I initially made the geometry using gmsh GUI and added the reverse surface manually to the .geo because I was getting an “assertion error: Area > 0” in freefem.
Even then, if I do remove the reverse surface and make the .msh in 4.7.1, I either get the assertion error (if I export all elements) or keep getting the same wrong geometry from earlier.
I remember trying out a holed square to check out if gmsh was having some problems with the not simply connected surface, but the meshing worked alright. I don’t think I had labels on, however.
I tried it out again just to be sure and, yeah, I get the same problem.
On the bright side, by trying it on a simple square, I noticed that the mesh as read by freefem is different from the one in gmsh even for simply connected surfaces, so it’s most likely a problem with gmshload.