Tablas de Daimiel

Declared in 1973, it is one of the last wetlands of La Mancha to survive the agricultural overdrawing of the aquifers that feed it through the closing decades of the 20th century, which has dried it out completely on several recorded occasions — the worst in 2009, when underground peat fires burned in the dry bed of the wetland for weeks. It has been a Ramsar wetland of international importance since 1982, though its ecological future still depends on how the region's agricultural water is managed.