Alboran Island
Template:Short description Template:More citations needed Template:Infobox islands Alboran Island (Template:Langx) is a small islet of Spain (province of Almería) in the Alboran Sea, part of the western Mediterranean Sea, about Template:Convert north of the Moroccan coast and Template:Convert from the Spanish mainland. The main buildings are an automated lighthouse built in the 19th century, a small cemetery, and a harbour.
DescriptionEdit
The island is a flat platform about Template:Convert above sea level and about Template:Cvt in area. Template:Convert off the northeastern end of the island is the small islote de La Nube (literally, islet of the cloud).
Natural historyEdit
Alboran has a volcanic origin, located in an important seismic zone where the African plate collides with the Eurasian plate. In 1899, a new igneous rock was discovered on Alboran, with the name of alboranite, in honor of the island.
The islet has been recognised as an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International because it supports a breeding population of Audouin's gulls as well as various species of passerines on migration.<ref name="bli">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
The wall-rocket species Diplotaxis siettiana, known in Spanish as jaramago de Alborán ("Alborán dandelion"), has its only known wild population on the island. It was declared extinct in the wild in 1974, but was successfully reintroduced from ex-situ conservation stocks in 1999. The plant remains critically endangered, and only grows around the island's helipad.
In 2001, the United Nations declared the island and its seabed a Specially Protected Area of Mediterranean Importance.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
HistoryEdit
The island became a power base of Mustafa ben Yusuf al Mahmud ed Din (Template:Langx), a Tunisian corsair in the Ottoman sultan's service whose attacks were so ferocious that he became known as Al-Borani (hence the island's name), from the Turkish for "thunderstorm". It became a Spanish possession after the Battle of Alboran in 1540.<ref name=r1/>
Alborán has been known in error as "Albusama".<ref>"Algunos cartógrafos de los últimos siglos han dado a Alboran el nombre de Albusama, confundiéndola con el pequeño islote costero cercano a la ciudad llamada tambien por ellos Albusama." (Marie Armand Pascal d'Avezac de Castera-Macaya, 1846. Historia de las islas de África p. 386); "Alhucema (Albusama): Pequeña isla del Mediterráneo, sobre la costa del reyno de Fez, en frente de la de Alhucema." (Antonio Vegas 1806. Diccionário geográfico universal, que comprende la descripción de las quatro partes del mundo, s.v. "Alhucema").</ref>
The aristocrat Archduke Ludwig Salvator of Austria visited the island and published in 1899 an illustrated book in German about the island.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
In 1963, the Spanish army established a permanent detachment of Spanish Navy Marines for the control and protection of the island.<ref name=r1>Template:Cite journal</ref>
AdministrationEdit
The island has belonged to Spain since 1540,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and to the municipality of Almería since the 19th century.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>