SOMETHINGABOUT
AIGÜESTORTES NATIONAL PA With an area of around 105 square kilometres, the park offers fairy-tale postcard landscapes. The Aigüestortes National Park is one of the gates to paradise offered by the Catalan Pyrenees, a place that allows us to appreciate nature in its purest form. Located between the Catalan regions of El Pallars Sobirà, Val d’Aran and Alta Ribagorça, and with an area of around 105 square kilometres, the park offers fairy-tale postcard landscapes with peaks that exceed 3,000 meters tall, rivers, ravines, marshes, more than 200 ponds of different shapes and colours and a large number of animal and plant species. And if anywhere stands out among all those in the park, this would be the pond of Sant Maurici, a beautiful spot at the bottom of Els Encantats, considered to be one of the most exemplary landscapes of Catalonia. The place is commonly visited by mountain enthusiasts, who have numerous route and itinerary options. In this sense, hiking, mountain biking, hill-walking, mountain skiing and trekking are widely practised activities, both privately and through organizing companies.
Flora and fauna The vegetation of the park changes as you keep climbing. The valley floors are full of mixed forests of deciduous trees. Further up, fir trees emerge from the shadows, and the black pine, the most resistant tree to the long and cold, mountainous 6
View of Aigüestortes national park and lake Sant Maurici.
winters, reigns in the highest places. Above the forest periphery, alpine meadows emerge. Both in spring and summer, the meadows and rock crevices are colourfully dressed with blossoming gentians, arnicas, forget-me-nots or evergreens. On the other hand, its fauna is conditioned by the glaciations of the quaternary and is that, with the retreat of the ice, the peaks and Pyrenean forests became a refuge for different breeds of animals. The most common mammals in the place are the chamois, the ermine and the Iberian desman. In addition, in the valleys of Boí, there are species such as the tawny mouse or the tricolour shrew. As far as birds, the capercaillie and the white partridge can be seen, as are small populations of brown partridge. The bearded vulture and the griffon vulture are also observable. Among the reptiles, the viviparous lizard, the agile lizard and the Pyrenean lizard stand out. The Pyrenean newt is the main amphibian exponent here.
