The municipality of Fuente de Piedra in the Antequera region spreads over some of the most level terrain in the province of Málaga and abounds with olive trees and grain fields. Its urban nucleus is characterised by its well-planned street pattern, its scrupulously whitewashed homes and a handful of aristocratic buildings that stand out among the unpretentious houses. Everything in Fuente de Piedra, however, revolves around its famous Laguna Salada (Salty Lake), the largest in Andalusia.


Due to its characteristics Laguna de Fuente de Piedra (Lake Fuente de Piedra) is considered a unique enclave among western Mediterranean wetlands, and it is with good reason that the largest colony of flamingos on the Iberian Peninsula gathers here. The Protected Area covers more than 1,360 hectares, of which 164 belong to the actual Nature Preserve. The lake is elliptical in shape and measures 6.5 kilometres on its longer axis, which is oriented from northeast to southwest, and 2.5 kilometres on its lesser, northwest to southeast, axis.

This wetland is watered by rains, which at an annual average of some 500 millimetres are not generally very plentiful in this region, and by underground aquifers, as well as by water from the Santillán and El Humilladero streams.


The lake has not always had the protection it has enjoyed since 1982, when it was declared a National Game Preserve and included on the List of Wetlands of International Importance RAMSAR. There had already been two attempts to drain it in the nineteenth century (1828 and 1880) in order to turn the wetland into an ordinary salt mining area, an activity that the Romans had engaged in before. Since the bed of the lake is level and its sheet of water is generally about 70 centimetres deep (in exceptional cases it can get up to two metres deep) and since the local substratum is extremely saline the evaporation that begins in the spring has the effect of condensing salt on the surface. This salt-extracting activity ended around 1950, however, and since then the lake has become known as an area where massive numbers of flamingos nest.

Each year thousands of pairs of flamingos (gatherings of up to 50,000 individuals are not unusual) flock to Fuente de Piedra to mate and nest. From the vantage points you can observe these birds’ remarkable courtship rituals. According to experts it is the females that choose the mate, and generally the selection is of a strongly built male that is capable of withstanding the high temperatures that are registered on the lake and of continuing with the incubation when the female is exhausted.

The flamingos begin arriving in late February and leave the lake around the end of August. During this period the mating occurs, the nests are prepared and the young are hatched and grow. In July and August some of the young, generally ten per cent of the total of new chicks, are banded. The total number of flamingos hatched at the lake can be as high as 7,000 to 10,000 per year. The best time for visiting this area is in May and August, although it is open throughout the year.