Sierra Nevada

Like a stone ring embracing the almost perpetual albino snow of its peaks, the Sierra Nevada Nature Park spills out in search of the holes in the plateau and Granada, the "tahas" of Las Alpujarras and the peat bogs of Lecrín, an outburst of water, forests and abrupt formations that are home to the most spectacular life.

While at great heights the formations result in a succession of hills exceeding 3,000 metres above sea level, on lower levels the rock presents steeper forms, with cliffs and crags like the aguja del Trevenque or the ridges of Dornajo, and the spectacular narrow canyons known as the cahorros of Monachil. In the south-eastern part, where rainfall and temporary rivers are born of the storms, the relief features gullies and gorges that give way to arid Tabernas Desert landscapes.

Fauna and flora

The Biosphere Reserve, is home to up to 2,100 plant species, including rarities such as the manzanilla real, Arenaria nevadensis, Laserpitium longiradium or the tejo; and in the middle mountains is where the greatest diversity is located. The old forests of oak, holm oak and gall oaks alternate with masses of resinous and black pine, age-old walnut and chestnut trees, some as spectacular as the Pink Chestnut of Laujar or the chestnut of Huéneja . Here appears a varied undergrowth that exhibits such outstanding species such as rompesayos, an endemic plant in acid soil, or the aceral that thrive in the more humid zones. The abundant rivers and streams welcome riverbank forests, as stunning as the high course of the Andarax River and the spectacular grove of the Alhama River, with presence of willows, poplars, alders, osiers and rushes which shelter golden orioles, blackbirds and viperine snakes, water rats, and, at the heads of the rivers, autochthonous trout. Its enormously diverse fauna is illustrated by the presence of up to 2,000 arthropods, 300 of them exclusive to this massif, like the Chicharra of Sierra Nevada; and the high number of butterflies that are a reference of the extreme environmental quality of this space (apolo nevadensis, el puerto del lobo butterfly, the girl of Sierra Nevada and four eyespots of Sierra Nevada).