Several readers pointed out that there are still some Spanish enclaves in Morocco, including two substantial cities, Ceuta and Melilla. I knew that Spain ran the northern chunk of Morocco for a while, but I didn’t know that it still had these enclaves.
I guess that makes even more interesting another trivia question, which is “Which countries are located on more than one continent?” (not counting embassies, military bases, and research outputs). The obvious answers are Russia, Turkey, and Egypt; the nonobvious ones are, it turns out, Spain and possibly France (if you do treat French Guiana as part of France). I couldn’t figure out the official dividing line between South and North America; if it’s the canal, then Panama would be included, but I suspect that it’s the Panama / Colombia border.
Note, though, that this is not a valid answer to my Remnants of Empire puzzle because of rule #3, which excludes territories that are right across the sea from the governing country.
UPDATE: Amanda Butler points out that Kazakhstan might also be both in Europe and Asia, since part of it is apparently west of the Urals.
FURTHER UPDATE: Several people pointed out that French law treats not just Guyana but many other colonies, such as St. Pierre & Miquelon, Mayotte, New Caledonia, and others as parts of France. If you count them, and if you count islands as parts of adjacent continents, then France would also extend into North America, Africa, and conceivably Asia, depending how you count New Caledonia. Likewise, if Greenland is counted as being part of North America, and treated as part of Denmark and not just a colony (I’m not up on Danish law related to this), then Denmark would count as well. But I think the problem is most aesthetically pleasing if we limit continents to just the continental landmass.
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