The Balearic Islands (Catalan Illes Balears, Spanish Islas Baleares)
or Balearic Islands are an archipelago in the western Mediterranean
Sea and an autonomous community of Spain.
In addition to the
Gymnesian islands of Mallorca, Menorca and Cabrera, the autonomous
community also includes the Pityuses with Ibiza and Formentera.
In addition to these five inhabited islands, the autonomous
community of the Balearic Islands also includes 146 uninhabited
islands. These include the protected rocky islands of Dragonera and
Pantaleu. The largest island is Mallorca with 3,603.716 square
kilometers.
The name of the archipelago derives from the
ancient Greek βάλλειν bállein "to throw", which meant the slingers
Els Foners Balears, Greek Baliarides, who were feared in antiquity
and who hired themselves out as mercenaries in the theaters of war
in antiquity.
From a geological point of view, the Balearic Islands are the eastern extension of the Betic Cordillera. They are thus assigned to the Iberian small plate. The local geology of the Balearic Islands is strongly influenced by the Alpine orogeny. In the Oligocene - about 30 million years ago - the Betic Orogen experienced its main uplift phase. Subsequently, from the Oligocene-Miocene turn, the Balearic Islands were torn away from the Iberian Plate by stretching tectonics, and the current geographical situation was formed. The rift valley between the northwestern edge of the island chain and the Spanish mainland is known as the Valencia Trough (Spanish: Surco de Valencia). It is the geological equivalent of the Balearic Sea. The oldest rocks in the Balearic Islands, which were folded during the Variscan orogeny, can be found on Menorca with Devonian and Carboniferous rocks.
Prehistory
The original population of the Balearic Islands
presumably immigrated from the Iberian Peninsula or today's southern
France or crossed over by ship; first traces of human settlements date
back to the 4th millennium BC. The first human find descends from
Iberian steppe nomads and is dated around 2400 BC. Dated.[5] Individual
cultural phases, including the Talayotic, have now been well researched.
antiquity
In ancient times, the islands were called Balearides or
Gymnesiae, meaning the islands of Mallorca (Balearis major) and Menorca
(Balearis minor). They depended first on the Phoenicians. The
inhabitants (Balearici) distinguished themselves as warriors
particularly through their skill in hurling lead bullets pointed at two
ends and served in large numbers in the Carthaginian and later in the
Roman armies.
The inhabitants aroused the wrath of the Romans
through piratical activities; the consul Quintus Caecilius Metellus,
later "Balearicus", conquered them in 123 BC. and settled there
romanized southern Spaniards, who founded the cities of Palma and
Polentia on Mallorca.
In AD 425 the Vandals under Gunderic took
possession of the islands; after the destruction of the Vandal Empire
they were part of the Byzantine province of Spania.
middle Ages
From the middle of the 8th century, the Frankish Empire exercised a kind
of protective rule over the islands, which had become largely
independent again politically, and at the beginning of the 10th century
they were incorporated into the caliphate of Córdoba.
Mallorca
and Ibiza were conquered in 1229 and 1235 under James I of Aragon
(Catalan Jaume I), Menorca under his descendant Alfonso III. The
Balearic Islands, like Catalonia, now belonged to the Crown of Aragon.
At times, together with parts of Catalonia, they formed an independent
state, the Kingdom of Mallorca, ruled by a branch of the Aragonese royal
family. In 1344, Peter IV of Aragon conquered the Kingdom of Mallorca.
Now the islands were reunited with the ancestral lands of the dynasty.
Eventually, by uniting the crowns of Aragon and Castile, they became
part of the Spanish monarchy.
18th century
In 1708 Maó was
conquered by the British. The Peace of Utrecht (1713), which ended the
War of Spanish Succession, awarded Menorca to the British Empire. In the
Treaty of Versailles (1783), Spain had to return the island to Spain,
but it remained under British occupation until 1802.
