Doñana is the great wetland at the mouth of the Guadalquivir River on Spain's Atlantic coast. It lies in Andalusia, spread across the provinces of Huelva, Seville and Cádiz, with most of it in the municipality of Almonte. The national park covers 543 km² of seasonal marsh (marisma), shallow lagoons, mobile sand dunes and Mediterranean scrub and pine woods, all between sea level and about 40 m. It has been a national park since 1969, a UNESCO biosphere reserve since 1980, a Ramsar wetland of international importance since 1982 and a World Heritage Site since 1994. Up to 200,000 waterfowl winter there, and more than 300 bird species are seen each year. For most of the past 70 years Doñana has also been under pressure, from drainage schemes, a toxic mine spill, tourist building and above all the pumping of its groundwater for irrigated farming.
1952–1953: The Drainage Plan That Nearly Ended Doñana
What the drainage plan put at risk was a young landscape. When sea level peaked after the last ice age, some 6,500–7,000 years ago, the area was flooded and became a lagoon that the Romans called the Lacus Ligustinus. Over the past 6,000 years river sediment has filled that lagoon, while the Doñana spit, a broad sandy barrier with dunes moving south-east, has grown across its mouth. The result is the flat marsh of today, with shallow hollows called lucios that hold water seasonally. The park records 360 non-marine bird species, 127 of which have bred there, along with 37 mammal species and the Baetican toothcarp, a critically endangered fish found only in the Doñana system.
For centuries the marshes were a hunting ground, not a nature reserve. In 1262 King Alfonso X set up a royal hunting preserve in the Las Rocinas woods. The estate later passed to the dukes of Medina Sidonia, and the name Doñana comes from the "Coto de Doña Ana", the retreat of Ana de Silva y Mendoza, wife of the 7th duke. The sherry merchant William Garvey bought the run-down estate in 1901. In the early 1950s the Spanish government was preparing to drain the wetlands for farmland and plant them with eucalyptus.
That plan was the first modern threat, and the first one turned back. In 1952 the ornithologists José Antonio Valverde and Francisco Bernis toured the marshes, guided by Mauricio González-Gordon, whose family owned a large estate there. The three wrote a memorandum, and González-Gordon's father, Manuel, presented it to Francisco Franco himself. By November 1953 Bernis had finished a report showing the area's exceptional ecological value. The drainage plans were dropped. In 1957 Valverde led the first organised scientific expedition, joined by the British naturalists Guy Mountfort, Roger Tory Peterson and Sir Julian Huxley.
Matalascañas, the 1963 Reserve and the 1969 National Park
The next threat came from tourism. In 1959 the González family sold part of their land to build the Matalascañas beach resort on the Doñana coast. European conservationists were alarmed. Valverde, Luc Hoffmann and Max Nicholson set up an international appeal with the British Nature Conservancy, which raised two million Swiss francs to buy 7,000 hectares, to add to land González-Gordon had already given. In 1963 the Spanish government and the WWF bought part of the territory and created the first Doñana reserve, and in 1964 the Doñana Biological Station opened under the CSIC, Spain's national research council. In 1969 the WWF and the government bought another section of the delta marshes, and Doñana National Park was created by decree.
Ramsar 1982, Natural Park 1989, World Heritage 1994
Formal protection followed in layers. A buffer zone, the "Preparque", was added about ten years after the park. UNESCO named Doñana a biosphere reserve of 77,260 hectares in 1980. The marshes went onto the Ramsar list in 1982. The Andalusian government turned the Preparque into the Doñana Natural Park in 1989 and enlarged it in 1997. In 1994 the park was listed as a World Heritage Site. The natural park's western section, between Matalascañas and Mazagón, has dunes, old lagoons and pine woods, and its protection stopped a large housing project from being built west of Matalascañas.
25 April 1998: The Aznalcóllar Tailings Spill
The most sudden blow came from upstream. On 25 April 1998 a holding dam burst at the Los Frailes zinc and silver mine near Aznalcóllar, in Seville province. The mine was run by Boliden-Apirsa, the Spanish subsidiary of Sweden's Boliden. Between 4 and 5 million cubic metres of acidic tailings, laden with lead, copper, zinc and cadmium, poured into the River Agrio and then the Guadiamar. The Guadiamar is the main water source for the national park. The sludge travelled about 40 km and covered 4,600 hectares before it was stopped. Almost 2,000 birds, chicks, eggs and nests were killed or destroyed, and 37,400 kg of dead fish were collected, mostly carp, mullet, Andalusian barbel and eel.
