The shortest national border in the world is only 85 meters long

Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera, a small rock in North Africa, conquered by Spain in 1564, holds the record for the smallest national border in the world, measuring only 85 meters long.

Spain has nearly 2,000 kilometers of land borders with Portugal and France, but it also has much smaller borders with countries such as Andorra, the United Kingdom (Gibraltar) and Morocco. With the latter, Spain shares the world’s smallest land border, an 85-meter-long stretch of land that connects a roughly 19,000-square-meter cliff to the Moroccan coast, according to 20minutos.es.

Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera has been Spanish territory since 1564, when it was conquered by Admiral Pedro de Estopiñán, and although Morocco has repeatedly claimed it, Spain has never agreed to return the territory where it has always had troops stationed, for to impose their dominance.

Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera is one of the so-called “places of sovereignty” that Spain has in North Africa, along with Ceuta, Melilla, Peñón de Alhucemas, the Chafarinas Islands and Isla de Perejil. Its legal status is that of non-autonomous territories under Spanish administration.

Interestingly, this barren rock was an island until 1934, when an earthquake created a small isthmus and turned the island into a peninsula. This land border has been officially recognized as the smallest in the world.

Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera is currently inhabited only by the Spanish military tasked with surveillance and defense. The soldiers are replaced every month and live in modest houses without running water or electricity. They are supplied exclusively by the ships of the Spanish navy which bring all the necessities.

Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera is the last Spanish territory to suffer an invasion by the agents of a foreign power. In 2012, a group of seven people belonging to an organization known as the Coordinating Committee for the Liberation of Ceuta and Melilla sneaked onto the rock and replaced the Spanish flag with the Moroccan one. The invasion lasted only a few minutes before Spanish troops took down the foreign flag and arrested the perpetrators. Although the incident is more of a joke, it is technically a genuine invasion.

Publisher: DC

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