Somiedo

Declared in 1988 and a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve since 2000, Somiedo is one of the best places in Europe to watch the Cantabrian brown bear in the wild, a population genetically cut off from other European bears that came to the brink of extinction in the 1990s with barely a hundred animals left and has since recovered markedly. Its brañas — herding settlements of traditional stone and thatch built for seasonal mountain grazing — are still partly lived in through the summer by herders keeping up practices centuries old.