In the weeks and months after 5 February 1985, business boomed from the new tourist trade to Gibraltar. Within the first week there were 45,000 visitors to the Rock, while during Easter week some 10,000 visitors per day followed the same path. After six months the number reached the one million mark, with 250,000 of them crossing the border in July alone. Vehicles were entering at the rate of 1,000 per day in July, and parking became a nightmare. By the summer, daily flights into Gibraltar from London had doubled, with tour operators offering packages combining the Costa del Sol and the Rock. Retail sales of food and clothing boomed, banks were busy, hotel bookings increased and pubs were overcrowded.

Initially, fears by the GSLP of Gibraltar being inundated by Spanish workers were unfounded. A fortnight after the gates had been opened, no work permits had been issued to Spaniards (even by June the figure was only 84), and newly created jobs had gone to unemployed Moroccans and Gibraltarian or EC nationals.

Traffic between the Rock and Spain was not, of course, all one way and many Gibraltarians crossed into the Campo, either at weekends to shop at the hypermarket Continente, or on Wednesdays for the market in La Línea. One significant Gibraltarian who on 18 April made his first visit to the Campo after a 20-year interval was the Chief Minister, Sir Joshua Hassan. He was returning the official visit of the Chairman of the Councils of the Campo Region, Rafael Palomino, who went to Gibraltar on 22 March.