> This sort of joint sovereignty is called a condominium, and Faisans Island is one of the oldest in existence.<p>I don't think this strictly counts as condominium. In a true condominium, France and Spain would exercise joint sovereignty 100% of the time. But in this case, they never exercise joint sovereignty, it is just they have agreed to transfer the single sovereignty of the territory back and forth on a regular basis.<p>New Hebrides (now known as Vanuatu) was a true condominium in that 100% of the territory was under joint British-French sovereignty 100% of the time (until independence in 1980).
Google Maps currently shows it on the Spanish side of the border for me (despite that fact that it's France's "turn" for a few more days). I suspect this sort of detail isn't worth bothering with, but it is interesting...
This could be one of the "Falsehoods programmers believe about" series. Imagine how this complicates maps, geography data etc. Obviously, unless you ignore the reality.
> For six months of the year, from February 1 to 31 July, it's under Spanish rule - and for the following six months it's French<p>If I'm counting right, France has it 184 days per year (185 in leap years), and Spain has it 181 days.<p>I wonder why they didn't balance that better? April 1 to Sept 30 for France and Aug 1 to March 31 for Spain would have given 183 for France and 182 for Spain (183 in leap years).<p>The same balance would also arise from June 1 to November 30 for France and December 1 to May 31 for Spain.
> Next week, France will hand over 3,000 sq m (3,200 sq ft) of its territory to Spain without a single shot being fired.<p>Those numbers don't add up.<p>> The island is tiny - just over 200m long and 40m wide.<p>Assuming the island is roughly an ellipse, it's area should be ~6,280 m^2 or ~67,400 ft^2. Wikipedia reports the island's area as 0.00682 km^2 (6,820 m^2) and 0.00263 mi^2 (73,300 ft^2) [1].<p>So the reported area is half of the actual area, and the U.S. conversion to feet is off by an order of magnitude. BBC should have someone double check the numbers.<p>[1]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pheasant_Island" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pheasant_Island</a>
Cool and weird! You'd think by now, they would have made some sort of agreement for one country to take it full-time, and the other to pay a modest price or give some other sort of diplomatic consideration. Guess nobody cares enough because it's so small and nobody lives there.