We thank the Ocean Drilling Program for providing us with the unique opportunity for spectacularly achieving the tectonic objectives in the Alboran Basin. We are grateful for the help at sea of the ODP technical staff and the entire SEDCO-FOREX crew of Leg 161. We appreciate constructive comments and revisions done by B. Taylor, A. Klaus, and an anonymous reviewer that helped to improve the final version of the paper. We also acknowledge the data, preprints, and encouraging discussions of our shipboard and shorebased colleagues who participated in Leg 161's result papers. Research by M.C. Comas and J.I. Soto was supported by Project AMB95-1557 (CICYT, Spain). Research by J.P. Platt was supported by grant number GR3/10828 from the Natural Environmental Research Council of Great Britain.