Mags GarganAlbert Poggio OBE, the United Kingdom Representative of the Government of Gibraltar, travelled to Kirkinriola parish in Ballymena, Co. Antrim during a civic visit last week to thank the community for hosting evacuees from Gibraltar during World War II.
Mr Poggio was born in the parish in 1945 and he was presented with a copy of his baptismal cert during his visit. He said he could not “overstate how important it is to me personally and how proud I am to come to in Ballymena and be able, during the course of my public duties here, to seize a private moment to meet friends in this Catholic parish. There are many, many Gibraltarians like myself who will never forget the kindness and generosity extended by the people in Ballymena, to Gibraltarians in the dark days of World War II.”
Mr Poggio thanked all the people of the parish, but gave a particular mention to the parish secretary Breda Waterson who researched the history of the connection between Gibraltar and Ballymena and “the camps in which we lived and in which we were born”.
He said he would request that Ballymena be remembered in the bidding prayers in the annual Mass at the shrine of our Lady of Europe on Gibraltar’s National Day and invited the parish priest, Fr Paddy Delargy to a Gibraltar civic Mass in London in October.
About 2,000 Gibraltarians lived in four camps – Dunaird, Drummack, Aughacully and Brekagh Bridge – from 1943 to 1948 and some met and married local people.
In the year 2000 the Bishop of Gibralatar, Dr Charles Caruana (now deceased), who had also spent time in Northern Ireland as an evacuee, presented the parish with a statue of Our Lady of Europe. The town was also twinned with Gibraltar in 2006.