Alboran Island

Alboran Island (Isla de Alborán) is a small islet of Spain (province of Almería) in the Alboran Sea, part of the western Mediterranean Sea, about 56 km north of the Moroccan coast and 85 km 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 15 m above sea level and about 71200 m² in area. 100 m 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 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.

The wall-rocket species Diplotaxis siettiana, 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 was reintroduced from ex-situ conservation stocks in 1999.

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 (مصطفى بن يوسف المحمود الدين), 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 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.

Administration
The island has belonged to Spain since 1540, and to the municipality of Almería since the 19th century.