19th and
20th centuries
In 1833 the Spanish province of the Balearic Islands
was founded. At the end of the 19th century, there were beginnings of a
regional independence movement, which, however, could not consolidate.
Autonomy status was proposed for the province as early as 1931, but it
was not granted until 1983, after the end of the Franco dictatorship. On
March 1, 1983, the Statute of Autonomy for the Balearic Islands came
into force. To mark this event, March 1st was declared a public holiday
as Dia de les Illes Balears.
21st century
In the wake of the
euro crisis, the autonomous regions of Spain have been the focus of
public attention in Spain and other countries in the euro zone, the EU
and the IMF since around 2011. In 2012, the Catalonia region announced
that it wanted to become more independent from Spain. Like the Balearic
Islands, the Catalonia region is relatively wealthy and yet relatively
heavily indebted. On October 19, 2012, it was announced that the
Balearic Region had applied to the central government in Madrid for an
aid loan from their aid fund (Fondo de Liquidez Autonómica) in the
amount of 355 million euros. Before the Balearic Islands, six of the 17
regions had already asked for help, namely Catalonia, Andalusia,
Valencia, Castile-La Mancha, the Canary Islands and Murcia. Shortly
thereafter, Asturias was the eighth country to do so. The aid fund for
financially weak regions totals 18 billion euros. More than 90 percent
of the funds would be used up with the requests for help that have been
received so far.
The mountainous archipelago of the Balearic Islands (highest mountain: Puig Major, 1445 meters) is about 90 to 200 km east or south-east of the Iberian Peninsula in the western Mediterranean Sea. The three large main islands of Ibiza, Mallorca and Menorca are lined up along a southwest-northeast axis for almost 300 kilometers. The Balearic Sea stretches more than 2000 meters deep between the archipelago and the Catalan mainland, while the strait between Ibiza and the Cabo de la Nao (Valencia) is not much deeper than 1000 meters. The strait between Mallorca and Menorca is called the Menorca Canal.
The population is 1,149,460 people (as of 2019), which corresponds to just over 2.3% of the total Spanish population. Around 79% of this, 869,067 inhabitants, fall on by far the largest island of Mallorca. The Balearic Islands are quite densely populated by Spanish standards. With 230.3 inhabitants per square kilometer, the population density is more than twice as high as the national average (83 inhabitants/km²) and also remarkable in comparison to the European Union (119 inhabitants/km²). In addition, there are around ten million tourists who visit the Balearic Islands every year. The majority of them, around nine million, travel exclusively to the island of Mallorca. 167,751 foreigners are resident in the Balearic Islands, which is 16.8% of the total population.
According to Article 3 of
the Statute of Autonomy, the official languages of the Balearic Islands
are Spanish (castellano) and Catalan (català). At the same time, there
is a ban on discrimination with regard to the use of one of these
languages and a funding requirement to create the prerequisite for
learning and using both languages. In addition, there are
island-specific dialects of Catalan such as Mallorquin, Menorcan and
Ibicencan, which are sometimes grouped under the term Balearic.
The last regional government survey of language use was a 2003 sample
survey aimed at people aged 15 and over. When asked about their mother
tongue, 47.7% answered Spanish, 42.6% Catalan, 1.8% both and 7.9%
neither. Furthermore, 93.1% of those questioned said they could
understand Catalan, 74.6% could speak it, 79.6% could read it and 46.9%
could write it.
The Balearic Islands have 394
schools, 263 of which are public schools. 112 schools are contract
schools and 20 schools are purely private schools. Around 150,000
students were taught in the 2002/03 school year. In addition, there are
17 adult education institutions in the Balearic Islands.
In
addition to the National University for Distance Learning (UNED), the
University of the Balearic Islands (UIB) in particular offers a wide
range of courses in natural sciences and humanities. In the academic
year 2002/2003, 14,323 students were enrolled in 15 different subjects
at the UIB. Since 1995 the Hotel Management School of the Balearic
Islands has also been housed on the UIB premises in Palma.