evidence: At every one of these tiny "plazas de soberanía" or sovereign strongholds held by Spain along the northern coast of Morocco, there were postal employees, border patrolmen, schoolteachers and lighthouse-keepers among a population that was over 400 in Alhucemas and Vélez (including the prisoners). Over at Isabel II, one of the Chafarinas islands - the largest of the minuscule Spanish archipelagos in the area - the population was more than 700 at one point, and there was a casino and a small military hospital on site. [...] In other words, Spanish sovereignty was not explicit anywhere. But everything changed in 2002. The Spanish-Moroccan conflict over the islet of Perejil (known as Leila in Arabic) put an end to the casual relationship. The nurse no longer came down to the village, and the soldiers placed barbed wire fences along the perimeter of Isla de Tierra to prevent holidaymakers from reaching it. Yet Perejil, a craggy protuberance with a surface area of 0.15 square kilometers that Morocco took control of on July 11, 2002, only to be evicted by Spanish forces six days later, is technically not a plaza de soberanía. It is a strange no man's land, according to the agreement reached 10 years ago.