Island of I Arantzatu LUZARRAGA UPM-ETSAM
In this seaside village there is an island called I, which is any island and all of them at once. Only 3 km separate I from the rest of the village, however despite spotting it every day it maintains its distance, has something unattainable and its own idiosyncrasy. I was attacked by Francis Drake in the sixteenth century, because as any island, has been a shelter and stopover for pirates. Franciscans lived in I for centuries, like in any island where distance from crowd is sought. I, like any island, is a desired location but also a destination for undesirables. The convent housed a leper colony, because as any island, was used to send the rejected, like the convicts sent from the late eighteenth century to Australia to ease population pressure in British prisons. The island I was rented during the nineteenth century for sheep to graze on it, as any insular program users, shepherd and flock, sailed mile and a half each day aboard their boat to arrive at I. Nobles and monarchs enjoyed visiting I and offered generous donations to do so; as it is done on the island of Jeju in Korea, where gambling tourism attracts millions of people every year. I was during the Napoleonic Wars a munitions dump and a prisoners’ pontoon, like that other Cuban island in which the U.S. government uses its unique position to create a state of emergency. I helds each year a party to commemorate a legendary race in which one of the nearby villages won the property of the island to its neighbour, ending up with a long time dispute. The winning village throws a tile to the sea as a sign that the leak of that village come to this point; as happened in the Perejil
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