Menorca changed hands between Britain, France and Spain four times in a century
The smaller of the two big Balearic islands, Menorca simply means lesser island in Latin. Its sheltered harbour at Mahon made it a prize: British, French and Spanish flags swapped over it repeatedly in the 1700s, and later the United States Navy based its Mediterranean headquarters there.
Prehistoric islanders left stone monuments called navetes, taules and talaiots, and some early customs may echo the Minoans of Crete. After the Punic Wars, pirates used Menorca and Mallorca to raid Roman shipping, so Rome invaded, securing both islands by 123 BC. Vandals, Byzantines and then the Caliphate of Cordoba followed, the last from 903. After Christians took Mallorca in 1231, Menorca survived as an independent Islamic state paying tribute to Aragon, until Alfonso III invaded on 17 January 1287; that date is now the island's national day, though most Muslim residents were enslaved and sold.
In the sixteenth century Ottoman and Barbary raiders wrecked both Mahon and the old capital Ciutadella, carrying off as many as 6,000 captives from Mahon. Anglo-Dutch forces seized the island in 1708, and the Treaty of Utrecht handed it to Britain in 1713. The British moved the capital to Mahon and built a Royal Navy base. France captured it in 1756, Britain got it back in 1763, Spain retook it in 1782 and kept it by treaty, Britain grabbed it again in 1798, and the Treaty of Amiens returned it to Spain for good in 1802.
A quarantine station built at the harbour entrance between 1793 and 1807 could hold ship crews for up to 40 days until any infection passed; it is now a national monument open only on guided tours. The American navy's stay from 1815 left an English Cemetery that Spain restored in 2008. In the Spanish Civil War Menorca, unlike the other Balearics, sided with the Republic.
Today about 102,000 people live on the island, whose highest hill, El Toro, reaches 358 metres. UNESCO named it a biosphere reserve in 1993. At the Saint John festival in Ciutadella each June, riders coax black horses to rear up in the streets while daring onlookers dash underneath to touch the animals' chests for luck.
Source: Menorca
