Alboran Island
Alboran Island is a small islet of Spain in the Alboran Sea, part of the western Mediterranean Sea, about north of the Moroccan coast and from the Spanish mainland. The main buildings are an automated lighthouse built in the 19th century, a small cemetery, and a harbour.
Description
The island is a flat platform about above sea level and about in area. off the northeastern end of the island is the small islote de La Nube.Natural history
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 by BirdLife International because it supports a breeding population of Audouin's gulls as well as various species of passerines on migration.
The wall-rocket species Diplotaxis siettiana, known in Spanish as jaramago de Alborán, 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.
History
The island became a power base of Mustafa ben Yusuf al Mahmud ed Din, a Tunisian corsair in the Ottoman sultan's service whose attacks were so ferocious that he became known as Al-Borani, from the Turkish for "thunderstorm". It became a Spanish possession after the Battle of Alboran in 1540.Alborán has been known in error as "Albusama".
The aristocrat Archduke Ludwig Salvator of Austria visited the island and published in 1899 an illustrated book in German about the island.
In 1963, the Spanish army established a permanent detachment of Spanish Navy Marines for the control and protection of the island.