Puerto Rico's Spanish Virgins.

• Author: Luxner, Larry
• Position: Islands of Vieques and Culebra - Brief Article

IT DOESN'T TAKE an Einstein to figure out that the U.S. Virgin Islands are owned by the United States, and that the British Virgin Islands are owned by Great Britain. So who, then, do the Spanish Virgins belong to? Certainly not Spain.

The geographical designation--a marketing gimmick that's come into vogue only within the last few years--applies to the two Puerto Rican offshore islands of Vieques and Culebra, and twenty or so smaller, mostly uninhabited dots in the ocean. Once unheard of, the term "Spanish Virgin Islands" is suddenly cropping up everywhere, from the new-edition Lonely Planet guidebook, Puerto Rico and the Spanish Virgins to the Guide to the Spanish Virgin Islands, by Bruce Van Sant.

In fact, the Yahoo search engine brings up 197 references to the "Spanish Virgin Islands." And that's just fine with Daniel W. Shelley, a transplanted New Englander who claims to have coined the term at a 1988 boat show in Miami.

Shelley owns the busy Puerto del Rey marina near Fajardo, on Puerto Rico's eastern tip. Prom the windows of his second-floor office, the hilly peaks of Vieques and Culebra are easily visible on the horizon; on a clear day, you can even see the distant blue haze of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

"These two islands, Vieques and Culebra, were once part, of Spain, but they didn't have a name," says Shelley, an antique map collector who's also part owner of the $118 million Cayo Largo Inter-Continental Beach Resort, now under construction. "So we decided to make it obvious to people, because when you say Vieques or Culebra, nobody knows what that is. But when you say the Spanish Virgin Islands, people know exactly what you mean: warm water, safe boating, white sandy beaches, scuba diving, beautiful reefs, and not much rain. I think it adds flavor."

Don't tell that to Monique Sibilly-Hodge, acting tourism commissioner of the U.S. Virgin Islands.

"The what?!" she blurted when asked about the name. "I'm not sure I like the sound of that."

Neither does Anne Leonard, director of tourism in the nearby British Virgin Islands.

"The BVI is the original and only Virgin Islands," she sniffed in a phone interview from Tortola. "All of our official documents are in the name of the Virgin Islands--they do not differentiate between U.S. or British. It was only in 1917 when the current...