Turespaña presents
25 places in Spain almost nobody knows
25 places
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Congost de Mont-rebei, Lleida
Everyone knows the big names. This is not that story. These are twenty-five places most travellers never hear about, and some Spaniards have never seen: a beach in a meadow, a waterfall that runs through a village, a river the colour of rust. The further you scroll, the fewer people have been there.
Keep going.
Mirador de Orellán
The main viewpoint, on the rim of what was once the mine.
What the water left
Roman engineers ran water through tunnels to bring the hillside down and sift it for gold.
Chestnut groves
Woods grew back over the debris; in autumn they turn the red slopes gold.
01 of 25 · León
The Romans took the gold. This is what they left.
Las Médulas
Two thousand years ago Roman engineers cut channels into this mountain and released water to collapse it, sifting the debris for gold. What remains is a landscape of red clay spires under chestnut trees.
A UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997.
02 of 25
A desert next to the greenest hills in Spain.
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Navarra · Navarra
Bardenas Reales
Half an hour from the green valleys of Navarra the land turns to clay, gypsum and sandstone, carved by wind and rain into gullies, plateaus and the lone pinnacle of Castildetierra.
A UNESCO Biosphere Reserve since 2000.
You’ve seen 2 of 25.
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Prize: a 7-night trip for two to Spain: flights, hotels and a rental car, to discover three of the 25 places in this story.
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03 of 25 · Asturias
A beach with no sea in sight.
Playa de Gulpiyuri
A cove of sand and waves in the middle of a meadow. The sea is a hundred metres away, out of sight: it reaches the beach through tunnels in the rock.
Declared a Natural Monument in 2001.
A village that uses a rock as its roof.
04 of 25 · Setenil de las Bodegas · Cádiz
Whole streets of white houses are built into the overhang of a gorge, so the rock is their ceiling and, in summer, their shade.
The walkway
A boardwalk bolted to the rock face, rebuilt and reopened in 2015.
The old path
Below it, the crumbling original built for hydroelectric workers in the early 1900s.
Desfiladero de los Gaitanes
The gorge itself, cut by the Guadalhorce river through the limestone.
05 of 25 · Málaga
A footpath nailed to a cliff, a hundred metres up.
Caminito del Rey
A walkway bolted to the walls of a gorge, built for workers of a hydroelectric plant and reopened to visitors after decades of abandonment.
06 of 25 · Lleida / Huesca
A path carved into the wall of a canyon.
Congost de Mont-rebei
A ledge cut by hand into limestone, with turquoise water far below and no road, no village and no noise.
07 of 25 · Girona
A village built to the very edge of a cliff.
The houses stop where the basalt stops: the whole village sits on a narrow cliff formed by ancient lava flows.
08 of 25
Wine grown on cliffs above a river canyon.
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Lugo / Ourense · Galicia
Ribeira Sacra
Terraced vineyards climb almost vertically from the canyons of the Sil and Miño rivers. The easiest way to see them is from a boat.
A waterfall that runs through a village.
09 of 25 · Orbaneja del Castillo · Burgos
A stream pours out of a cave, tumbles between the houses in a series of pools and falls into the river Ebro below.
10 of 25 · A Coruña
A river that ends as a waterfall into the sea.
Cascada del Ézaro
The river Xallas reaches the Atlantic by dropping straight off a granite mountain onto the shore.
11 of 25 · Gipuzkoa
Millions of years, standing on end.
Flysch de Zumaia
The cliffs are layers of rock tilted upright, each one a page of geological time you can walk along at low tide.
12 of 25 · Burgos / Álava
A waterfall that exists only after it rains.
Salto del Nervión
One of the highest waterfalls in Spain, and most days there is no water at all: it appears after heavy rain or snowmelt and disappears again.
13 of 25 · Cantabria
A lighthouse you reach by climbing down.
Hundreds of steps cut into the cliff lead down to a lighthouse at the foot of Monte Buciero, and then back up.
The meander
The river doubles back on itself between limestone walls.
Griffon vultures
One of the largest colonies in Europe nests on these cliffs. Look up.
The ledge
Rock balconies like this one line the top of the canyon.
14 of 25 · Segovia
A canyon you paddle through, with vultures overhead.
Hoces del Río Duratón
A river bends between limestone walls where griffon vultures nest; a Romanesque hermitage sits on a spur above the water.
A monastery with waterfalls in the garden.
15 of 25 · Monasterio de Piedra · Zaragoza
Behind the walls of a Cistercian monastery, the river Piedra falls through a park of waterfalls, grottoes and lakes.
A pink town hanging over a river.
16 of 25 · Albarracín · Teruel
Houses of reddish plaster lean over narrow streets on a spur above the river Guadalaviar, inside medieval walls.
17 of 25 · Cuenca
A city with no houses, carved by rain.
Limestone shaped over millions of years into mushrooms, ships and faces, along a path through a pine forest.
18 of 25 · Cáceres
Natural pools carved into granite, one after another.
Garganta de los Infiernos
Los Pilones: a staircase of round pools worn into the rock by a mountain stream, in the cherry valley of the Jerte.
A red river where scientists rehearse Mars.
19 of 25 · Río Tinto · Huelva
Iron and copper turn the water the colour of rust; its acidity and microbes have made it a stand-in for Mars in scientific research.
20 of 25
A desert where the westerns were shot.
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Almería · Andalucía
Desierto de Tabernas
A landscape of dry gullies and badlands where film sets from the 1960s still stand, saloons included.
21 of 25 · Alicante
A lake that turns pink.
A salt lagoon whose water turns pink in the warm months, next to one of the largest salt works in Europe.
22 of 25 · Mallorca
A canyon that ends in a cove.
Torrent de Pareis
A gorge between limestone walls opens onto a pebble beach hemmed in by cliffs, reached by a road of hairpin bends or by boat.
23 of 25 · Tenerife
A rainforest of mist on a volcanic island.
Anaga
Ancient laurel forest, wrapped in cloud most of the year, on a ridge of volcanic peaks half an hour from the island capital.
24 of 25 · Lanzarote
Vines that grow in holes dug into volcanic ash.
La Geria
Each vine sits in its own hollow in the black ash, sheltered by a low stone wall from the wind: thousands of crescents across the slopes.
Praia de Rodas
White sand and clear water, inside the Illas Atlánticas National Park.
Pines to the shore
The forest runs right down to the sand.
The permit
Visitor numbers are capped: you need an authorisation before you board the ferry.
25 of 25 · Pontevedra
Islands you can only visit with a permit.
Islas Cíes
White sand, Atlantic water and no cars: three islands at the mouth of a ría, with a daily limit on visitors and boats as the only way in.
The map
Twenty-five places, one country.
From the Atlantic cliffs to the volcanic islands, in no particular order. Keep scrolling: each place lights up its province.
Scroll to light them up ↓
The map could not load on this device. Here are the 25 places, in order.
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The deck
Every place in this story, side by side.
Twenty-five cards. Pull back and the rest of the deck appears.