Sierra Nevada

Declared a national park in 1999, though protected as a nature park since 1989 and a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve since 1986, Sierra Nevada is the highest massif in Mediterranean Europe outside the Caucasus, with Mulhacén (3,479 m) as the roof of the Iberian Peninsula. Its enormous altitudinal range, from subtropical crops at its foot to an Arctic-alpine climate on its summits, has produced an exceptional plant endemism, with more than 80 species that exist nowhere else on the planet.