SOMIEDO, LAND OF BEARS
Biosphere Reserve
The Somiedo Natural Park can be considered the protected area that best represents the natural and ethnographic values of the Asturian mountains. Its rugged territory, with deep valleys and peaks over 2,000 meters, is one of the wildest and best preserved mountain environments in the north of the peninsula. The “Somedano” landscape is home to all the diversity of geological substrates of the Cantabrian Mountains and the best sample of mountain lakes in all of Spain, with the exception of the Pyrenees. Extensive and well-preserved deciduous forests of beech, oak, birch, mountain ash and other Atlantic species, and a complete community of large Cantabrian forest and mountain fauna with the presence of representative species such as the wolf, izard, roe deer , the marten, the black woodpecker,… But there is no doubt that the most emblematic animal of Somiedo, due to its rarity and for having become a true ecological symbol, is the Cantabrian brown bear.