The Medes Islands

Coordinates: 42.0479350000, 3.2216030000 (map)

The Medes Islands (Illes Medes) is an archipelago of seven islands with the total area of 21.5 hectares. It is the main attraction of the L'Estartit resort towering over the sea a kilometre away from the beach. Not all islands of the archipelago are "real" islands — five out of seven are rocks sticking out of the water with no flat surfaces to step on or any plants to grow, but they still have names: Carall Bernat, Tascons Grossos, Tascons Petits, Medellot, Ferranelles. The other two are called Meda Gran and Meda Xica.

Since time immemorial the Medes islands have been a headache for the local villages. Since the archipelago is located so close to the shore, it provided easy cover for pirates and facilitated lightning-bolt attacks, all the while preventing the effective building of defensive structures. Martin the Humane founded a monastery on the islands in the 14th century, opining that the monks would defend it better, but there was no money to build a complete fortress. So in 1442, when the Genoese attacked the islands, all the meager fortifications that had been already erected were burned to the ground, along with the church. An unhurried restoration followed, interrupted in 1522 by a partial flooding of the western side of the island where all the fortifications stood.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Medes Islands played a role in armed conflicts between Spain and France. After the Napoleonic wars, a garrison had been stationed there, whose numbers had stably decreased over time until 1890, when the last soldier sailed to mainland leaving behind only a lighthouse keeper. Thanks to the lighthouse, there had been intelligent life on the Medes islands until the 1930s. After the technological advances allowed for the automation of the lighthouse operations, the keeper has gone too.

Biologists rave about the unique conditions for the flora and fauna of the Medes archipelago, mainly talking about the life underwater. A heterogeneous seabed in this marine zone has given rise to endless combinations of life-supporting factors of temperature, depth, light, currents speed, and soil composition. All of these combinations, in turn, created numerous unique biotopes that are home to so many sea creatures. Some examples you may encounter while diving in the Medes Islands: sea bream, sea bass, grouper, tuna, sea sponge colonies, red corals, meadows of Posidonia, mollusks of the noble pen shell and date shell, and so many more.

Since 1983, the government has adopted a whole host of measures and by-laws to protect the Medes archipelago from human influence, turning the islands into a conservation area where the only allowed activity is scuba or free diving. There are additional regulations in place: any diving session requires a license whose quantities are subject to an annual quota — 73000 for diving schools (there are about 20 in the area) and 4000 for independent divers. Up until 2015, the quota was daily and the number of dives hovered above 60000 a year, raising fears about their environmental impact.

These fears are not unfounded. The Medes Islands is one of the top diving spots in the Mediterranean that attracts divers of all levels with its diverse marine life, numerous sea caves and even a 120-metre long sunken ferry! Fishing around the islands has been prohibited since 1983, but fines and arrests are made from time to time regardless. The stats collected by the administration of the natural park of Montgrí (Parc Natural del Montgrí, les illes Medes i el Baix Ter), of which the Medes Islands have been a part of since 2010, tell the story of vanishing species and depleting fish numbers. Illegal fishing may be to blame: in September 2016 divers found an abandoned fishing net that was so long (200 meters!) that it took the firefighters two days to lift it from the sea bottom.