Chafarinas Islands
Spanish archipelago
The Chafarinas Islands, also spelled Zafarin, Djaferin or Zafarani, are a group of three Spanish small islets located in the Alboran Sea off the coast of Africa with an aggregate area of 0.525 square kilometres (0.203 sq mi), 45 km (28.0 mi) to the east of Nador and 3.3 km (2.1 mi) off the Moroccan town of Ras Kebdana. They are uninhabited except for a garrison of the Spanish Army, though there was also a civilian population roughly between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries.
The Chafarinas Islands are one of the Spanish territories in North Africa off the Moroccan coast known as plazas de soberanía. The islands are administered by Spain but also claimed by Morocco as part of its territory alongside other Spanish territories in North Africa.
History
These offshore islands were probably the Tres Insulae of the Romans and the Zafrān of the Arabs.
They were uninhabited and unclaimed in 1848, when the French government decided to occupy them, in order to monitor the tribes living in the border area between Morocco and French-ruled Algeria. A small expedition under the command of then Colonel MacMahon left Oran by sea and by land in January 1848 to take possession of the islands. Forewarned by its consul in Oran, Spain, which also coveted the Chafarinas, quickly dispatched a warship to the islands from Málaga. When the French arrived, the Spaniards had already taken possession of the islands in the name of Queen Isabella II.
Geography
The Chafarinas Islands are made up of three islands (from west to east, with areas in hectares):
Isla del Congreso (25.6 ha)
Isla de Isabel II (15.3 ha) (with garrison)
Isla del Rey (11.6 ha).
Under Spanish control since 1847, there is a 30-man military garrison on Isla Isabel II, the only stable population on the small archipelago, down from 426 people in 1900 and 736 people in 1910.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q130574. VIAF identifies the subject as 315167618. The Library of Congress control number is sh2011002522. Authority coordinates are 35.177, -2.430. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1848, 1847, 1900 and 1910.
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This entry incorporates text from “Chafarinas Islands” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.