An interesting article about the annual festivities of three villages on either side of Col de Somport. Each year at 17 july they check the bordermarker 305 at Col de Somport (an easy job, I think) as prescribed by the article 9 of the “Traité des limites du 14 avril 1862” and celebrate their crossborder-friendship with gifts and dancing.
I was happy to learn from Charles Darrieu that the famous Bulletin Pyrénées (published by the Musée Pyrénéen in Lourdes) has been digitalized and made available for all of us. There are two links because there are two successive series:
The first one is the “Bulletin Pyrénéen” (1896-1948):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb32732870b/date
The second one is “Pyrénées” (1950-2004):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb32846197s/date.r=bulletin%20pyreneen
Charles is an admirer of the French border-commissioner Jean Sermet (1907-2003) who has written very much about the Pyrenean border and was the ‘leading man’ in many borderrelated issues. He has listed the articles of Sermet in these magazines: 106,104 (1975), 105,106,107,(1976) 109,111,112 (1977), 114,116 (1978), 117,119 (1979), 123 (1980), 130,131,132 (1982), 140 (1984), 183 (1995).
Thanks to information of Serge Poncet I learned that on the mountain-top of Querroig four submarkers of bm597 will be engraved (if the proposal will be approved by the “Commission mixte Franco-Espagnole”). Why? Apparently there were groundworks scheduled around the ruins of the former castle which could change the watershed and therefore the borderline.
In 2014 a team of officials made a reconnaissance of the terrain and marked the four rocks where the bordercrosses could be engraved when the project will be approved. I don’t know when that will be. In their report they list the coordinates which makes locating them on Google Earth easy.
The rocks in question were provisory marked with yellow paint crosses and spots. Like this one (bm597c):
Update 2017 or 2018: according to Serge Poncet, the project has been abandoned due to the estimated high costs.
