Tag Archives: Llivia-bm31-34

How Spain lost territory to France without knowing

The border of the Spanish enclave of Llivia mainly crosses the fields around its pretty town in a pretty straight way and is marked with single bordermarkers. There are however two sets of double bordermarkers:

Bm17-21: with the borderline in the middle of the dirtroad between the double markers.

Bm31-34: with – I thought – the small stream between the double markers as the borderline.

But, I discovered that this is wrong! The borderline is ± 5m to the north of the stream!

After getting a question of the well known border-expert Jan Krogh, I read the treaty (http://www.grpdesbf.nl/esfr-html-bibliography-treaties-llivia.html ) again:

esfr-map-llivia-bm31-34-treaty-text

The text implicates that the double 31-34 markers once included a road north along the stream. The axe of that road was established as the borderline! One bm was placed at the N-side of the road, the other one at the S-side of the stream and the maximum distance between the double markers was said to be 5 meters. The road has disappeared and nowadays the double markers stand at each side of the little stream.

If you watch the French IGN-map, you can see the old positions of the bordermarkers and the original borderline (and the positions of the new ones as established with my gps).

esfr-map-llivia-bm31-34-IGN-map

At some point of time, the dirtroad has disappeared and out of convenience and ignorance- I think – the bordermarkers were placed on either side of the stream. But the borderline is still north of the stream.

esfr-map-llivia-bm31-34-on-GE-with-real-borderline

Finally, on this picture – the borderline shown on Google Earth. If we measure the territory lost to France, it’s a strip of approximately 5x500m.

But you might ask yourself: who cares? Well, I do!