Why do they not teach Spanish in Gib?

In Gibraltar you can walk over to Spain in about ten minutes but it will take you 2 hours and 40 minutes on an over-priced flight to get to the UK. Despite the geographical proximity to Spain Gibraltarians persist to "block" Spanish.

In Gibraltarian schools Spanish lessons starts at the age of 8. There are no Spanish Learning Centres in Gibraltar, and if you Google Spanish Courses Gibraltar, all results will come up with classes on the Costa del Sol.

I find this odd, my personal experience from border cities both on the Finish and Norwegian side of Sweden is that local authorities take proactive steps to ensure the population are proficient in languages on both sides of the border(The Norwegian presence where I used to live was noticeable even though it is 2h from the Norwegian border). They realise the benefits of being able to take part in a wider social scene as well as the economical benefits of a larger market and job opportunities.

The Gibraltarian approach to Spanish (I of course realise it is based on the common notion of the Spanish being smuggling thieving bastards who have ruined their life, however) cause two problems. Firstly the poor butchered version of Spanish kids learn from home in the absence of proper Spanish lessons at school. Not teaching kids proper Spanish in schools from day one of nursery will leave them worse of having to re learn a language later on. Secondly from an economic and social perspective, completely isolating yourself from the surrounding areas by either not knowing the language or using a dialect that is not common (and will put you in a "gibbo" box even on the other side of the border) is just plain dumb.

There is another part of this ignorance of the importance of Spanish and that it the huge business opportunity that is being completely ignored here. A Spanish learning centre should really be mandatory! I cannot think of anyone relocating to this part of the world who wouldn’t at least try to learn the language if lessons were readily available. Stupido.