Territorial claims in Antarctica south of the Straits of Magellan (Terra Australis, and Tierra del Fuego and by extension the entire continent of Antarctica). This grant established, according to Argentina and Chile, that an "animus occupandi" existed on the part of Spain in Antarctica. Spain's sovereignty claim over parts of Antarctica was, according to Chile and Argentina, internationally recognized with the "Inter caetera" bull of 1493 and the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494. Argentina and Chile treat these treaties as legal international treaties mediated by the Catholic Church that was at that time a recognized arbiter in such matters. Each country currently has claim
Antarctica in 2004 at the Russian Bellingshausen Station—is manned year-round by one or two priests, who are similarly rotated every year. The first semi-permanent inhabitants of regions near Antarctica (areas situated south of the Antarctic Convergence) were British and American sealers who used to spend a year or more on South Georgia, from 1786 onward. During the whaling era, which lasted until 1966, the population of that island varied from over 1,000 in the summer (over 2,000 in some years) to some 200 in the winter. Most of the whalers were Norwegian, with an increasing proportion of Britons. The settlements included