Columbretes

“Despite the exceptionally fertile land covering the highest parts of the main island, the Columbretes have neither trees nor bushes.

It seems that this was not always the case. As Captain Smith explains, the two main promontories ‘are covered with an exuberance of dwarf olives, geraniums, prickly pears, myrtles and brushwood’.

The prickly pears—which used to be so abundant that, on the hill facing El Mascarat, you had to walk hunched over underneath them—were all destroyed, except for a few located on the high parts of Columbrete Grande and La Foradada.”

Urios, G., Nachtwey, J., Translation, Columbretes, 1895, Castellón City Council, 1990.