Spain's National Parks in Order of Founding, From Picos de Europa in 1918 to Sierra de las Nieves in 2021

Established in 1918 as the first national park in Spain, it began around the Lakes of Covadonga and grew through later expansions to about 671 square kilometers. Its limestone massifs still show glacial erosion, rising to 2,648 meters at Torre de Cerredo.

Declared on January 22, 1954, it surrounds Mount Teide on Tenerife, at 3,718 meters the highest peak in Spain. It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007 and is the most visited national park in Spain, with more than 4.4 million visitors in 2023.

Also designated in 1954, this park on La Palma protects a depression roughly 10 kilometers across, formed by a massive landslide about 525,000 years ago rather than by a crater collapse. Its walls rise as much as 2,000 meters above the valley floor.

Established in 1955 as Spain's fifth national park, it is the only one in Catalonia. Nearly 200 lakes carved by past glaciation sit in the Pyrenees here, below Besiberri Sud at 3,017 meters.

Designated in 1973, it protects the last surviving floodplain wetland in the arid center of the Iberian Peninsula. At about 3,000 hectares it is the smallest of Spain's national parks, and it has faced pressure from agricultural overuse of the surrounding aquifer.

Established in 1974 on Lanzarote, it is the only national park in Spain that is entirely geological in character, shaped mainly by eruptions between 1730 and 1736. Underground temperatures still reach 100 to 600 degrees Celsius at a depth of 13 meters.

Declared a national park in 1981 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986, it covers the center and north of La Gomera. About 40 square kilometers of laurel forest and volcanic rock formations rise to 1,487 meters at the Garajonay summit.

Established on April 29, 1991, it protects the eleven islands of the Cabrera Archipelago in the Balearic Islands. Of its 908 square kilometers, 895 are sea, which makes it the largest national park in Spain by area.

Designated in 1995 in the Montes de Toledo, it covers about 390 square kilometers and protects the best and largest surviving stretch of Iberian Mediterranean forest, with traditional dehesa pastureland between the Estena and Bullaque rivers. Conservation projects are working to reestablish the critically endangered Iberian lynx there.

Designated on January 14, 1999, it covers 85,883 hectares across Granada and Almeria, with more than 20 peaks above 3,000 meters, topped by Mulhacen at 3,479 meters. It protects about 2,100 plant species, more than 60 of them found nowhere else.

Declared on June 13, 2002, as Spain's thirteenth national park, it is made up of the Cies, Ons, Salvora and Cortegada archipelagos off the Rias Baixas coast. The 2002 Prestige oil spill badly damaged its ecosystem, and its biodiversity has still not fully recovered two decades later.

Protected at a lower level since 1979, it became a national park on March 2, 2007. The Tagus River cuts cliffs through it that shelter the world's largest colony of cinereous vultures, more than 300 breeding pairs.

Designated on June 26, 2013, after proposals dating back to the 1920s, it protects about 34,000 hectares of the Guadarrama range across Madrid, Segovia and Avila. Wolves have recently returned to the range after a 70 year absence.

It became a national park on July 1, 2021, when King Felipe VI gave royal assent to the park's act. It holds the world's largest stand of Spanish fir, nearly 2,000 hectares of a tree that survives as a relict of Tertiary-era conifer forests.