This island changes nationalities EVERY six months
Welcome to Feeasant Island. So, good morning from Donastia or San Sebastian, this little resort city overlooking the Bay of Bisque. But we won’t be spending much time here because I’m actually heading about 20 km east to the Franco Spanish border. Now, the mission today is to find a very curious geopolitical anomaly. But we heading to the border because in the middle of the river that separates France from Spain is a place called Pheasant Island. This is one of the world’s rarest ctographical curiosities. Pheasant island is uninhabited. For half of the year it’s French. For the other half of the year it’s Spanish. So join me on my journey to discover the strange history of this nation changing island. So, we’ve just been staying in like the suburbs of Donostia or San Sebastian. And there’s this really futuristic looking metro station which is hopefully going to take us from here from Spain from the Bas country across to France. So, we’ll be heading on the Usco Trans line E2 to a place called Henda. Now, Hendai sits in France. It’s the first town across the border. Um, but really it’s still part of Bas country. It’s one of the Bass provinces. Um, but obviously divided by the by a river and divided by a man-made border. First hitch in the plan. We’re on the wrong side of the station. Then we got to go under and then go around. So you got these traditional bases next to this veoff of a train station. Looks like it’s from Star Wars. Now here we go. Entrada laminos and France. Raminos. So, we got our passports in our pockets, but I don’t think we’re going to need them. Good old Shen. Good old Shenhen. Yeah. There you go. This is Laa, the border town of Arun. We’re just passing through on the way to part. And this train is proper multilingual, which is when you know you’re in a in a border lab. Signs in French, Spanish, Basque, and English. Four languages on one train. Here we go. This is the border between France and Spain. So, we’ll be going from Irun on one side to Hendai on the other. This is France. There we go. We made it to France. No passport checks, nothing. Simple border crossing. Easiest border crossing I’ve ever made. One of the easiest border crossing. [Music] What do you say? Not Veronos, but Alonzi. Alonzi. Let’s uh see what we find on the other side of the border. Bonjour. Welcome to France. We’re at the Gard Hendai, which is the main train station in Hendai on the French side of the border. And from here, you can catch a train to Paris, I think. And but we’re just on the the main boulevard and the boulevard is called Boulevard de General Charles de Gore. So extremely French the town on France. Yeah, I can’t remember. I think it’s Is there a word for city or is it just no say we go? I don’t even know what languages we’re speaking. Well, we’re speaking broken French and Spanish like we would anywhere else in France or Spain. Hey, my Spanish. No, your Spanish is good. Dualingo. Yeah. So, we may have crossed the border into France, but in reality, we haven’t crossed the border of the Bas country because all of these provinces on this side of of the the border of the river Bossa, which we crossed, um are all still historically Basque. And we’re now in one of the pre French Basque provinces. Yeah. Let’s try and uh find the Muse and escape game. Muse. The Muse. That was the most bridge. Let’s find the Muse. We’re going to find the Muse. Muse and the Muse and uh see if they can teach us a little bit about Hendai. All right. So, we found what looks like Santra Deville, the town center. As you can see outside the hotel deville, looks like there is a bus flag. This is Laete de Memoir, the city of memories. And this should be the local museum. So, we’re going to go in and see what we can find out. A nice museum. Oh, this is the back room. We [Music] we Okay. Okay. [Music] [Music] Mathemat. [Music] Okay, Francco [Music] [Music] Okay. Okay. [Music] [Music] Okay. So, frank [Music] um uh Um, [Music] baskaos. Okay. Okay. [Music] Okay. Because there’s the bas on one side and [Music] bask Yeah. Mhm. Okay. Some excellent translation skills from close footsteps there where we’re just in the back room of the museum because they brought us in to get some coffee. But that that was Sylvie. She’s like works for the the local museum and the tourism board. I think she’s from here. Um and she was just explaining how there’s a strong Basque culture over here on the other side of the border. Um just as strong I think she said as as it is over in Spain probably. Um they learned Basque from a very young age. Um she speaks three languages, Basque, Spanish, French, and a little bit of English as well by the sounds of it. So yeah, it’s real frontier kind of feel to