Then there are the other meetings with partners, staff — the firm employs nearly 100 people, including 32 lawyers — court appearances and briefings, and trips abroad. In fact, the high pressure activities of most leading Gibraltar lawyers.

   Yet he still finds time for his three main passions — his religion (which he rediscovered late, after marrying a gentile who converted to Judaism); art, a love of which was instilled by his father; and history, which was encouraged by his grandfather, but probably has as much to do with family pride as with dates and events.

   “As boy I went to school, initially at the French School in Malaga and then at the Boys Comprehensive here in Gib. There were no Jewish schools as such and we tended to grow up with little real concern for our religion… it wasn’t something that we took very seriously,” Marrache explains. “Then I proposed to Anjette, a fellow barrister who worked for me. She converted to Judaism… I became ‘Frumm’ (ultra orthodox)… and now I work for her,” he shakes his head in smiling self-mockery.

   He and Anjette Jones were the first Gibraltar barristers to wed, and though others have since followed a similar course, that he was ‘first’ clearly has significance to Marrache. The firm, established by his brother Isaac in 1984 and which Benjamin joined four years later, was the first Gibraltar lawyers to establish a London office; the first to set up in Spain; the first to employ a registered Spanish abogado and set up its own Spanish department, and last year he and his brother became the first Gibraltar lawyers to be admitted as abogados in Spain; the firm was first legal company to have its own website and is a leader in the field of marketing…

   (The Spanish office was established 20 years ago — long before it was ‘fashionable” to do business in and with Spain; while the London office — now largely run by senior partner Isaac — was set up 15 years ago in Knightsbridge, though it has since moved to the more fashionable Mayfair. Marrache & Co also have branches in Lisbon and Prague.)

   Benjamin Marrache is justifiably proud of the firm’s achievements; but though being ‘first’ is important in a trail-blazing sense, there’s no suggestion of competitive pushiness in the claims; he is too much of a gentleman for that… with social skills and a polish inherited from his father who was a successful property developer and during World War II a diplomat attached to the British Embassy. And his son has the grace to lightly mock the Marrache brother’s role as innovators, dubbing this ‘the pink trousers syndrome’ which he explains: “We have a joke that if my brothers and I started wearing pink trousers, other lawyers would soon be wearing them too.”

   Coming from a background of traders and bankers, the six Marache brothers and their sister are what Benjamin describes as “first generation professionals”. There are three brothers who are lawyers — the oldest of whom, Abraham, retired at 50 as head of the Chemical bank in Spain and now does some consultancy work for the firm. Another is an economist who works with the law firm, a genealogist, a professional interior decorator in Israel who recently opened an art gallery there, and sister Rebecca who runs her own real estate firm.

   “New professionals” to their fingertips. But the family’s roots are not forgotten. On the walls of the staircase leading from the firm’s small ground-floor vestibule to a series of handsome, book-lined offices are the consular shields of Ecuador and Venezuela — two South American countries once represented by Marrache’s father and grandfather as honorary consuls… until Franco closed the border and the two Latin American states withdrew their representation in Gibraltar as a gesture of support for ‘El Caudillo’.

   “Though the firm continues to have links with both countries, we haven’t attempted to revive the official connection… however, we might, one day,” Benjamin says. And I raise a silent but quizzical eyebrow, wondering how he will ever find the time…

   And there are other proud pointers to the past. In the main board room, dominated by a dramatic seascape of the Rock, an array of photographs of Marrache pere with former British Premier Ted Heath and other notables of the era, culminates in a shot of the wealthy property developer with Aristotle Onasis. “Onasis had fallen out with the Grimaldis and my father had persuaded the Greek billionaire shipping magnate to consider shifting his interests from Monte Carlo to the Rock,” Benjamin says.

   In a glass case below the frame-laden shelf a scale model of the old South African railways & Harbours tug the Thomas Stuttaford catches my eye. Built in Britain in 1904, the vessel occasionally served as a supply boat ferrying stores to the lighthouse keeper and maintenance staff on Robben Island — later to become for years the prison home of Nelson Mandela.

