Sierra de las Nieves

Torrecilla 1919m

The nature park Sierra de las Nierves is located in the hills behind Marbella and to the east of the Ronda-San Pedro road as it winds up the mountain along hairpin bends. 

The park centers on Mount Torrecilla (1919m) and covers an area of 30km by 20km or 18,530 hectares.

The district of the Sierra de las Nieves is bounded to the south by the western Costa del Sol, to the east by the Guadalhorce Valley, to the west by Sierra of Ronda and to the north by the district of Guadalteba.

Apart from a few villages, which form rural mountain communities, this isolated area is largely uninhabited, and has seen very little human influence or activity, such as agricultural cultivation. For this reason, it has an unusually rich variety of indigenous flora, (pine, fir, ash, chestnut,wild olive and oak tree as well as juniper) and fauna, including mountain goat and wild deer. As the name suggests, the park is sometimes snow covered in winter.

The Spanish fir Pinsapo (Abies pinsapo)

Read more: Spanish fir or Spanish silver spruce (Apies pinsapo)

Read more: Wikipedia Spanish Ibex

                                  

In 1995 the park was declared a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve

Alongside the nature park has nine municipalities:

Alozaina
Casarabolonela
El Burgo
Guaro
Istan
Monda
Ojen
Tolox
Yunquera