Spinalonga – The Island

Spinalonga - "The Island"

Few places are imbued with the pervasive sense of pathos as the place known in Greek as the “Island of the Dammed” which I visited a few days ago. Made famous by Victoria Hislop’s book “The Island” Spinalonga was Europe’s last Leper Colony in the days when the disease was incurable, operating from 1903 until its closure in 1957.

Spinalonga seen from the village of Plaka on the mainland

The black flags flying from the upper bastion symbolising
Spinalonga's past as a Leper Colony

The entrance tunnel to the Venetian Fortress. It is now mirrored as part
 of a series of artworks  to symbolise the island's history.
The Lepers never had mirrors.

It was one of a chain of Venetian Fortresses defending Crete from Turkish invasion. The island of Crete, then known as Candia, remained Venetian for almost 400 years before succumbing to the Ottoman Army of Yussuf Pasha in 1669. The Siege of Candia (modern Heraklion, Crete) was a military conflict in which Ottoman forces besieged the Venetian-ruled city and were ultimately victorious. Lasting from 1648 to 1669, it was the longest siege in history. Spinalonga, along with Gramvousa and Souda, remained in Venetian hands even after the rest of Crete fell to the Ottomans in the Cretan War (1645–1669) until 1715, when they fell to the Ottomans during the last Ottoman–Venetian War. These three forts defended Venetian trade routes and were also useful bases in the event of a new Venetian-Turkish war for Crete. Many Christians found refuge in these fortresses to escape persecution from the Ottoman Turks.

"Main Street" - Spinalonga

The island of Spinalonga (Kalidon) has captured the imagination of many over its long history. One of the most visited tourist attraction on Crete, thousands of visitors every year walk along the narrow streets through the village on Spinalonga. The name Spinalonga is Venetian, meaning "Long Thorn." The official name is Kalidon, but so well known as its former name Spinalonga not even the sign posts and the boats that take you to the island will call it anything but by its Venetian name. The Venetians called it Spinalonga after a small island near Venice which is now days been renamed Giudecca. The fortress on the island was built by the Venetians using building materials from an original ancient fortress on the island. It was founded in 1579 by Luca Michiel and the island was used as in defence of Crete usually against the ever expanding Turks and pirates. The Venetians were defeated by the Turks in 1669 however the island stayed in Venetian hands until 1715. Later in history it was inhabited by Ottoman Turks until 1903 and when they left the island became a leper colony by order of the Cretan Government of the time. After Crete was joined in union with Greece on 1 December 1913, lepers from all over Greece were moved to the island which had a population around 400/450.

Map copyright PlanetWare.com

Today, we do not quite understand the stigma of Leprosy which was then incurable and condemned the sufferer to a life apart. At the time sick people with Leprosy were known as the untouchables, because the illness was incurable and wrongly considered contagious, and was also known already from the Old Testament as a punishment from God to incredulous and impure people. Leprosy is caused by a slow-growing bacillus, Mycobacterium leprae. It is transmitted via droplets from the nose and mouth of untreated patients with severe disease, but is not highly infectious; indeed 95% of the population have a natural immunity. If left untreated, the disease can cause nerve damage, leading to muscle weakness and atrophy, and permanent disabilities. Today, Leprosy can be easily treated with a 6–12-month course of multidrug therapy. The treatment is highly effective, and has few side-effects and low relapse rates; there is no known drug resistance. It is also known as Hansen’s disease after the Norwegian physician who first developed a treatment in the 1870’s and identified the main symptoms and the parthenogenesis of the disease. His treatment stopped the disease progressing but it was only in the 1930’s that multidrug therapies were developed which reversed the disease’s progress. The disease originated in India and was brought to the Middle East by the armies of Alexander the Great. The Crusaders are reputed to have brought it to Europe where the superstitious medieval mind needed little persuading that the very visible suffering of those afflicted was a punishment from God and with its grotesque progress those sufferers were dammed on Earth.

Lepers on Spinalonga

Doctor, Priest and Inmates, Spinalonga, 1931

There were two entrances to Spinalonga, one being the lepers' entrance, a tunnel known as "Dante's Gate". This was so named because the patients did not know what was going to happen to them once they arrived. However, once on the island they received food, water, and medical attention and social security payments. Previously, such amenities had been unavailable to Crete's leprosy patients, as they mostly lived in the area's caves, away from civilization. Living conditions were very poor and eventually the lepers formed their own community with its own laws. In the 1930's a generator was installed, and a library, school and churches were built - things began to improve. Plaka began to grow as villagers from the area used it as a base to sail to the island to sell produce to the colony - by now the lepers were given a small pension. Shops began to appear on the island including raki bars and a bakery.  Improvements continued throughout the 1940's and 1950's, but the feeling of isolation remained and the residents of Spinalonga began to lobby the Government to be moved.  In 1957 the last lepers were moved to a colony near Athens, and Spinalonga fell into ruin.

