NATURE IN SPAIN

Spain is a mosaic of landscapes and ecosystems and one of the richest countries in the world in terms of its natural heritage. Our country is blessed with a number of different natural environments: deserts, wetlands, mountains, forests, islands, etc. Likewise there is great variety in our land and water ecosystems and in our plant and animal life.

Within an area of 500.000 km2 we can find from glaciers to deserts, including steppes, marshes and Mediterranean forest; landscapes made of the richest and most diverse flora and fauna of Western Europe:

 bears, wolves, otters, birds of prey and a huge number of animals inhabit areas peopled with beech trees, gall-oaks, cork oaks, oak trees, etc.

The management and conservation of nature in Spain is becoming more and more important. Due to the beauty of their landscape, the fact that their ecosystems are exemplary, the uniqueness of their geomorphological plant and animal life, our national parks and other protected areas along with areas little affected by human exploitation or occupation deserve to be conserved in all their splendor.

The best protected areas in Spain

Spain has a wide selection of national parks with features that range from wetlands to mountains to volcanic formations.

Set in the mountain systems in the north of the peninsula are the following:

Picos de Europa National Park

which, with the second largest surface area of all the parks (over 64,000 hectares distributed among the Autonomous Regions of Asturias, Cantabria and Castle & León) features forests of beech, oak, birch and holly, and the chamois as its most representative animal. Other animals present are the brown bear, the royal eagle and the capercaille, a kind of woodcock.

Ordesa and Monte Perdido National Park

which stretches over 16,000 hectares in the very heart of the Pyrenees in an area belonging to the Aragon Autonomous Region, and includes the Pineta cirque, with its hanging glaciars, and the deep karst gorges of Añisclo and Escuain, plus a wide variety of Pyrenean fauna. Includes fox, chamois, eagles, etc.

Aigües Tortes and Estany Sant Maurici National Park

in the Catalonian Pyrenees, its nigh on 10,000 hectares constituting a magnificent microcosm of the central, essentially continental, Pyrenees, with winding streams and waterways, lakes and fir-trimmed crags.

In La Mancha there is an abundance of endorheic lakes, some more permanent than others, and seasonally waterlogged areas as a result of the complex hydrological mechanism which combines the region's aquifers with its rivers, the Guadiana, Cigüela, Záncara and Riansares.

Tablas de Daimiel National Park

with its 1,928 hectares, is home to a considerable numbers of waterfowl and waders, due to its importance as a haven, nesting site and stopover point on the migratory route.

Cabañeros National Park

also situated in the Castilla-La Mancha Autonomous Region, covers a total of 41,805 hectares and is made up of Palaeozoic hill country alternating with wide plains and areas of dense thicket. Cabañeros is the biggest and best example of Iberian Mediterranean woodland, and is considerate the Spanish "Serengeti".

National parks to discover in the south:

Doñana National Park

declared a UNESCO World Heritage site, is the most outstanding of Spain’s natural spaces and one of the most important in Europe. With its 50,720 hectares and extensive buffer protection zone, it has a complicated seepage system of rivulets, underground streams and marshlands adjoining the banks of the Guadalquivir, together with the river mouth itself and a 30-kilometre coastal strip. Beaches, shifting dunes, undergrowth and hill scrub play host to a multitude of species of waterfowl, waders and birds of prey, as well as being the last refuge of endangered species, such as the lynx, Purple Gallinule, Imperial Eagle and Crested Coot.

Sierra Nevada National Park

Stretching over an area of 86,000 hectares in the provinces of Granada and Almería is the Sierra Nevada National Park, a combination of high mountain and Mediterranean habitats featuring high-altitude desert, sub-alpine steppe, forests of conifer and other types of vegetation.

In the Balearic Isles, the tiny Archipelago of Cabrera is one of the most beautiful and natural island in Mediterranean Sea.

Cabrera Archipelago Sea & Land National Park

an area of 10.021 hectares of Mediterranean limestone with stunted vegetation, which has inestimable ecological value owing to the importance of its birdlife (Shearwaters, Cormorants, gulls, raptors).

As a group, the Canary Islands are the most protected natural area in Spain. They lie in the bio-geographic region known as Macaronesia, a zone of volcanic origin. Towering above Tenerife, the largest and most important island, is the mythical and awesome Mt. Teide, which, at its summit, rises to a height of 3,718 metres (12,195 ft.).

Teide National Park

an area of 13,571 hectares lying at many different altitudes. This variation in altitude makes for a whole range of climatic and vegetation layers or levels, which in turn renders the park a paradise for native flora and fauna, such as the violet, the yellow-blossoming broom-like clumps of hierba pajonera (Descurainia bourgaeana), the kestrel, the shrike, and a local species of lizard, the lagarto tizón (Lacerta galloti).

Caldera de Taburiente National Park

situated on the Island of La Palma. Here, the interior of a crater that is one of the biggest in the world (8 km. across at its widest point and over 1,000 m. deep) reveals the oldest rock in the archipelago (basal complex) and, in the torrents that pour down the sheer rockfaces, the miracle of water. It conserves the best instance of the Canary pine ecosystem, a great quantity of indigenous plant life and a fauna rich in island birds. The park extends over an area of 4,690 hectares.

Timanfaya National Park

This is the genuine mountain of fire which, with its more than three hundred craters formed over the different periods when it was in eruption, is eloquent evidence of the volcanic nature of the Canaries. The park is very popular, thanks to the fascinating play of colour, the ingenious way the islanders grow their crops in shallow pits sheltered by semi-circular dry-stone walls, and certain examples of local fauna, such as the Haría lizard, the Egyptian Vulture and different varieties of Shearwater.

Garajonay National Park

on La Gomera covers 3,984 hectares and is a UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site. It affords an invaluable example of Canary laurel forest, the very formation which millions of years ago constituted the vegetation of the Mediterranean Basin and North Africa, as well as fauna dependent on the forest, such as the indigenous pigeons, the rabiche and the turqué (Columba junoniae), and insect-life.