Berço das Aves

Doñana was classified as a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO in the 1980s. A decade later, the same organization declared it a World Heritage Site. Legend has it that Goya painted *Las Majas* in the Doñana Palace, that the film *Lawrence of Arabia* was shot on its sands, and that the world’s largest nature conservation organization, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), was born there. But above all, Doñana remains the largest bird reserve in Europe and one of the last strongholds of the Iberian lynx. Its diverse ecosystems—featuring mobile coastal dune formations, river marshes, and pine forests with large mastic trees—harbor a biodiversity that makes Doñana one of the most renowned national parks in the world. Yet, we could never have imagined that the birds and Iberian lynxes that inhabit it come from **Portugal**.