Estado Nueva Esparta, Venezuela — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Estado Nueva Esparta known for?

Margarita Island, Coche and the lightly inhabited Cubagua together form Estado Nueva Esparta, which sits out in the Caribbean Sea a short distance off the coast of Venezuela rather than on the mainland. Free-port status came in 1973. That grant set the islands apart from the mainland states in the way trade is handled there.

Where is Estado Nueva Esparta?

Water surrounds all of it. Estado Nueva Esparta lies in the Caribbean Sea a short distance off the coast of Venezuela, which means the state has open water on every side instead of a land border with its neighbours. Three islands make up the whole.

Margarita Island, Coche and Cubagua are the components, and the state's territory is therefore not continuous ground but a set of separate shores, each reached across water from the others and from the mainland. Island scale keeps every journey short. Nothing within the state stands far from the Caribbean Sea, since what Nueva Esparta holds is island rather than interior, and its whole extent is measured in coast.

Cubagua is lightly inhabited. That leaves the ordinary business of the state gathered on Margarita Island and Coche, while the third island sits offshore with little on it, all of them counted together as one of the 23 states of Venezuela. Free-port status arrived in 1973.

The grant belongs to the islands' geography as much as to their law, since a port set apart from the mainland customs frame changes what crosses the Caribbean Sea to reach it.

What is Estado Nueva Esparta like?

Spanish is spoken across the islands. Estado Nueva Esparta belongs to Venezuela, and the language of the mainland is the language used on Margarita Island, on Coche and on the boats that run between them and the shore. Distance from the mainland shapes the rest.

A state made of three islands in the Caribbean Sea keeps its own rhythm of arrivals and departures, since everything reaching Nueva Esparta has crossed water first and everything leaving it does the same. The free port changed that traffic. Free-port status was granted in 1973, and a trading concession of that kind draws a different pattern of movement towards the islands than a mainland state of Venezuela would ever see.

Nueva Esparta became a state late. Estado Nueva Esparta dates from 1909, and its standing among the 23 states of Venezuela has run without interruption from that year onward. Cubagua carries the least of it.

The lightly inhabited third island is part of the state on paper and part of its outline in fact, though the weight of ordinary life falls on Margarita Island and Coche instead.

What is the history of Estado Nueva Esparta?

The state dates from 1909. Estado Nueva Esparta was constituted in that year, and the three islands it gathers, Margarita Island with Coche and Cubagua, have been counted together ever since. A second date matters as much.

Free-port status was granted to Nueva Esparta in 1973, setting the islands on a different footing from the mainland states of Venezuela in matters of trade.

What is the climate of Estado Nueva Esparta?

The Caribbean Sea is the whole climate here. Estado Nueva Esparta has no interior to speak of, so the water around Margarita Island, Coche and Cubagua reaches every part of the state rather than only its edges. Sea air arrives from every quarter.

An island a short distance off the coast of Venezuela takes its conditions from open water first and from the land mass behind it second.

How do you get to Estado Nueva Esparta?

Every arrival crosses water. Estado Nueva Esparta sits a short distance off the coast of Venezuela, so reaching Margarita Island, Coche or Cubagua means a sea or air crossing rather than a road out of the mainland. The islands connect to one another separately.

Moving between Margarita Island and Coche is its own crossing, and lightly inhabited Cubagua is approached the same way and generally left again the same day.