We associate the dunes with exotic and native destinations with a turban, but in Galicia and Cantabria, for example, we will also see them.
Here are eight Spanish natural spaces where the dunes are the protagonists.
We must walk through them respecting the marked paths and warnings, because they are very fragile environments and protected species nest in their sands.
When in doubt, we will admire them from a distance, lying on the edge of the sea.
In summer, the dunes burn.
Better to visit them at any other station.
Liencres (Cantabria)
One would expect to find mountains of sobaos and quesadas at the mouth of the Pas estuary, typical pasiegos products, never sand.
The poet Gerardo Diego was made sad and happy by this strange landscape, yellow here and green a little further on.
“The sadness of the dunes, / that the sea and the wind mold (…) / And around the corner is the idyll.
/ The estuary, the forest, the garden ”.
The Liencres dune complex, declared a natural park in 1986, is the largest on the Cantabrian coast, with an area of 194 hectares, which also includes a maritime pine forest.
The Valdearenas beach allows you to walk a kilometer and a half seeing the high dunes on one side and the high waves, perfect for surfing, on the other.
Maspalomas (Gran Canaria)
Another landscape that makes you happy and sad at the same time is that of the dunes of Maspalomas, on the southern tip of the island of Gran Canaria.
Although it is a formidable sea of sand of 403 hectares, with elevations of up to 12 meters high, it is insignificant compared to the ocean of hotels that surrounds it, which is the true desert, for many people who inhabit it.
In fact, the main access, the interpretation center and the best viewpoint of this natural space are in the Riu Palace hotel.
Walking through the dunes along a signposted path, you will reach Maspalomas beach in 20 minutes.
At its western end, next to the first houses, is the Maspalomas Charca, where you can see gray herons, ospreys, Barbary falcons and 21 other species of birds.
enlarge photo Dunes in El Fangar, in the Ebro delta (Tarragona).
DS GARCÍA getty images
Punta del Fangar (Tarragona)
The Ebro delta is the second largest wetland in Spain: 330 square kilometers of rice fields, lagoons where 325 species of birds bustle, and virgin beaches such as La Marquesa, in Deltebre.
Walking for an hour along it, towards the north, you reach the Fangar lighthouse, in the middle of a large peninsula (about six kilometers long and three wide), surrounded by dunes and mirages.
Seeing it, one realizes and distresses how enormous the delta is and the titanic force of the Ebro, which has dragged such a heap of earth here.
The only people who visit this remote point are terns, waders and solitary bathers.
Bolonia Beach (Cádiz)
This beach in the municipality of Tarifa is addicted: 3,800 meters of white sands lapped by a turquoise sea, a majestic dune and, as a backdrop, the ruins of the Roman fishing town of Baelo Claudia.
The dune, which is declared a natural monument, rises to more than 30 meters high and stretches about 200 meters wide and, driven by the east, moves slowly inland, gradually burying the stone pines.
Those who do move fast here with the winds of the Strait are the windsurfers.
enlarge photo View from the dune of Monsul beach, in Cabo de Gata (Almería).
getty images
Arenal de Mónsul (Almería)
The wind that hits the Cabo de Gata Natural Park 250 days a year, in the southeastern corner of the Peninsula, has formed a 50-meter high mobile dune on Mónsul beach, five kilometers from the town of San José.
At the foot of this flying mountain, on the very shore of the sea, La Peineta rises, which is like a wave of petrified lava, a tsunami of ash and basalt.
The waves of the Mediterranean ceaselessly crumble the volcanic rocks of the cliffs that surround this beach of the first day of the world.
The gods Aeolus, Vulcan and Neptune continue to put the finishing touches on their masterpiece here.
Corrubedo (A Coruña)
Between the estuaries of Arousa and that of Muros-Noia, is the Complexo Dunar de Corrubedo and Lagoas de Carregal e Vixán.
The lagoons, one sweet and the other salty, are a magnet for curlews, teals, shovelers, sandpipers, plovers ... But the star of this natural area is the huge mobile dune that rises behind the beach of A Ladeira.
It is one kilometer long, 250 meters wide and 20 meters high.
The catches that are unloaded in the nearby port of Ribeira, the most important inshore fishing in Spain, are not small either.
Some conger eels weigh 30 kilos.
enlarge photo Access walkway to Mazagón beach, in Huelva.
A. Campos
Doñana and Mazagón (Huelva)
There are three indelible images of Doñana: the marsh teeming with birds, the lynxes playing hide-and-seek on the shore and the dunes that advance from an almost infinite beach, cornering the stone pines.
To see this latter environment, there is a 1.5 kilometer long dune path on wooden walkways that begins and ends at the eastern end of Matalascañas.
At the other extreme, what awaits is a dune park where you can ride a dromedary with Aires Africanos (airesafricanos.com).
And further afield, between Matalascañas and Mazagón, await 25 kilometers of beaches lined with yellow cliffs (old solidified dunes) and unique trees, such as the monstrous stone pine of the Parador.
Corralejo (Fuerteventura)
In the northeast of Fuerteventura, a stone's throw from the island of Lobos, is the natural park of Corralejo, a coastal strip 2.5 kilometers wide and 10.5 kilometers long that is home to the largest field of dunes on the islands Canary Islands.
And also the most accessible, because the coastal highway that connects the town of the same name with the island capital, Puerto del Rosario, crosses it from north to south.
Next to Corralejo you can see a sea of white sands bathed by another of turquoise waters.
Do not forget the swimsuit.
In the south of the natural park, however, we will observe brown and red conical hills, with wrinkled skirts.
That is, volcanoes.
Like Red Mountain, 300 meters high.
Don't forget the boots.
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