peter this news & your reporting are both absolutely fantastic
& your hot pursuit here amply fulfills my fondest wish for our group
which has now truly become thanx in large measure to you a real time
global try pointing search & research tank
indeed it looks to me like we have actually created a perpetual motion
machine for the pursuit of happiness
i should probably wait to see the map
but my reading & rereading of your data so far plus my excitement lead me
to hazard the premature guess that there may actually be 2 distinct points
within the bay where the condo trijoins with both the french & the spanish
territorial waters
an inner one near the river mouth
possibly but not necessarily equidistant from the pierheads
& an outer one where the bay meets the ocean
again possibly at a point of equidistance from the respective coasts
the exact positions of both tripoints being possibly referred to in if not
actually determined by the terms of the 1959 treaty
which incidentally i was unable to access
cant help wondering also if this condo even tho all wet might not be the
first physical manifestation of a sovereign basque homeland
with highest regards
m
was also gratified to see your positive identification of the 1375 st
martin stone as number 262
which reminds me to ask you also
if you will indulge me another question
seeing as this is the oldest working international boundary monument i am
aware of
whether you have learned of any older ones along this line
as i think gideon biger implies it might be exceeded in antiquity by a
century or 2
>
>--- 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>
>http://www.doc.diplomatie.fr/BASIS/pacte/webext/bilat/sf
>
>Peter S.
>
>
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