Cabo de Gata-Níjar Natural Park

Cabo de Gata-Níjar is the wild south-eastern corner of Spain: a coast of dark volcanic headlands, pale coves and desert light that somehow escaped the concrete that lines most of the Mediterranean. It was declared Andalusia's first combined land-and-sea natural park in December 1987, and it remains the largest protected coastal area in the region. The climate is the driest in Europe outside the Canaries, with well under 200 mm of rain a year, and the vegetation shows it: dwarf fan palms, prickly pear, esparto grass and drought-hardened shrubs, some of them found nowhere else. Even the tall agaves that seem so emblematic are relatively recent arrivals, planted in the 1950s for a rope industry that never took off.

The Sierra del Cabo de Gata is volcanic, and the park is essentially an old volcanic field worn down by sea and wind: lava flows, domes and the hollows of calderas, with cliffs up to about 100 metres dropping into the water. That geology earned it a place in UNESCO's Global Geoparks Network in 2006; it has also been a Biosphere Reserve since 1997. Between the village of San Miguel and the cape itself, the salt pans of Las Salinas lie behind a sand bar, a Ramsar wetland, and near the Cabo de Gata lighthouse rise the rocks of the Arrecife de las Sirenas, one of the best-loved images of the province.

Underwater the park is as rich as on land. A marine reserve of around 12,000 hectares runs along the coast, with Posidonia seagrass meadows that begin in the shallows. Among the coves, Mónsul and Los Genoveses are the best known, and whitewashed villages such as San José, Las Negras and Agua Amarga keep a low profile along the shore. Inland, the abandoned mining village around Rodalquilar and the lonely Cortijo del Fraile, whose real-life crime inspired Lorca's Blood Wedding, add a haunted note, and the desert light has drawn film-makers from Sergio Leone to Steven Spielberg.

Getting there

The park stretches along the coast east of Almería city; the town of Níjar, on its northern edge, is about 17 km from its centre. Almería Airport (LEI) is about 31 km away. Villages such as San José, Cabo de Gata, Las Negras and Agua Amarga are the natural bases for walks, coves and diving.