Navarra
Navarra, one of the four Spanish provinces of the Basque country, stands out by its diverse landscape: wooded highlands, limestone mountains, and mesas alternate with wide, fertile farmland whereas desert-like arid environments stretch out to the south, close to Aragon.
Does that name ring a bell? Yes, La Rioja is the origin of Spain's most famous wine! Here, on the fertile soil of the Ebro valley, tasteful grapes grow on the vine under Spain's most gracious sun. The warm climate typical of the La Rioja region provides these grapes with an incomparable flavor. However, winegrowing is not the principal source of income in La Rioja. East of Logroño, for example, you will find a landscape full of vegetable farming and fruit-growing.
Castile/León
Castile, Spain's heartland, which is shaped by bare, uniform looking tablelands, is not extremely blessed with a favorable climate. In winter it resembles a cold storage, in summer a baking oven. In spite of these conditions, however, the barren looking mesa reveals fascinating shades of color and intensive contrasts at a closer look. Houses are usually built of clay bricks, and thus blend well with Castile's landscape.
Some 50 km west of León, the natural scenery suddenly changes: after crossing the colorful heathland up in the Montes de León mountains you reach fertile soil, a region where vineyards grow. You have reached the “El Bierzo” wine country! Castile bears its name to countless castles and forts spread across the heartland. Once these fortifications were build to protect the region against the Moors, a region that had been hotly contested until the 10th century.
Galicia
For centuries, Galicia has been a densely populated cultivated land, an area full of ample, green landscape with countless wooded hills, open meadows and little creeks running everywhere. Because of the abundance of water, pastures and forests, one might consider Galicia to be a very fertile region, but in fact it only provides poor crop yields.
Some areas will make you feel like being back in medieval times. Even today farmers cultivate their fields in hard work using pairs of oxen. Their farmland, traditionally passed on to the next generation by distribution of acres, left their heirs with little to live from. Galicia's economic life is merely bound to fishing in the fjord-like bays and estuaries (“rías”) carved deeply into landscape. 