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This huge park dominates the southern end of the city. Its present design was laid out for the 1929 Exposition. Keep an eye out for peacocks perched in the trees.

Seville’s glorious main park was a gift to the city from a Bourbon duchess in 1893. A few decades later it was redesigned and embellished for the 1929 Ibero-American Exhibition. Numerous lavish structures have been left behind, including the stunning Plaza de España and several other fine buildings, now used mostly as cultural centres. The grounds are largely the creation of Jean-Claude Nicolas Forestier, the French landscape gardener who also designed the Bois de Boulogne in Paris.

These important floodplains are a UNESCO Biospheric Reserve and have been a national park since 1969. The ecosystems include sand dunes, pine and cork forests, marshes, scrubland and riverbank. More than six million birds stop here on their annual migrations and fauna includes the last of the Iberian lynx population.

This beautiful park is home to prolific forests of holm oak, cork and pine. For the most part gently rolling, it gives way to more dramatic topography in the west. There are plenty of marked hiking trails, and it’s a good place for spotting local fauna.

Most of this park was planted to cloak Málaga’s once barren heights so as to prevent the seasonal flooding the city experienced for several centuries. Just 30-minutes’ drive from town, it’s a fine place for hiking and biking, with colour-coded trails taking you through a land of gorges, forests and valleys.

Jerez’s small zoo, set in botanical gardens, is also an active centre for the rehabilitation of regional endangered species or any injured animals. The star turns are a pair of white tigers. This is also the only chance you may get to see the elusive and extremely rare Iberian lynx, of which only an estimated 1,000 remain in the wild.

With the Torre del Oro at one end (see Torre del Oro & Torre de Plata), this tree-lined riverfront promenade makes for a pleasant stroll.