Sal (Portuguese for "salt") is an island in Cape Verde. Sal is a tourist destination with white sand beaches and over 350 days of sunshine a year. It is one of the three sandy eastern islands of the Cape Verde archipelago in the central Atlantic Ocean, off the west coast of Africa. Cabo Verde is known for year-round kiteboarding, for the large reserve of Caretta turtles which hatch from July to September, and the music of Cesaria Evora. Cabo Verde is now the world's largest nesting aggregation for this turtle species, and Sal has the second-largest rookery.
History
The island was discovered on 3 December 1460 and named Chã ("flat"). This name was changed into the current "Sal" when the two large salt ponds (Pedra de Lume and Santa Maria) were discovered. The first three centuries after its discovery, the island was only sparsely inhabited; in 1720 there was a small fishing village near present Palmeira. This changed when the salt industry was developed at the end of the 18th century, starting in Pedra de Lume. Santa Maria was founded in the south of the island in 1830 by Manuel António Martins. Its area is . It is one of the three sandy eastern islands (Sal, Boa Vista and Maio) of the archipelago, with white sandy beaches. The island is fairly flat; its highest point is Monte Grande, at 406 m elevation. Instituto Nacional de Meteorologia e Geofísica (humidity 1981-2010)
|source 2 = Deutscher Wetterdienst (extremes, sun)
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Municipality
Administratively, the island of Sal is covered by one municipality, Concelho do Sal. This municipality consists of one freguesia (civil parish), Nossa Senhora das Dores, which also covers the whole island. The municipality of Sal was created in 1935, when it was separated from the Municipality of Boa Vista. The municipal seat was originally at Santa Maria, but Espargos became the municipal seat in the 1970s.
The freguesia is subdivided into the following settlements:
- Espargos (city)
{| class="wikitable sortable" style=text-align:right
!rowspan=2|Party
!colspan=2|Municipal Council
!colspan=2|Municipal Assembly
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|align=left|MpD||50.88||7||50.18||9
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|align=left|PAICV||43.58||0||41.14||7
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|align=left|UCID||2.82||0||5.83||1
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|align=left|PSD||0.34||0||0.38||0
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Demographics
As of 1832, the population was estimated at 400 people. Until 1960, it was the least populous island of the nine inhabited islands of Cape Verde, with less than 3,000 inhabitants.