Even today along the “main street” on the island there are Turkish and Venetian areas. In the 1930’s conditions improved and lepers on the island were paid a pension which they could use to buy goods and services from the mainland. After WW11 new accommodation blocks were built and many of the families moved out of the houses into these. This ironically meant that they were often better off than the mainlanders in the adjoining villages of Elounda and Plaka who became economically dependent on “The Island.”

"Dante's Gate"

It is this symbiotic relationship between the islanders and the mainland which is explored in Victoria Hislop’s book which is set on Spinalonga and on the village of Plaka which lies within swimming distance across from it. The Island tells the story of Alexis Fielding, a 25 year old on the cusp of a life-changing decision. Alexis knows little or nothing about her family's past and has always resented her mother for refusing to discuss it. She knows only that her mother, Sofia, grew up in Plaka, a small Cretan village, before moving to London. Making her first visit to Crete to see the village where her mother was born, Alexis discovers that the village of Plaka faces the small, now deserted island of Spinalonga, which, she is shocked and surprised to learn was Greece's leper colony for much of the 20th century. It is here that Alexis meets an old friend of her mother's, Fotini, who is prepared to tell her for the first time the whole tragic story of her family. What Fotini tells her is shocking and tragic; it is the story which Sofia has spent her life concealing: the story of Eleni, her grandmother, and of a family torn apart by tragedy, war and passion. She discovers how intimately she is connected with the island and with the horror and pity of the leper colony which was once there, and learns too that the secrets of the past have the power to change the future. “The Island” is a vivid, moving and absorbing tale, with its sensitive, realistic engagement with all the consequences of, and stigma attached to leprosy.

Spinalonga (and Crete’s) darkest moment in modern times came during the German occupation. The Battle of Crete in 1941 was vicious with the German Airborne division sustaining 7,000 casualties with not just the Allies but ordinary Cretans attacking German Paratroopers with anything they could find. The resistance continued throughout the war with the people paying a terrible price with German executions of anybody suspected of resistance becoming commonplace. By 1945 with the help of a small group of Allied commandos and supplies the Cretans had retaken most of the island with the Germans under siege in Chania in the west. They even helped (and paid a high price) to capture the German Commander of Crete in 1944, General Kreipe, and to spirit him off the island to Cairo. The event was later immortalised in the book 'Ill Met By Moonlight' by Billy Moss and the film of the same name. The Germans were forbidden to enter on the island of Spinalonga which became a refuge for those fleeing the occupation. Instead German soldiers would take up position on a concrete domed water tank in Plaka opposite and use people swimming to and fro for target practice. Many died this way trying to escape or going back to the mainland for food.

The effect of Spinalonga on the villages of Plaka and Elounda was strange. Because of the Leper Colony many in these villages had jobs on the island or made money supplying goods or services. On the one hand you had the dread of leprosy and on the other hand you had this symbiotic dependency build up between the people of these economically depressed villages and the leper colony which people could not leave but where they had a steady income and a thriving community. Indeed on the island you had shops and cafes and social events. More than that the people felt protected and there were marriages and children, so you had affected and unaffected people living side by side on the island. At the end many were fearful to leave and feared being shunned back in the “world.”

Church of St Panteleimon on Spinalonga which was used by the Lepers. 
Known in Greek as Παντελεήμων "all-compassionate" 
he is also referred to as Panteleimon the Healer, 

hence the dedication of the church to him on the Leper Colony.

Elounda, where most of the ferry’s leave from for the island, is located in east Crete, north of Agios Nikolaos and south of the seaside resort of Plaka. It was once a picturesque fishing village in the lovely Mirabello Bay, so named by the Venetians for its “lovely view.” The inhabitants lived from farming, fishing, salt extraction from the Venetian saltpans, and emery mining. In the hills around Elounda is found a mineral unique to Greece, “akonopetra” or whetstone, a type of fine emery used to make whetstones and emery paper to hone tools used in many different jobs. The emery of Elounda had long been known in Europe by the name of “Turkey stones” or “Naxos stone”. More recently from the early 1930s to the outbreak of World War 2 Flying Boats of Imperial Airways used the sheltered bay at Elounda, between the town and Spinalonga Island (known then as Mirabella Harbour) to stop on the flight from London to South Africa, the Far East and back.

