Valderejo

Valderejo is a small enclosed valley at the westernmost tip of Álava, on the boundary with Burgos, and at 3,496 hectares it is the smallest of the Alavese natural parks. It was declared in 1992, the first in Álava, and its appeal arises precisely from that condition of a sheltered valley: a flat floor entirely ringed by limestone ranges — Arrayuelas, Vallegrull, Lerón — that cut it off from the outside and give it the air of a world apart.

The most spectacular feature is the defile of the river Purón, which crosses the limestone in a narrow canyon with vertical walls and is the most walked route in the park. Those crags support one of the most important griffon vulture colonies in the Basque Country, along with Egyptian vultures, peregrine falcons, choughs and other cliff-nesting birds, which makes Valderejo a reference place for watching raptors. On the slopes alternate Scots pine woods, beech woods, Portuguese oak stands and Mediterranean scrub, a transitional mosaic between Atlantic and Mediterranean very characteristic of this corner of Álava.

The valley was inhabited until the depopulation of the twentieth century: its four hamlets — Lahoz, Ribera, Villamardones and Lalastra — were left practically empty, and today Lalastra holds the interpretation centre and the park's visitor facilities. The ruins of the houses, the churches and the abandoned cultivation terraces form part of the landscape and explain its recent history as well as the geology explains its relief.