The Sierra De Las Nieves Natural Park and Biosphere, Andalucia, Spain
It is hard to believe, when you look at the rapidly expanding concrete jungles of Marbella, Puerto Banus, and the rest of the Costa Del Sol, that only an hours drive away there are huge, green, unspoilt forests and moor lands.
In fact, in Marbella's case the time needed is even less than that, when travelling up the Ojen road, past the La Canada shopping mall, or even more directly to the Village of Istan.
An amazing 19% of all land in Andalucia holds protected status in one way or another, that’s roughly 1 field in 5 and, when you consider this includes our building saturated coastal strip, it is an extremely impressive amount of protected nature. The Park closest to the heart of the Costa Del Sol is The Sierra De Las Nieves Natural Park which protects almost 94’000 hectares of incomparable landscape.
It is centred on the Pueblo Blanco Serrano of Yunquera. The term Pueblo Blanco, or white village, also applies to settlements like Mijas or Alhaurin but to be a Serrano (Of the mountains) village, you must be isolated and independent. This was certainly the case for Yunquera, which didn’t even have a road until the 1950s!
The creation of a Natural Park in 1970, was prompted, many years earlier, by the discovery of a very unique tree, the Abies Pinsapo (Spanish Fir or Pinsapo Pine), by a Swiss botanist called Charles Edmond Boisser in 1837. He realised that the fir trees he was seeing were crucially different from those he had observed in other places.
This series of differences is not always clear to the casual observer, and we tend to see the Pinsapo in the shape of a classic Christmas tree. They are very similar to the elegant tree presented to the British people very year, and placed in Trafalgar Square, as a thank you from the people of Norway for our help in World War 2. In fact the most prestigious Christmas tree in the province of Malaga, is in the Plaza De La Constitution in Malaga Capital, and it is a Pinsapo tree from the Sierra De Las Nieves. However, please don’t feel tempted to “acquire” a tree from the park. They are fiercely protected and, if you are caught, the many 1000Euro fine will make it the most expensive Christmas tree you ever bought!
The principal differences between the Pinsapo and other fir trees is that the needles are arranged in a radial pattern on the branches, that is they go all the way around and not just along the sides like many other firs.
One of the reasons, why the Pinsapo does not look so different from the other fir trees, is that some scientists believe it to be the grandfather of all the others. This unusual parentage was caused by various ice ages, which put most of Europe, with the exception of Southern Spain under a very thick ice sheet.
This killed off most of the vegetation, which had grown there previously. When the ice eventually melted, leaving fertile soil and very little plant life, the surviving plants from the South of Europe began to repopulate the whole continent. This accident of geography also accounts for the small numbers of Pinsapo found in the Atlas Mountains of North Africa and an incredibly rare sub-species on the island of Sicily. These trees are numbered only in the 10s and, even in Spain; there are only small clusters such as in The Grazelema Natural Park.
However, in the Yunquera valley there are more than 5000 Hectares of Pinsapo trees, making it the home of the only Pinsapo forest in the world! It is this unique factor, which drew the attention of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and caused them to declare the area a World Biosphere in 1995, despite this, in typical UN form, the practical benefits this status gives are difficult to establish precisely!
The Pinsapo tree has 3 principle varieties, although they are effectively 3 different colours of the same tree. The Pinsapo Verde, Pinsapo Azul and Pinsapo Moreno or green, blue and brown Pinsapos. While the difference between the green and the blue Pinsapos is clear to the naked eye, especially in good light, it is frustratingly difficult to see, even in the best of photographs, especially after they have been printed.
The brown Pinsapo is not listed in any official research, and I have personally never seen one, but my friends, the most knowledgeable men on the mountains, the goat herders, assure me that it does exist.
The maximum age of the Pinsapo is considered to be around 400 years old but this is a highly speculative age bearing in mind their relatively recent discovery. Certainly it is believed there is a 350-year-old tree in the park at the moment. Regrettably, old age takes its toll on trees, just like the rest of us, and the older Pinsapos lose their youthful, slender, triangular shape and become huge limbed and fairly tatty looking.
At this age it is actually quite hard to associate them with a fir tree as they have completely lost the Christmas tree shape. This version of the tree is known as “The Candelabra” The other strange aspect of the Pinsapos growth, is that it seems content to either grow up, all slender and lovely, or outwards, to form something like looks like a big, untidy shrub with poor personal habits!
These trees are a unique species in the world and are only an hour’s drive from the Costa Del Sol. You really should make the effort to come and see them, after all when was the last time you did a world-class thing.