    “It was bought at auction in London, because one of the lawyers in our London office had played on her as a boy,” the explanation is offered. It is one of the few memorabilia with no direct connection to Gibraltar and its history.

   The paintings are from the Marraches’ private collection — some 760 oils, watercolours, drawings and etchings many of which are by Gibraltarian artists but also including a Rubens and works by Lautrec and Chagalle — and Benjamin is currently preparing a coffee-table book, tentatively titled Insight into the Marrache Collection which will be presented to clients and which contains works that he admits “are a subjective choice… very much the works that I particularly like or consider particularly significant.” (When, I wonder, does he find the time for all this extracurricular work… and his commitment to the Heritage Trust?)

   “I am putting in the historical material as well as works that have a meaning for me or for Gibraltar, such as a painting of the sinking of HMS Hood, a ship which was close to the hearts of many Gibraltarians.” There will also be etchings from the 1850s “which show how little some parts of Gibraltar have changed; and there will be works, too, by the 19th century Gibraltarian painter Jacob Azagury who was a friend of both Monet and Degas. The Marraches own some 80 per cent of Azagury’s works.

   And he has a private commitment, too, to track down a Velasquez painting which he believes may hang, dust-covered and unrecognized on the wall of some Gibraltar hall or drawing-room.

   “When they we collecting funds to build the Sacred Heart church a century or so ago, someone is supposed to have donated a paining by Velasquez, one of the great Spanish old masters, which was sold to help raise the cash,” he says. “What a wonderful find that would be.”

   Would he have preferred art to law? “Definitely not. My father instilled my love of art — and it’s something I’m trying to teach my children [he has five — four boys and a girl, the oldest of whom can already identify the work of an Impressionist!] — but I haven’t the skills to paint.”

   Back to the more mundane world… and he recalls that on his mother’s side of the family there were bankers to the Duke of Wellington during the Peninsular Wars and that until 1946 the Marrache’s had their own bank registered in Gibraltar. Then there was his father’s relatively short-lived ownership of the newspaper El Campense which he bought in the 1960s but closed in the 1970s, and copies of which — now held by Joshua the genealogist — span more than a century of Gibraltar’s social history.

   There are close Spanish links that stretch back further than the establishment of the firm’s Spanish ofiice, and though Marrache is no “palomo” he welcomes the recent Cordoba agreement and the Rock’s closer links with Spain. Again historical and social sense colours this approach. Spanish aristocrats fleeing from the Civil War established links with the Marrache family in Gibraltar, their sons playing football with members of the family in Line Wall Road — and these ties have endured.

   And his grandfather bought a large tract of land at Los Chapas on the old Malaga road in the 1920s — and area which today comprises the only stretch where old established trees grow.

   “During the Spanish Civil war when trees everywhere were being chopped down by the troops for firewood, my grandfather hung British flags throughout the land he had bought and told any forager that it was British property… That kept the trees safe from their axes,” Benjamin explains with a chuckle.

   It is the sort of anecdote that will be handed down — along with numerous others — to future generations of Marraches. Colouful, individualist and innovative. Part of the history of a family — though perhaps dynasty would be a more suitable term — that is also part of the fabric of Gibraltar.

   For the history of the Marraches is, in microcosm, a history of Gibraltar’s Jewry and the family is among the oldest, if not the oldest, of the Rock’s Sephardic families. Indeed, Joshua — one of Benjamin’s five brothers and a professional genealogist — has found in the old Jewish cemetery at the southern end of the Rock below Mediterranean steps the grave of a Marrache who died in 1750.

   “It is safe to argue that the first Marraches probably came here from Morocco in the early 18th century — returning to the Iberian Peninsula from where they had fled during the Spanish Inquisition.”

   The family were merchants and bankers, and early records show that during the wars with Spain and the Napoleonic wars this family of early entrepreneurs bought captured vessels from the Royal Navy when these were brought into Rosia Bay as prizes then use these privateers to import goods for the garrison.

   They have come a long way since then…