The former Prime Minister of Greece Andreas Papandreou was particularly fond of Elounda and came here on holiday at least once a year. He introduced it to French President Mitterrand and Libyan leader Gaddafi, while Elounda was also a favourite resort of Kostas Simitis, another more recent Greek Prime Minister. Apart from politicians, Elounda often welcomes Arab princes with their large families, film and music stars, Russian tycoons and other VIPs from all over the world.

After its years of dereliction Spinalonga is coming back to life as a restoration programme continues and there are interesting and often poignant displays of life on the island with many artefacts from the period. There are two churches on the island as well as the hospital and newer buildings. The most poignant place is the graveyard for the lepers never left the island even in death. They were buried in temporary graves and after three years their skeletons were dug up and removed to an ossuary adjoining the graveyard. Earlier visitors speak of human bones being visible. The earlier neglect by the Greek State was redeemed by the colony itself and enlightened administrators who both built a real community on the island and improved the care and medical treatment of the inhabitants. When the colony was closed in 1957 there were only 30 nervous patients left who were transferred to the Hospital of Santa Barbara in Athens.

The other church on the island, Agios Georgiou. St George was
Patron Saint of the Crusades which is somewhat ironic as
the Venetians acquired Spinalonga and indeed all of
Crete as a result of the 4th Crusade which instead of recovering
the Holy Land resulted in the shameful Rape of Constantinople.

http://daithaic.blogspot.co.uk/2008/04/fall-of-byzantium.html

Spinalonga is a natural rock formation which the Venetians probably made into an island by cutting a channel to separate it from the Kolokitha Peninsula.  The original fortifications and dwellings are at the base of the island with two artillery bastions and musket points at the corners. Within these walls are also cisterns which collect rainwater from the rock as there are no groundwater sources on the island. Later, upper fortifications were built on top of the rock to cover the lower fortifications. This had the effect of making the Fortress of Spinalonga impregnable as the lower bastions were covered by artillery fire and the upper guns were out of range of attacking ships.

The Graveyard with the temporary unmarked graves

The ossuary where the bones of the lepers were re-interred
in boxes after three years in the graves

And what of Victoria Hislop and her book “The Island?” Well it would be wrong to say she is admired and respected on the Island of Crete, although undoubtedly she is. Rather she is loved; loved as a Xeno for learning Greek and talking to people on Crete about the reality of Spinalonga, the reality on the island and on the communities of Plaka and Elounda. Loved for telling the human story of the colony for it has allowed the Greeks to talk about something which was dark and hidden. Now the book in Greek and other languages is for sale all over the island and Spinalonga is the most visited tourist attraction on Crete after the Palace of Knossos. Victoria still has a house there but on the far side of Agios Nikolaos from Spinalonga.

The one downside is that the Island is run by the dead bureaucratic hand of The Ministry of Culture which knows as much about running visitor attractions as I do about banana ripening. So with 3,000 daily visitors in season paying 3 Euros a go what toilet or catering facilities are available on the island? The answer my friends are none, zilch, diddly squat or to use the Greek, ZERO. This is doubly strange because a Kafeoin and toilets have been built (no doubt with EU grants) but the lazy bureaucrats in Athens can’t be bothered to open them, no doubt citing budget cutbacks but forgetting their paying guests are entitled to some facilities and dignity. They will never improve because this stultifying Ministry does not speak to tourists but do of course speak to each other about their self-important jobs. Indeed I must not be unfair and I must assume, despite the evidence, that some of them have actually applied for their jobs.

Victoria Hislop and Manoli Foundoulakis, a former leprosy sufferer who lived 

in the hills overlooking Spinalonga, in the village of Ano Elounda. 

He died on 28 May 2010 peacefully at the age of eighty-seven.

With the passage of time the small village and walls of the fortress have begun to crumble, however much work has been done on the island over the last few years to repair its fabric and this continues. But no repairs will ever plaster over the all pervading sense that this island is a special place where every stone speaks to you of the pathos and melancholia of those who came to live and to die without ever leaving the Island of the Dammed.

A sculpture on the upper bastion depicting an inmate about to jump.
 In fact during its 54 years as a Leper Colony there were
no suicides on the island and no visitors caught the disease.

                                                                                                                                                           
For more on the history of Spinalonga and tours of the area see Victor Zorba’s website. He has written a history of the Island and has been running tours for 25 years.

http://www.victorzorbas.com/eng_index.html