this place. That is similar. Um [Music] um okay. Mhm. [Music] [Music] Yeah. Okay. [Music] Okay. Okay. So, it was made after the finish of the wars between French and Spain when they when they sort of officially, you know, became became peace. Um, it was just kind of decided and now it’s just the tradition and every six months is a celebration. Oh, it’s a celebration. Okay. like a fiesta or like a like a fiesta or wait. Okay. Yeah. Okay. [Laughter] Very serious. Yeah. Serious like a like a Yeah, like a formal pand. Yeah. Cool. When is is that in which month? Julio. Okay. July and August. [Music] In Vo. In Vo. In Vienna. an arrow. Oh, okay. Okay. So, because Hendai and I ran right on the the frontier, the fronta has a big history of smuggling. You can see though before the European Union came about, this is what the border would have looked like. You would have had Guardia, civil, French police, customs barriers on the bridges, little customs posts like this. This is a mockup in the museum. Yeah, people would have tried to take stuff across illegally, of course. And here you go. A little quote from Albert Einstein. The frontiers, the borders of the creations, politicians. Okay, so this is what we’re really here for. This is the alle defe island. And this is the nation changing island. We’ll go and find it soon. Um, but you can see every six months they have a handover ceremony on the island itself where it changes nationality from French to Spanish or Spanish to French and they have a rather formal looking ceremony um which officially hands over sovereignty of the island to the other country. Pretty unusual to say the least. You can see some old maps of uh Pleasant Island. here and here. The curious uh situation dates back to about the 17th century, I think. I’ll explain a little bit more when we’re actually [Music] there. Right. So, we got about half hour walk to the island itself. Now, we’ve learned a little bit about the curious history of Feeasant Island. It’s time to take a look at the island itself. Let’s go and find it. New Zealand. Welcome to Feeasant Island. Isle defa. So, this is the curious geopolitical anomaly we came here to the border to see. and it’s just over here, maybe 20 m across the river. So, we got here. It’s right next to a school. We’re on the French side and I saw this little little skate park and I thought this was like a viewing platform for the island itself, which is just just over here. You can just see it on the water there. So, the island’s in the middle. It’s about 200 m long. Um, this side that I’m stood on now is France and on the other side is Spain. And you can see up there, this is kind of the foothills of the Pyrenees. So, let me explain a little bit more about the strange history of Fezan Island and how it came to be. So in 1659, the border between France and Spain, which runs for around 400 miles from the Bayisque from Hendai and Arun all the way across to the Mediterranean to the end of the Pyrenees mountain range, was yet to be fully decided. After the end of seemingly long endless wars between France and Spain, the two kings came together and decided that the Pyrenees and geographical features like the Bisawa River here would form the natural frontier between France and Spain, forgetting about the Basque communities on either side, of course. Now, they decided that they would need a neutral space to sign the Treaty of the Pyrenees. So the kings of Spain and the king of France came to this island here, pheasant island, island of peeasants. Um, and in 1659 they actually signed a peace treaty which not only ended the war but then also defined the border between France and Spain which still exists to this day. Now after the peace treaty was signed, the island became a sort of symbol of neutrality almost a symbol of peace between the two countries. Um although that piece was broken obviously in later wars like the Napoleonic Wars um for the large part the island still sort of symbolizes the peace of the Pyrenees and I’m not sure if you can see but right in the middle of the island is a sort of stone monument and that is a monument to peace in the Pyrenees. Now curiously as part of the peace treaty it was decided that this would not only be neutral territory but that sovereignty would be shared between France and Spain. So, Feeasant Island became one of the world’s rare condominiums. A condominium under international law is effectively a piece of land or in this case an island over which two or more countries share sovereignty. And every 6 months France and Spain change ownership of the island. So, right now we’re here in March and there’s a handover ceremony in February. And in February it changed from being French to being Spanish. So at the moment this is