Despite being more related to the fishing port of Santa Pola, both socially and economically, the tiny island of Tabarca is a part of the city ofAlicante. Administratively, it is managed as a rural district of Alicante, jointly with el Palmeral, Aiguamarga and Urbanova. The local census counted 68 inhabitants. The postal code is 03138. The islet is long, with a maximum breadth of and rises to only. Almost next to the main islet lie the islets of la Nau, la Galera and la Cantera. It lies approximately south-southeast from Alicante and east-southeast from Santa Pola. Tourism is the main economical activity, especially during the summer. There are several boats connecting Tabarca with Alicante, Santa Pola and Torrevieja, with higher frequencies during summer time.
History
Before 1700, the island was known as Illa de Sant Pau or Illa Plana. Believed to be the island that St. Paul disembarked on, the island was a refuge for Barbary pirates up to the end of the 18th century. Its Tunisian fellow islet off the town of Tabarka was a part of the Republic of Genoa till 1741 when it was conquered by the Bey of Tunis. In 1760, Charles III of Spain ordered the fortification and repopulation of the Spanish island. A group of Genoese sailors shipwrecked near the coast of Tunisia, mostly coming from the islet off Tunisian Tabarka, were rescued and settled here. The islet was renamed Nova Tabarca. Thus a settlement was created by royal edict on this uninhabited island which the North African corsaries had previously used as a platform for raids on the Levantine coast. On their arrival, the Genoese were first moved to Alicante, where they lived temporarily in the Jesuit School, empty after the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain. Finally, the Genoese were moved to the island together with a Spanish garrison. The military engineer Fernando Méndez Ras planned a fortified town and walls, bulwarks, warehouses and barracks were built. From 1770, the island was known as Nueva Tabarca. Although the Genoese assimilated, abandoning their language in favour first of Valencian and, later on, of Spanish, the Genoese descent of the settlers can still be noticed today in the surnames of Italian origin common on the islet. The island is twinned with Carloforte, in the Sardinian San Pietro Island, which was also populated with Genoese from Tunisian Tabarka. The gateways are still visible and so are the Governor's House and the church of St Peter and St Paul, concluded in 1779. In 1850 the governor and the garrison were removed. At the end of the 19th century, the island had a population of around 1,000 people mainly devoted to fishing. Nowadays, the permanent population is around 50, making Tabarca the smallest permanently inhabited Spanish island, although this number is multiplied by ten during the tourist season in summer. The main activity of the local population is fishing, with the catch brought to Santa Pola's fish market, but tourism becomes the most important resource during summer, specially in July and August.
Ecology
Tabarca is a protected marine reserve called Reserva marina de la Isla de Tabarca, with a variety of marine fauna including sea bass, grouper, conger eel, and gilthead, and was declared a Zone of Special Protection for Birds by the EU. It is surrounded by very clear and unpolluted waters. The island is formed by materials of volcanic origin on top of which limestone and quaternary deposits have settled. Tabarca was the last Spanish Mediterranean location where the critically endangered Mediterranean monk seal successfully bred before it became extinct in this part of its range in the 1960s. This proves the high quality of the waters around the island in terms of marine ecology. Therefore, waters around Tabarca were declared a marine reserve in 1986, the first of its kind in Spain. This status was mainly granted due to its submarine posidonia prairie, which is the largest in the Spanish Mediterranean and has an extraordinary ecological value in terms of marine fauna and flora. In order to both enhance the marine biodiversity and protect it from fishing, an artificial reef was laid near the island by the Marine Reserve authorities.
