Away from its popular beach resorts and historic cities, Spain is full of bizarre otherworldly landscapes, many of which you won’t even believe are real until you’re there yourself.
Las Bardenas Reales, Navarre
Right on the border between Navarre and Aragón lies the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve of Bardenas Reales, a harsh desert-like landscape just 70km from the lush Pyrenees. Bizarre rock formations and mountains are scattered throughout like giant sandcastles sculpted from something or someone high above.
Gaze upon the formations of Navarre’s Bardenas Reales. Photo: Jesús Esteban San José / Pexels
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Laguna Rosa, Valencia region
Lakes are often described as cerulean blue, turquoise, navy or even aqua marine, but never bubble-gum pink. Arriving at the Laguna Rosa near the popular resort of Torrevieja feels as if it’s a world away and could almost be on another planet, where pink water is the norm. One of Europe’s largest salt lakes, it’s actually Halobacterium (a type of bacteria) and microalgae that give it this unique shade.
The pink water of the Laguna Rosa. Photo: Tomas Wells / Pexels
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Las Médulas, Castilla y León
Close to the border between Castilla y León and Galicia, you’ll find Las Médulas, an ancient Roman gold mine where towering red rocks peek out from beneath the verdant emerald green foliage. Surprisingly it’s one of the few places on our list that is actually not a natural phenomenon, but a manmade one. To access the gold in the mountains, the Romans used hydraulic power, diverting water from a nearby river to carve out gullies and even explode them from the inside. The result is this scarred, but somewhat fascinating landscape.
The Romans created this landscape thousands of years ago. Photo: Elena Martinez Chacon / Wikimedia Commons
Lanzarote’s Charco Verde, Canary Islands
If there’s anywhere in Spain where the entire place could be another planet, then it’s Lanzarote. This small Canary Island is known as ‘the Island of Volcanos’ is filled with bizarre blackened landscapes, fossilised lava tubes and deep craters that feel almost as if you’re walking on the moon. But one strange place stands out among all the black for its bright green hue – is the Charco Verde or Green Lagoon. Almost fluorescent in colour, It’s caused by algae at the bottom of the lake which contrasts with the colour of the sky.
El Charco Verde has a luminous green hue. Photo: Javier Balseiro / Pexels
Río Tinto, Andalusia
With its blood orange shade and its rugged surrounds of reddish rocks, the landscapes around Rio are as close as many of us will ever get to standing on Mars. In fact NASA and the European Space Agency even carried out some of their training and experiments here in preparation for their voyage to the red planet. The area around Minas de Riotinto near Huelva is one of the most peculiar spots, an ancient mining village constructed here during Roman rule.
The Martian-like landscapes near Huelva, Photo: Paco Naranjo Jiménez /Wikimedia Commons
Cuenca’s Ciudad Encantada, Castilla-La Mancha
Set within the Serranía de Cuenca, you’ll find the aptly-named Enchanted City, where whimsical shapes have been carved from the limestone, modelled over millions of years by waves, ice, wind and rain. Over 90 million years ago, this area lay beneath the Tethys Sea and when it retreated these odd formations began to appear.
The Enchanted City near Cuenca. Source: Visit Cuenca
La Montaña de Sal, Catalonia
Rising 120 metres into the sky, around 100km northeast of Barcelona, sits this oddly-shaped mountain made of salt covered in ridges, bubbles and strange coloured rock. The outside is otherworldly enough, but for an even more alien experience, you can head deep into the mountain itself to the salt mines. Here, delicate salt crystals grow up from the floor and cling to roof, just like stalactites and stalagmites and the walls are adorned with what looks like salty foam. It was in fact a working mine all the way from 1929 to 1990.
You can even explore inside the Cardona Salt Mountain. Photo: Cardona Turisme
Torcal de Antequera, Andalusia
Not far from the city of Antequera, just north of Málaga, sits one of the most unusual landscapes in Andalusia, where towering rocks are piled one on top of another, almost like bizarrely-shaped stacks of pancakes. What makes it even more fascinating is that millions of years ago, this natural park was under the sea and you can still see fossils of many ammonites imprinted into the rocks.
The pancake like rocks of Torcal de Antequera. Photo: Dgalan / Wikimedia Commons
Cuevas del Drach, Mallorca
Another underground marvel are the Drach Caves, ‘Drach’ meaning dragon in the Majorcan language. Deep beneath the surface of Mallorca, extending for 1200 metres, they’re some of the few caves you can explore by boat. Row across the glassy waters of Lake Martel within the caves themselves and gape at the otherworldly formations that almost seem to glow in gold when lit.
Take a boat through the Drach Caves in Mallorca. Photo: lapping / Pixabay
