Home › Political & Historical › Enclaves, Exclaves & Border Oddities
Pheasant Island
A tiny river island ruled by France and Spain in turn, changing hands every six months
Pheasant Island is a wooded scrap of land in the Bidasoa River, smaller than a football stadium, and it changes countries twice a year. Since the 19th century it has been a condominium shared by France and Spain, and administration alternates on a fixed calendar: Spain from 1 February to 31 July, France from 1 August to 31 January. No one lives there, the public is rarely allowed ashore, and nothing on it is more prominent than a stone monument. Yet in 1659 this island hosted the negotiations that ended a quarter century of war between the two kingdoms, and a year later it staged a royal meeting that sealed the peace with a marriage. It is often described as the world's smallest condominium.
The island lies in the tidal lower course of the Bidasoa, the river that marks the border between France and Spain at its Atlantic end, between the French town of Hendaye and the Spanish town of Irun. It is only about 200 meters long and 40 meters wide, roughly 6,800 square meters, low and tree-covered, and it has been shrinking as the current erodes its banks. Its only structure is a monument from 1861 commemorating the Treaty of the Pyrenees. In practice the island is looked after by the two navies, with the naval commanders at Bayonne and San Sebastián serving as its alternating viceroys, while municipal crews from Hendaye and Irun clear vegetation. Visits are generally limited to occasional guided openings, such as European heritage days, and it is usually seen from the riverbanks.
The island was chosen as neutral ground for talks between Cardinal Mazarin of France and Luis de Haro of Spain, who signed the Treaty of the Pyrenees there on 7 November 1659, ending the Franco-Spanish war that began in 1635 and moving the frontier to the Pyrenees. In June 1660 Louis XIV met his bride, the Spanish infanta Maria Theresa, on the island in a pavilion decorated in part by the painter Diego Velázquez. The 1856 Treaty of Bayonne formalized joint sovereignty, and later arrangements between the two navies set the alternating six-month administration. Today the island is a symbol of Franco-Spanish cooperation, and the handovers, sometimes marked with a modest ceremony, are a reminder of how the border between two large European states was settled.