Atlantic Islands of Galicia National Park

Atlantic Islands of Galicia National Park is Spain's only national park in Pontevedra province, Galicia, made up of four archipelagos, the Cies, Ons, Salvora, and Cortegada islands. Declared a national park on June 13, 2002, as Spain's thirteenth, it covers 8,480 hectares, of which about 1,200 are land and 7,200 are sea, on the continental shelf off the Rias Baixas coast. Cortegada Island holds one of the largest bay laurel forests in Europe, and the park hosts the continent's largest colony of European shags; it ranks as the tenth most visited national park in Spain, drawing 472,274 visitors in 2019, and has been a protected Ramsar site since 2021. The 2002 Prestige oil spill badly damaged the park's ecosystem, and its biodiversity has still not fully recovered two decades later.