Alboran Island ( es, Isla de Alborán) is a small

islet An islet is a very small, often unnamed island. Most definitions are not precise, but some suggest that an islet has little or no vegetation and cannot support human habitation. It may be made of rock, sand and/or hard coral; may be permanen ...

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = '' Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , ...

(

province of Almería Almería (, also , ) is a province of the autonomous community of Andalusia, Spain. It is bordered by the provinces of Granada, Murcia, and the Mediterranean Sea. Its capital is the homonymous city of Almería. Almería has an area of . With 701, ...

) in the

Alboran Sea The Alboran Sea (from Arabic , ''al-Baḥrān'') is the westernmost portion of the Mediterranean Sea, lying between the Iberian Peninsula and the north of Africa (Spain on the north and Morocco and Algeria on the south). The Strait of Gibraltar, w ...

, part of the western

Mediterranean Sea The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on ...

, 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 harbor.

Description

The island is a flat platform about

above sea level Height above mean sea level is a measure of the vertical distance ( height, elevation or altitude) of a location in reference to a historic mean sea level taken as a vertical datum. In geodesy, it is formalized as '' orthometric heights''. Th ...

and about in area. off the northeastern end of the island is the small ''islote de La Nube'' (literally, islet of the cloud).

Natural history

Alboran has a

volcanic A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plat ...

origin, located in an important

seismic zone In seismology, a seismic zone or seismic belt is an area of seismicity potentially sharing a common cause. It may also be a region on a map for which a common areal rate of seismicity is assumed for the purpose of calculating probabilistic ground ...

where the

African plate The African Plate is a major tectonic plate that includes much of the continent of Africa (except for its easternmost part) and the adjacent oceanic crust to the west and south. It is bounded by the North American Plate and South American Plate ...

collides with the

Eurasian plate The Eurasian Plate is a tectonic plate that includes most of the continent of Eurasia (a landmass consisting of the traditional continents of Europe and Asia), with the notable exceptions of the Indian subcontinent, the Arabian subcontinent an ...

. In 1899 a new

igneous rock Igneous rock (derived from the Latin word ''ignis'' meaning fire), or magmatic rock, is one of the three main rock types, the others being sedimentary and metamorphic. Igneous rock is formed through the cooling and solidification of magma o ...

was discovered on Alboran, with the name of alboranite, in honor of the island. The islet has been recognised as an

Important Bird Area An Important Bird and Biodiversity Area (IBA) is an area identified using an internationally agreed set of criteria as being globally important for the conservation of bird populations. IBA was developed and sites are identified by BirdLife Inte ...

(IBA) by

BirdLife International BirdLife International is a global partnership of non-governmental organizations that strives to conserve birds and their habitats. BirdLife International's priorities include preventing extinction of bird species, identifying and safeguarding ...

because it supports a breeding population of

Audouin's gull Audouin's gull (''Ichthyaetus audouinii'') is a large gull restricted to the Mediterranean and the western coast of Saharan Africa and the Iberian Peninsula. The genus name is from Ancient Greek ''ikhthus'', "fish", and ''aetos'', "eagle", and t ...

s, as well as various species of

passerine A passerine () is any bird of the order Passeriformes (; from Latin 'sparrow' and '-shaped'), which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds, passerines are distinguished from other orders of birds by th ...

s on

migration Migration, migratory, or migrate may refer to: Human migration * Human migration, physical movement by humans from one region to another ** International migration, when peoples cross state boundaries and stay in the host state for some minimum le ...

. The wall-rocket species ''

Diplotaxis siettiana ''Diplotaxis siettiana'', known in Spanish as ', is a species of flowering plant in the family Brassicaceae. It is endemic to Alborán Island in the western Mediterranean Sea, where it grows only around the helipad. The natural population became ...

'', called ''jaramago de Alborán'' in Spanish, has its only known wild population on the island. It was extinct there during much of the late 20th century but successfully reintroduced from

ex-situ conservation Svalbard GLOBAL SEED BANK, an ''ex situ'' conservation. ''Ex situ'' conservation literally means, "off-site conservation". It is the process of protecting an endangered species, variety or breed, of plant or animal outside its natural habitat; ...

stocks in 1999. In 2001, the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoni ...

declared the island and its seabed a Specially Protected Areas 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'' (hence the island's name), 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 Archduke Ludwig Salvator of Austria ( it, Luigi Salvatore Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Battista Dominico Raineri Ferdinando Carlo Zenobio Antonino, german: Ludwig Salvator Maria Joseph Johann Baptist Dominicus Rainerius Ferdinand Carl Zenobius Antonin) ...

visited the island and published in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

an illustrated book in German: Alboran (1898). Early in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, the shape of the flat island with a single building prompted a British bomber crew operating at dusk to bomb the island, mistaking it for a U-boat. In the mid-1960s there were several attempts by Soviet fishing boats to establish a settlement on Alboran, which forced the Spanish army to establish a permanent detachment of

Spanish Navy Marines The Spanish Naval Infantry ( es, Infantería de Marina) is the naval infantry unit of the Spanish Navy () responsible for conducting amphibious warfare by utilizing naval platforms and resources. The Marine Corps is fully integrated into the A ...

for the control and protection of the island. It is now home to a small

Spanish Navy The Spanish Navy or officially, the Armada, is the maritime branch of the Spanish Armed Forces and one of the oldest active naval forces in the world. The Spanish Navy was responsible for a number of major historic achievements in navigation, ...

garrison and an automated lighthouse.

Administration

The island has belonged to the municipality of

Almería Almería (, , ) is a city and municipality of Spain, located in Andalusia. It is the capital of the province of the same name. It lies on southeastern Iberia on the Mediterranean Sea. Caliph Abd al-Rahman III founded the city in 955. The city g ...

since the 19th century.

References

;Citations ;Bibliography * {{DEFAULTSORT:Alboran, Isla de Almería Islands of Africa Islands of Spain Mediterranean islands Volcanoes of Africa Volcanoes of Spain Pre-Holocene volcanoes Landforms of Andalusia Important Bird Areas of Spain Seabird colonies Important Bird Areas of Mediterranean islands