Britain and Argentina still claim the Falklands. But the dispute is no longer simply theirs, and that may be what makes its future so difficult.
The title of this Letter is a pithy comment about the lunacy of people fighting over something useless. The comment has been ascribed to various sources over the centuries. It was made famous in the 1980s when the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges used it to describe the fight between the UK and Argentina over the Falklands/Malvinas Islands. The Islands have, historically at least, been of little intrinsic value to either party, but are a source of much emotional turmoil, especially for Argentina.
Located some 500 km off the southern Argentine coast, the Falklands/Malvinas are a windswept (some might say barren) collection of islands. There are two principal islands and hundreds of smaller ones. They were first “discovered” by European explorers in 1592 (though some research suggests there may have been sightings in around 1518). Ownership changed back and forth several times between France, Spain and Britain, until Britain took them in 1833 and installed a small population which has been there ever since. Spain, however, had never surrendered its claim to the Islands, which claim had been inherited by Argentina when it became an independent country in 1816. That is the basis for the Argentine claim today.
