--- In BoundaryPoint@y..., michael donner <m@d...> wrote:
> very interesting as usual peter
> & it looks like you may have turned up another condominial tripoint
or 2 here
>
> so i am curious to know
> when you say
> much of the water surface is condo like ile de la conference
> does this mean only the surface & not the underlying column or bed
> or does it mean such maritime territory generally & inclusively at
all levels
>
I'd say the last one. There is no mentioning anywhere of the seabed.
> also
> are this wet one & the ile de la conference dry one the only 2 such
condos
> along the frsp frontier
> or do you know of others
I don't, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were others. This
boundary is _very_ complicated.
>
>
> also
> if you or anyone else can point to or illuminate any other condos
anywhere
> else in the world
> please dont hesitate
> as it would be nice to at least know about them all
>
> m
>
>
> i realize any roundup of them would not just be a cut & dry list
> but would have to be riddled with asterisks & footnotes
> since the terms of each agreement are likely to be not only unique
but
> quite idiosyncratic
> yet all the more reason to think it would make a fascinating
assemblage
>
I made this little compilation after some reading in Jacques
Descheemaeker and in the on-line archive of the French ministry of
foreign affairs:
First, to clarify things: Txingudi and Baie du Figuier are very often
considered to designate the same area of water (as I have done). This
seems to be not entirely correct. On a little hand-drawn map by
Jacques Descheemaeker, the outer part of the estuary (strictly
speaking already a part of the sea) is called Baie du Figuier. The
river proper is called Bidassoa, but on this map there is no boundary
between the two entities to be seen, and this is important, because
the condominium situation only applies to the bay. The condominium
was set up by the Declaration on the Excercition of the Jurisdiction
of the two countries in the Baie du Figuier (March 30, 1879). On the
map by Descheemaeker, some lines and letters can be seen, but they
are not referred to by Descheemaeker in the accompanying article. I
can, however, find a description in the Convention on the Fishing in
the Bidassoa and the Baie du Figuier (July 14, 1959). Some other
letters are used in the description, but the overall picture seems to
be the same. With one exception: the boundary between the Bidassoa
and the Baie du Figuier is defined as a line between the two
downstream extremities of the piers bordering the mouth of the river.
Now this probably can't be found in the 1879 declaration, because at
that date the piers possibly didn't exist yet. They don't show on
Descheemaeker's map, which he no doubt copied from the 1879
declaration.
On a 1:25k topo map, the part of the Bidassoa river in between the
railway bridges between Hendaye and Irun and the two piers marking
the mouth of the river is called Baie de Chingoudy. So this is
without any doubt Txingudi. Descheemaeker sees this as being part of
the Bidassoa river. The piers are located approximately where on
Descheemaeker's map the letter G is written.
Descheemaeker distinguishes:
1. the Ile de la Conférence, which he calls a condominium of
international law,
2. the central part of the Baie du Figuier, which he calls a
condominium of exploitation, and
3. the Bidassoa river between Chapitelaco-arria (boundary marker no.
1, where the boundary becomes a dry one) and the Baie du Figuier
(which is a normal international river in the sense of the Vienna
Congress, with a defined boundary halfway the stream at low tide cq.
at the thalweg, but with special provisions regarding the
exploitation of the river).
The difference between the statuses of 1 and 2 are clearly linked
with the fact that 1 is dry and 2 is wet. The preoccupation with the
exploitation of both bay and river dates from the days that it was
very common for villages at both sides of the boundary to make
treaties on these issues, without any interference of the respective
national governments. These treaties were called faceries, and
according to one theory the name Ile des Faisans has nothing to do
with pheasants but with the fact that the signatories of these
faceries, the façans, came to this spot to sign it. This was usually
done at a boundary marker, and the annual payment of a tribute
according to the facerie between the Bearnese valley of Barétous and
the Navarrese valley of Roncal/Erronkari, at boundary marker no. 262
a.k.a. the Saint Martin stone, is a well-known example.
The treaty of Bayonne of 1856, on an international level, was partly
superimposed on these faceries, but had to take into account the
ancient rights of the local people. Many special provisions were made
since, and if you query for example the database of the archives of
the French foreign ministry on bilateral treaties with Spain, a lot
of them have to do with the intra-Basque boundary. An example is the
regulations concerning the upper part of the Aldude valley, known as
the Kintoa (Pays Quint in French). But this I leave for another time
to discuss.
So the regulations for the Bidassoa and the Baie du Figuier can be
considered as faceries of some sort, not `dry' faceries concerning
the grazing and passage of cattle etc., but `wet' ones, aimed mainly
at regulating fishing and shipping. For the Bidassoa and the Baie du
Figuier, the fishing rights belong exclusively to the inhabitants of
the five municipalities at the Franco-Spanish wet boundary under
consideration: Hondarribia and Irun in Spain, and Hendaia/Hendaye,
Biriatu/Biriatou, and Urruña/Urrugne (the little border post of
Pausu/Béhobie is on its territory) in France. In other words, the
regulation can be considered as a local facerie. The waters are
nothing else than common pastures.
On the Bidassoa, what is common is the use of its waters, while there
is no condominium. But it goes further than that: all vessels on the
river remain under the jurisdiction of their own country. This is
regulated almost pedantically in the Bayonne treaty (art. 19), in
which it says that once a vessel has moored at one of the banks, it
falls under the jurisdiction of the country to which that bank
belongs, but also when a vessel is that close to a bank that it is
possible to enter it directly (I presume `to jump' is meant) from the
river bank!
The central part of the Baie du Figuier is common water regarding the
economical use of it as well, but here it really stays undivided
(wet) territory! I.e., it is a condominium. Two smaller parts, west
and east, are attached to the territorial waters of Spain and France,
respectively. And north of the line AD (Erdico (part of the Cabo
Higuer)-Pointe du Tombeau (part of the Pointe Ste. Anne)), the
territorial waters of the countries start, with a boundary that
starts from the very middle of line AD.
The exact delimitation of the waters following the 1959 convention
can be different from the one from 1879 (with which the Descheemaeker
map goes), and it is certainly different regarding the boundary
between the river and the bay, but I will send you the little hand-
drawn map as soon as I've made a scan of it. It is from Jacques
Descheemaeker, "La Bidassoa et l'Ile de la Conférence", in: Eusko-
Jakintza, 1948, no. 2 (pp. 649-680). The 1959 convention can be found
on-line in the archives of the French foreign ministry, at:
http://www.doc.diplomatie.fr/BASIS/pacte/webext/bilat/sf
Peter S.