Spanish territory. Now in August there’ll be another handover ceremony and the sovereignty will change again. It will go from being Spanish back to being French. And that process is repeated every 6 months. And they’ve been doing that since 1659. Now I think there used to be a lot more examples of condominiums in the world. For example, Sudan when it was colonized by the British was actually shared as a condominium between Egypt and the UK. But when Sudan gained independence, obviously that condominium status disappeared. But yeah, this is one of the last ones still standing. And yeah, as part of it sort of symbolism as a island of peace, as a neutral territory, a lot of curious things have happened here over the years. And for example, when a Spanish member of the royal family would marry a French member of the royal family, um they would always meet here. Some of the French royalty actually got married on this island and other times they would meet here first before then heading off to be married in either Madrid or in Paris. And so it sort of became a meeting place for for France and Spain really. and really unfortunately, but it’s yeah, it’s not open to the public anymore. Um, it’s about 200 m long and apparently it’s kind of eroding as well, so who knows how long it’s actually going to be here for. Um, but the only time you can actually get on the island is if you’re part of that handover ceremony, um, which obviously we’re not, which happens twice a year. And, um, yeah, I guess they take a little boat out to the uh to the memorial in the middle, hand over the flags. They changed the French flag for the Spanish flag and then row back to dry land. And now every time it changes sovereignty, it changes sort of uh so the the ruler of Feeasant Island changes. Uh so the Spanish admiral of Iran is the leader of Feezan Island. And then when it changes to France, the um I think the the maritime general of the Atlantic Pyrene region or some grand grandiose title takes over sort of governorship or rulership of the island. So it’s really very sort of medieval tradition that’s still still kind of going bizarrely. Um despite all the you know regime changes in Spain and in France, this was part of the regime. A legacy of that really. There’s a real quirky piece of history that’s sat here in the river. There you go. We’re still on the French side and you can get a good view of it from the cycle path alongside. And up there is the the foothills of the Pyrenees where the border continues over the rugged mountains all the way to the Mediterranean. So, there we have it, guys. First mission of the day complete. We found the nation changing island. But now, we’re going to head back into Spain. We’re going to cross the border once more and we’re going to explore the Spanish border town of Arun. All right, let’s go to Spain. Vamos Alispa. All right, we’re just strolling along the French side of the Bisaura River and getting towards sort of the estuary where the river sort empties into the Bay of Bisque. And there’s a lot more islands over here as well. Um, but apparently they’re all Spanish islands for the entirety of the year. These other islands don’t change nationality. They’re not quite as cool as Feeasant Island. Right. The border crossing one of the bridges is just up here. All right. So, this is the main motorway bridge between France and Spain. And then beyond that, you’ve got the main uh train bridge as well, which carries all of the crossber trains and freight etc between France and Spain. And this is pretty much where the Bisawa River kind of seems to end and become the eststerary and then from here it goes out into the Bay of Bisque and then into the Atlantic Ocean. So yeah, you can very much feel why this became the border despite the Basque communities obviously living on either side. Um for France and Spain, the nation states, it was very much a natural frontier. These look like very medieval bridges. All right. So, just on the pedestrian bridge heading over to Spain. So, yeah, this is the border. This little post here is all that marks the entrance into Spain or the entrance into France. That’s all you got. Right now I’ve got one foot in Spain and the other foot in France. Absolutely love places like this. And interestingly in the museum in Hendai I saw a picture of this bridge. This is one of the older bridges between Hendai and Irun. And the picture in the museum showed it full of customs post. There was um barriers at either end. And so Before the European Union, you would obviously have your passport checked. You need your documents. You would need your import taxes paid and or whatever depending what you’re bringing in. And but now you just stroll across. H see. So here we go. Erun laa, the