Old Providence and Santa Catalina, have an exciting and anxious history. He is incredible that these small islands have as much history. The first establishments happened towards 1629 by English puritans but they changed frequently of hands during following the 200 years. Spaniards, English and Dutch disputed their possession. Also they were occupied and besieged by pirates, like Mansvelt, Morgan, Louis Aury, who was the one that was in charge of the dredged one of the channel between the two islands, nowadays united by the floating bridge, the Lovers Bridge.

 
 
 

The buccaneer Henry Morgan made of Santa Catalina his base during his more active years of piracy and some of their treasures, is said, it was buried in their mountains. Some ruins of this anxious period remain in the Warwick Fort, where several tubes can be found, under handle woods and the exuberant vegetation of Santa Catherine. The islands comprise of the Republic of Colombia from 1822.

Until the first decades of century XX the islands remained relatively isolated of continental Colombia, conserving own traditions of the British Caribbean. In 1953 the neighboring island of San Andrés was declared free port and the denominated "colombianización" of the islands began that looked for the integration of these the Colombian State by means of the acculturation of its native population through the massive migration of continental Colombians that brought with himself serious even present consequences in the reality of San Andrés.

Although Providence was not free of these processes, by his moved away location more it could maintain his identity and the autonomy of his native inhabitants on his territory.
 

Nowadays the inhabitants of Providence even practice and depend on traditional activities as the artisan fishing and agriculture, this combined to the state use and the tourism (diving and ecotourism) that has received great force in the last years. It is to stand out that more ago than twenty years; sectors of the providence island society initiated a process by the search of a sustainable development for the islands that the conservation of its natural and cultural patrimony allowed. One of the results of this process was the declaration of the Archipelago of San Andrés, Providence and Santa Catherine like Biosphere Reserve "Seaflower" by UNESCO in the 2001.