Picos de Europa National Park: landscape and origins
Picos de Europa protects the highest limestone mountains of the Cantabrian range – and with them pastures, villages and paths that are older than the park.
On 22 July 1918, the 1,200th anniversary of the Battle of Covadonga, the Peña Santa massif became the Montaña de Covadonga National Park, the first in Spain. On 30 May 1995 parliament created today's Picos de Europa National Park; in 2015 land in Peñamellera was added.
The three massifs are mostly limestone, deposited up to 1,000 m (3,281 ft) thick on a marine platform in the Carboniferous. Water dissolves it: the park authority counts the karst features of the Picos among the largest on Earth, and the high plateaus are often extremely dry.
People in Cabrales call it Picu Urriellu, everyone else Naranjo de Bulnes; according to Turismo Asturias it is 2,519 m (8,264 ft) high. Its west face is one of the best-known climbing walls in Spain.
The park in numbers
- Area
- 66,030 ha
- Founded
- 1918
- Present park
- 1995
- Biosphere reserve
- 2003
- Torre Cerredo
- 2,648 m
- Picu Urriellu
- 2,519 m
- Lowest point
- 75 m
- Regions
- 3
