About

As an island partially framed by the Guadalquivir, the mountain mass of Sierra Mágina stands along the rim of the olive-producing countryside of Jaén as an extraordinary and perpetual hill.Here rises the highest level of Jaén and one of the highest summits in Andalusia, Pico Mágina, which at 2,167 metres crowns a limestone massif, abrupt and inaccessible, forgotten by shepherds and icemakers, and that is now ideal setting for avid mountaineers.Its orographic conditions, with a notable growth of altitude within a small area, presents an outstanding variety of its landscape. Thus, there are places as the Oleander grove of Cuadros River, the largest in Spain; the amazing waterfalls of Zurreón, a beautiful waterfall that freezes in winter; or Pinar de Cánava, a formation of Aleppo pine (Pinus halepensis) declared a natural monument which is crowned by an impressive quarry from which the millstones of the many hydraulic presses in the region were extracted.

Fauna and flora

At lower heights, olive, cherry and almond trees alternate with a small number of oaks which lead, in the mid-mountain, to forest that combine oak, gall oak, maples and a low mountain with juniper, Phoenician Juniper, cornicabra and hawthorns. The peaks are home to vegetation of padded plants that thereby avoid the severity, as holm juniper and hawthorn, and some Austrian pine, as Pinar del Gargantón. Here are many species of insignificant distribution, as Jurinea fontqueri, a type of cardoon that is autochthonous to these villages, and other species exclusive to Sierra Mágina, as Litodora nítida, Helianthemun frigidiurum, leguminous Vicia glauca or a variety of fruit, the dwarf apple Prunus praecox.

Birds of prey are especially important, and up to eighteen different species have been identified: kestrels, falcon, Bonelli's eagles, griffon vultures and golden eagles. The peaks are home to capiblanco, while the rock thrush build their nests red in the rock cracks; chaffinch, greenfinches and goldfinches live in holm oaks and olive groves. There is an interesting population of mountain goats, which at lower levels is replaced by wild boar.