The clean-up took three years and cost an estimated €240 million. In 2000 the Ministry of Environment launched the "Doñana 2005" programme to restore the marshes. Heavy metals still remain in soils, water and wildlife, and the accident is often described as Spain's worst environmental disaster.
Strawberries, Illegal Wells and the Doñana Aquifer
The threat with the longest reach today is underground. The marshes depend on a large aquifer that also feeds the lagoons and the scrub. Since the late 1980s irrigation withdrawals around the park have doubled, many of them illegal, first for cotton and rice and then for strawberries. Between 4,500 and 6,000 hectares around Doñana are now under plastic greenhouses, producing more than 90% of Spain's strawberry crop. In 2007 the WWF warned that boreholes, pesticide run-off and plastic waste from these farms could do catastrophic damage. Rice is also important on the drained Guadalquivir marshes east of the park, where about 400 km² of paddies grow some 310,000 tonnes a year, around 40% of Spain's rice.
In 2019 police closed dozens of illegal wells, run mostly by fruit farmers, that had drained the water table for years. The same year, the European Commission took Spain to the European Court of Justice. The court ruled that Spain had failed to prevent illegal water extraction and had not stopped significant damage to the park's habitats. In 2023 the Junta de Andalucía tried to legalise some of the illegal strawberry plots. The central government blocked the move, and the two governments then agreed on support for dryland farming. As part of that deal the Junta bought the 7,000-hectare Veta La Palma estate, whose lagoons had once been used for a failed fish farm. In January 2024 the winter bird count was the lowest on record. Rain returned in 2025, but UNESCO remained concerned about the aquifer and the threat of adding Doñana to its List of World Heritage in Danger.
Oil Tankers, Dredging and the Port of Huelva
Doñana sits between two working ports. The Port of Huelva, a few kilometres from the natural park, is counted among the park's major environmental threats. Environmental groups have criticised a project to build an oil pipeline from Extremadura to Huelva because it would bring hundreds of extra tankers a year past the coast and raise the risk of spills. To the east, the Guadalquivir channel is dredged often so that ships can reach the Port of Seville, which disturbs the estuary's natural dynamics. Adena, the Spanish branch of the WWF, has linked the shipping traffic to new species arriving in ballast water. Climate change brings its own threats: seawater could push into the aquifer and make it salty, or a drier climate could turn parts of the area to desert. To ease the water shortage, the Huelva provincial council approved a transfer of water from the Chanza–Piedras system.
2006–2012: Handover to Andalusia and a Wider Biosphere Reserve
Management changed hands in 2006. A Royal Decree of 9 June that year passed responsibility for the park to the Government of Andalusia, and the national and natural parks were combined into a single "Natural Area of Doñana" with different levels of protection. In 2008 Doñana was twinned with the Camargue in France. In 2010 the Ministry of the Environment expropriated 9,200 hectares of coastline for protection. In July 2012 UNESCO enlarged the biosphere reserve from 77,260 hectares to more than 255,000, adding a transition zone that covers the surrounding municipalities.
Iberian Lynx and Invasive Species Since 2002
Invasive species are managed inside the park. Rangers remove eucalyptus, Acacia longifolia, tree tobacco and the ice plant Carpobrotus edulis. Of the ten introduced fish species in Doñana's waters, eight are on Spain's catalogue of invasive species, including the common carp, the eastern mosquitofish, the largemouth bass and the pumpkinseed. The park's best-known species shows what protection can do. In 2002 only 94 Iberian lynx survived, in two isolated groups in Andalusia, one of them around Doñana. On 29 March 2005 a female named Saliega gave birth to three kittens at the El Acebuche Breeding Centre inside the park. They were the first Iberian lynx ever bred in captivity. By 2024 there were 2,401 lynx, 2,047 in Spain and 354 in Portugal, and the IUCN downgraded the species to Vulnerable. Road deaths and drivers breaking the ban on cars in the park are still a problem for the Doñana population.
Doñana still depends on the river that built it. You can trace that river upstream in our guide to the Guadalquivir, compare Doñana with its twin delta in the Camargue wetlands of southern France, or place the marshes among Spain's mountains, meseta and coasts in our overview of Spain's geography.