Spanish border town. So the history of really dates back to the Roman era. The Romans came through here and there was some some big mines up in the Pyrenees mountains and this was a sort of safe harbor where they could transport whatever they took out the ground out the mountains um back across the Roman Empire. Explained how this wasn’t really part of Spain for a very long time. It wasn’t until the 13th century that it became part of Castile which then became the modern nation state of Spain when it sort of combined with other provinces and states and kingdoms in Spain. Um but for a long time I said had it very very much had its own identity playing a large part of that is the Basque identity but now I’m just in front of the cathedral which came along a lot later. Um as this was a frontier this was an area of huge conflict so there’s not much left of the old town. Um you can see I’m kind of standing in it but there’s a lot of redevelopment has happened. A lot of the old structures were destroyed during the endless wars of France and wars of England as well I think. Um, so this is very much has a frontier history, a border history. But for a long time, it’s been firmly part of Spain, even if it still has a bass culture and identity that’s there under the surface. So right now, I’m going to head to the iron tam, the town hall. I’ll be meeting another local, local called Pia, who runs a company called Bidder Tours, and she’ll be showing me around the town and maybe another trip to Feeasant Island. for us is like it’s very curious because the the magazine of the of shops h are for for the French people. Oh, so all these shops are for people that come over the border. Ah, I see. Yeah. Yeah. So they go and buy the their ricard Yeah. tobacco, whiskey. Yeah. Because it’s cheaper here for the French. For Yeah. So they come over do a booze run and just liquor liquor. Yes. All liquor shops. Liquor shop. Liquor shop. Licor gasoline. Oh, that’s cheaper as well. Oh, okay. And things that Yes. Yeah. Special. Oh, wow. Yes. These are all the the liquor shops that the French come to to Ton. Do you know what’s Oh, Ton. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We don’t eat only in Christmas, but but the French come over and buy it. Yeah. The tobacos. It’s pretty. Yeah. Yeah. This is the Spanish side now. And there’s just perfume shops, souvenir shops, shoe shops. PAL. That is not Basque. There you go. Pier says paella is not Basque. No. No. is very good but it’s not possible. So this is the international border. Yeah. Lauri is the region of the other side. Ah okay. And that’s the Basque region as well. Lauri. And the the city of the main city of the Lauri is Bayona. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Capital. Yeah. Capital. Yeah. And this is the French police. French police. So they still stop people sometimes. Yeah. We’re in the middle. Yeah. So now we’re in one foot in France and one in Spain. Maybe No, we’re in France. Now we’re in France. In the middle surely middle of the river. Yeah. Now we are in France. So the border comes down the middle of this river here. Until the island. Ah. And there’s Pezant Islands. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. The island now is Spanish. Yes. The island now is Spanish. Yes. Yeah. Until the first August. First of August. Okay. The first August. Yeah. French. Yeah. Muga. Yeah. Muga is border in Basque. Oh, okay. So, Muga means border in Basque. Yeah. This is the border bar. So, the French side is the better viewing spot. Yeah, it’s small. Yeah, in the the other side there’s a lot of car and trucks and Yeah. So, we’re just heading along the French side of the river. Um Pier says it’s a lot more peaceful to see it from this side. So, apparently there’s 12 names for the island um that we call Feezan Island. The French call it alance and there’s different names in Basque and Spanish and French. And Pia here is going to explain espanol and we’ll put up some subtitles exactly what Feeasant Island is about. Could you explain a bit more about the history of it? The history? Yeah. Why why does it uh why is this really strange piece of uh geopolitical history here? So, do you speak Basque? Yeah. Like uh as a first language fluently? It’s my mother language. Yeah. So, you learned it as a as a child or Yes. Yeah. I learned Spanish in the school. Oh, really? So, B you learned Basque first? Yes. And then Spanish? And did lots of people in everyone speak Basque or here? Yeah. Yes. Okay. So, you can have a conversation. You walk into a shop and you could speak Bas. Yes, I speak Basque at home. Yeah. With my parents. Yeah. It’s our first language. Language. Yeah. Oh, amazing. Cool. I’ve learned one word. No, two words. Kaisho. Kaisho. And uh