When so much history, biological diversity and natural beauty are concentrated in a small piece of land, we could say that we find something unique and exceptional. This is what happens with the most famous island of the Cartagena coast, Escombreras, an elevation above the sea of no more than four hectares of steep and rocky surface, located at the entrance to the mouth of the port of Cartagena.
Its insularity is an extension of the so-called Sierra de la Fausilla, ending it a little further west of the islet, in the so-called Bajo de Escombreras, whose maximum height is nine meters below sea level; an authentic jewel of diving and with numerous wrecks from different eras.
The island has a length of about 400 meters in an east-west direction and a maximum width of 150. It presents a very rugged relief, with a very steep slope on the south face.
On its surface there are several constructions that have almost always corresponded to Navy facilities. Specifically, some searchlights to monitor access to the port, abandoned in 1984, and an automatic lighthouse at the highest point of the island, at about 60 meters above sea level, which was a complement to the abandoned La Podadera lighthouse before the current events of La Curra and Christmas. It has a small jetty, a beach and some other old construction.
Topographically it is a point indicated by historians of the ancient world given its importance as a point of reference for navigation and the entrance to the bay and port of Cartagena.
According to the Greek geographer and historian Strabo, it had the name of Herakles, but because of its richness in rubble (fish of the scombroid family, such as mackerel and starling) it was known as Skombraria. Finally, this toponym ended up encompassing the bay and the nearby valley as well, and this is how it has survived to this day.
About possible occupations of the island in antiquity and following in the footsteps of Strabo, the dedication of the island to Herakles has been recurrent in historiography. That there was a temple built to the Greek god Hercules to this day there is not the slightest archaeological trace of it.
archaeological paradise
What we do have evidence of is its great commercial activity in its surroundings, with some Phoenician remains, but above all Romans. The oldest ones found correspond to a sunken ship in the place in a date close to the year 150 before Christ. This commercial ship was loaded with wine, ceramics, crockery and kitchen utensils, oil, lanterns and lead ingots from the mines in the region.
It is remarkable – this is another of the arguments that support the importance of this island – that it was one of the first areas where studies were carried out using archaeological methodology in Spanish territory. Already in 1946, the surveys directed by the captain of the ship Juan José Jáuregui with the collaboration of Professor Antonio Beltrán and the support of the classic divers of the Navy and, later, those carried out under the direction of Julio Mas in the 70s with the participation of divers from the Navy Diving Center and the Board of Underwater Archaeological Excavations of Cartagena, tell us about the existence in the area of a significant amount of ceramic material. All this was a propelling element so that today in Cartagena the Arqua (National Museum of Underwater Archeology) and its research center are a world reference in this specialty.
The island, witness to the sinking of the ‘Castillo de Olite’, in 1939.
The island of Escombreras has been declared a Protected Natural Area and in its small territory there is a biological diversity that makes it of vital importance for this environment; the island contains one of only two Iberian populations of the Escombreras chamomile (Anthemis chrysantha), a critically endangered species. The presence of several colonies of seabirds is also confirmed: the yellow-legged gull (Larus michahellis) and the Mediterranean shag (Phalacrocorax aristotelis desmarestii), and it is even home to the only population of island lizards on the entire Cartagena coast. These are ‘Ocellated’ lizards, a species for which there is very little bibliographic documentation and whose conservation status, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), is “almost threatened” at a global level, and may become “threatened” in the next reassessment due to its restricted range.
But unfortunately for the island of Escombreras, the development and expansion of the dock of its name, by the Cartagena Port Authority, has almost condemned it to its disappearance. It was about to lose even its insularity, barely preserved by a small channel a few meters from the cliff of the new port. But there it resists, as a sentinel of our history, treasuring cultural, natural and landscape wealth. Let us never lose sight of her silhouette on the horizon of our sea, since she has been the door, witness and sometimes the protagonist of all those events that have occurred over our immense history.
#island #Escombreras