The World's Only Country-Swapping Island

it is the 31st of july and this is the river bidasoa which for its final 10 kilometers forms the international border between france and spain but right here that border does something that doesn't happen anywhere else on planet earth i'm currently standing in spain that bank over there is france but we're not here to see that what we're here to see is this island which is currently in spain but in just over four hours time it will change country and move over to france and it does this every six months welcome to pheasant island the world's only flipping border five four three two one i've come to the seaside resort of andei in the basque country right down in the very southwest corner of france the town stands on the opposite side of the bidisoa to the spanish town of irun at the point where the river flows into the atlantic ocean and for 10 kilometers from here upstream and inland the international border between the two countries is set exactly down the middle of the river [Music] except for one spot this is pheasant island it's about 200 meters long and 40 meters wide and no one lives on it not even any pheasants in fact it's kind of a mistranslation anyway while there are many islands that are shared between two countries all of the others are divided by a border this is the only one that's divided by time from february to july it's spanish and from august to january it's french so what ridiculous set of circumstances resulted in an island that flips countries every six months well it all goes back to 1659 france and spain have been fighting each other for 24 years the french have made some minor gains north of the pyrenees and the spanish have reclaimed barcelona but to be honest neither side is really getting anywhere and eventually the two kings louis xiv of france and felipe iv of spain decide that frankly they've lost enough people and money so they arrange a meeting to draw up a peace treaty and end the war and where better to meet than an unnamed and neutral island in the middle of the river a line was drawn down the middle a table was placed directly on it and the negotiations began okay so i think we agree we will have everything on the north side of the pyrenees all these villages here see you can have barcelona see and i will have your daughter see the treaty was agreed and a year later in 1660 the two parties came back to the island firstly to ratify it and secondly so that louis could collect his new wife maria teresa said goodbye to her father and everyone she'd ever known adios amigos crossed over into france and the war was officially over a week later the couple got married in this church just up the road in saint jean de luz and by all accounts the new queen lived fairly miserably ever after now most of the english language articles that i could find will tell you that the treaty established the island's flipping sovereignty it's been flipping ever since and that's the end of the whole flipping story but that isn't quite true in the original text of the treaty in french and spanish the island isn't even mentioned other than just being the location where it was signed so for a long time the border was left undefined you have to wait nearly 200 years for the situation to be clarified by the 1856 treaty of bayonne which says in barely legible writing pheasant island also known as conference island belongs undivided to france and spain so there we go that little piece of legal text finally cleared everything up once and for all and oh no wait it didn't did it with no clear instructions on how exactly the island was supposed to be shared without dividing it in some way at this point the navy stepped in with the flipping solution and since then responsibility has rotated every six months between the spanish naval commander in san sebastian and his french counterpart in bordeaux although in practice they delegate it to the two local mayors in andhei and irun but that leaves a question does anything actually happen on the flipping day itself well although there has sometimes been a ceremony to mark the occasion all that usually happens is that a letter is sent from one naval commander to the other these days apparently it's just an email which feels like kind of a shame if the french and the spanish can't be bothered to celebrate this unique event tonight then you know what i'm gonna do it for them because let's face it if there's one thing we british are really good at it's making a big fuss over flipping borders uh so i'm here to represent france but obviously we need someone to represent spain so i've brought my friend fran who lives in spain hi which bit of spain are you from france manchester united right we've got our french representative we've got our spanish representative all we need to do now is wait until midnight and see if anything happens [Music] it's now about a quarter to midnight and just to explain what's happening here i've come down to the island um to see what happens at midnight as far as i can tell it's absolutely nothing [Music] um so your friend was this worth coming all the way up from andalusia for debatable you wait until midnight it's gonna happen party is going on it's all gonna kick off right this is it five four three two one nothing happened quick there we are [Music] let the celebrations begin if they're not having a party we will exactly yeah where we've got that from well it's uh semi-spanish because it's in spanish it is in spanish yeah yeah yeah cheers cheers with my son pellegrini [Music] if you'd like to visit pheasant island and see the world's only flipping border it's a short bus ride or roughly a half hour walk from either ondai station in france or irun in spain and there are flat wide paths on either side of the river suitable for bicycles and wheelchairs unfortunately apart from on very special occasions access to the island itself is strictly forbidden apparently you can sometimes sneak across from the spanish side at low tide and you could of course bring a boat and try and land on it but bear in mind if you're found on there when you're not supposed to be it's technically a matter for the navy don't say i didn't warn you anyway as always thank you all for watching and i will see you soon but we need someone to represent spain so i've invented i've invented my friend she take that one again

Channel: The Tim Traveller

Views: 287,115

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Id: dGwjtjgiivE

Length: 8min 10sec (490 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 23 2021