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The Island Which Changes Country Twice A Year
Every summer and winter for the last 361 years, France and Spain have been passing a small, unpopulated island back and forth between them.
The Bidasoa River flows north from Erratzu, in the Navarran Pyrenees, picking up the snowmelt from the mountains on the way. As it rushes down towards the sea through dark green hills, it becomes the border between France and the Basque Country in Spain. Because both countries are now part of the Schengen Area, many parts of the French-Spanish border are barely noticeable today, marked only occasionally by an obelisk on a hill or a disused and decaying customs post by the side of an old road. But this border was once one of the most heavily defended in Europe.
Within living memory, this border was fortified by the dictator Franco with sentries every hundred metres along the river to stop outsiders getting into Spain, and internal enemies getting out. Separatist terror group ETA used the mountains to hide out, slipping across the border under cover of darkness.
