15 July. Routine immigration and customs checks ended at the La Línea–Gibraltar land frontier that morning. This page was originally published before the change; it has now been rewritten around what happened, what the…
Get the documents right and you have done the easy part. The thing that actually stops people settling in La Línea is not the form or the fee — it is getting an appointment to hand them in. The cita previa is the gate every other trámite passes through, and for long stretches that gate…
Before 2021 a Briton moving here did roughly what an EU citizen does — a form, a small fee, a green certificate. That door is shut. Since Brexit you are a third-country national, the same legal category as someone arriving from outside Europe, and your document is the TIE. It is more paperwork, more steps,…
There are two pieces of paper every EU citizen ends up chasing here, and almost everyone confuses them. One is a number. The other is proof that you are allowed to stay. You need both, you get them in different ways, and the system that hands them out runs on the speed of mañana. Here…
Every working morning, thousands of people walk or drive across one of the busiest land borders in Europe, clock in on a two-and-a-half square mile peninsula, and come home at night to a Spanish town that costs half as much to live in. If you work on the Rock, La Línea is the obvious place…