The Sierra de las Nieves is a natural paradise that is located in the central western area of the province of Malaga. As a whole, the municipalities that make up the area of the recently declared National Park – Tolox, Istán, Benahavís, El Burgo, Yunquera, Parauta, Ronda, Monda, Casarabonela, Ojén, Alozaina, Serrato, Guaro and Igualeja – make up a territory mountain and rural in which the human inhabitants have known how to maintain a perfect balance with nature over the centuries.
The impressive natural wealth of the Sierra de las Nieves is evident in its dreamlike landscapes, in its enormous variety of ecosystems and in the presence of unique species in the world, such as the Spanish fir, a rare and beautiful fir endemic to the south of the Iberian Peninsula. , undisputed king of these mountains, where its most extensive and lush forests are found.
But to this natural wealth that supported its declaration as a Natural Park in 1989, there is an imposing cultural, historical and ethnological legacy, since from prehistory to the present day man populated these lands, leaving on it the traces of Iberians and Romans, Arabs and Mozarabs, Christians and Moors.
The perfect combination of both elements, the natural and the human, throughout history led UNESCO in 1995 to declare the Sierra de las Nieves as a whole a "Biosphere Reserve". Since then, this territory has been part of the select club of internationally recognized places of greatest biogeographical interest on the planet and chosen as a model of what has been called "Sustainable Development", that is, making the conservation of natural values compatible with the use resource rationale.
The main massif of the Sierra de las Nieves dominates the landscape from any point in the region, being the main mountainous reference in the province of Malaga, and even in those of Cádiz and Seville, from which it is visible. Its imposing limestone mass reaches 1,919 meters at the summit, the peak of La Torrecilla, although much of it always exceeds 1,500 meters. This means that several months a year the entire complex is covered by a thick blanket of snow. A hard and ancient occupation of some inhabitants of the area, the so-called neveros, consisted of collecting that snow during the cold winter and storing it and preserving it in the snow wells to be able to take it as precious booty to towns and cities. It was for this reason that the snow not only gave these mountain ranges their name but also gave them fame in much of Andalusia for the preciousness of the resource during the hot summers.
Water is the other characteristic element of the Sierra, and it is so because of its abundance, its quality and its purity. Precipitation is abundant and frequent, caused by the entry of humid air from the nearby Atlantic Ocean, which turns into rain and snow when it "collides" with the mountain range. If we add to this the limestone nature of its mountains, capable of "absorbing" a large part of that water in its underground structures and releasing it continuously and slowly through a multitude of springs, we will have the explanation of why the Sierra de las Nieves is the authentic reservoir of water for all of Malaga, with the Grande, Turón, Verde and Guadalevín rivers, the largest in the province, being born from its bosom, as well as an innumerable number of streams and springs that supply human consumption and irrigation. nearby areas.