escarasco. It’s okay. It’s fine. It’s a start. That is bye-bye. Auror. Goodbye. Goodbye. So, we’re going to have a little bit of uh Basque language as well. So, Pier here speaks Basque as a first language. And so she’s just going to give you an example of what this uh this little known language is like. I say thank you for coming to my town and to show to the war, my region and that is in Basque is compia island of the the treaty I think the same conferencia conference. Yes. Island of the conferences. Cool. There you go. Earagasco that’s goodbye invas. Strange. This is strange. Yeah, it’s very strange. It’s very strange. Yeah. So P was just saying that the island here, you can’t actually technically access it. Um it’s kind of illegal because it’s owned by the military or it’s looked after by the navy of either Spain or France. Um so you can’t really visit it. But if you’re just in a kayak like this guy here, you could probably just stop and have a look. But did the police, they never check passports or anything like that when you cross over to control the immigration, right? Because you know the now the titus is high and that sink like this. But when it’s low, it seems too easy to cross the Oh, so people try and swim over, do they? Oh, wow. Oh, okay. And illegally come from Spain to France and they drown. Drunk. Yeah. Yeah. Huh? Yeah. People from Morocco or Africa for the south of center of of Africa. So they’ll get to Spain, come across Spain and then come into France. Comes to France and France to Europe or to Europe or to the UK or this is the Oh, I didn’t realize that. Yeah. last 10 years maybe four or more person died in the Oh, really? four or more people have drowned? Yes. I don’t I don’t have the the number. Yeah. But yes. Oh wow. The last 10 maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that’s very sad. Also a little bit sad. She was saying that um cuz this is the border into into France um in the past 10 years quite a few migrants from subsaharan Africa or North Africa have actually drowned attempting to cross the Vizoa where we were just standing. It seemed so um seemed very smooth and and slow. Um, but apparently few people have drowned trying to get into into France illegally despite it being the Shenhen zone and then from here going to places like the UK or other parts of Europe, etc. Um, so it’s still very much a a border and dangerous for some people. All right, so we’ve just crossed the border one more time. This is Peasant Island again from the Spanish side. Now I can see it be a lot busier here, wouldn’t it, with the cars? Thank you very much, Escaragasco. [Music] Goodbye to Pia and check out Be the Tours if you’re ever in a run. Cool. Bye-bye. So, there we go. Local insight into a run. Now, it’s time to head back to San Sebastian for the night. Go find the Usco Tren. So, there we have it. Survived the Franco Spanish border. I’m back in Tonestia San Sebastian where we started the day. What an interesting little trip to the border it was. Luckily we found pheasant island most curious geopolitical entity I’ve seen in France or Spain. So from here it’s goodbye from Bass Country, Escaragasco.
In this video, I travel by train from San Sebastián across the French border to Hendaye, to explore one of Europe’s most unusual cartographical curiosities — Pheasant Island.
Sitting quietly in the middle of the Bidasoa River, this tiny island changes nationalities every six months. For half the year, it’s French. For the other half, it’s Spanish. I set off to find out why.
Known for hosting the signing of the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, which redrew the political map of Western Europe, Pheasant Island continues to serve as a rare example of condominium — a territory jointly administered by two nations.
I delve into its political significance, its role in shaping Basque and broader European history, and the complex questions of sovereignty that it continues to represent today.
Follow Claire’s Footsteps, who joined me on this journey: https://www.youtube.com/@ClairesFootsteps
Check out Bidatour if you fancy visiting this nation-changing island yourself:
https://www.bidatour.com/
About me
Hello there, I’m Richard, the Travel Tramp. Award-winning blogger and professional travel journalist.
I’m on a quest to explore the world through its borders and boundaries.
Follow me as I visit cartographic curiosities and geopolitical oddities
Follow my blog for geopolitical oddities and cartographic curiosities: https://www.travel-tramp.com/
Sign up for my Substack newsletter for weekly updates: https://traveltramp.substack.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/traveltramp_uk/?hl=en
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/traveltramptravel/