1.

General characteristics of Peninsular and Insular relief

The relief is the ensemble of the shapes of the terrestrial surface. It is produced -throughout
geological time- by the combination of three elements:
● Tectonics forces, inner of the Earth, generated by the movement and collision of the
plates. Specifically, in the case of the Iberian Peninsula, the contact between the
Eurasian and African plates runs along the line Gulf of Cadiz-Strait of
Gibraltar-Alboran Sea. The crash between these two plates, given that both are
continental, produced, during the Tertiary Age, the rise of the Alpine mountains:
Baetic Range, Atlas (Morocco), and others along the Mediterranean Basin.
● The lithology: kind, and characteristics of rocks.
● Erosion, the external forces of Earth.
The main general characteristics of Peninsular relief are:
- Its solid shape.
- Its high average altitude (660 m).
- The peripheral layout of the mountainous relief around the Central Plateau or Mesa,
which is the core land of the Peninsula.
2. The most important morfostructural units of Peninsula and Balearic Islands
The morfostructural units are the shapes of relief due to tectonic movements caused in the
Earth’s inside, without consider the external forces. These units are:
● The Palaeozoic basement.
● The ancient massifs, set up from those old Palaeozoic rocks, including the Central
Range and Toledo Mountains, and the Central Plateau edges: Galician Massif-western
Cantabrian Range, and Sierra Morena.
● The fold ranges produced during the Alpine movement: Pyrenees, Iberian Mountains,
and Penibetic Range.
● The sedimentary basins or valleys, internal or external of the Central Plateau.
THE PALAEOZOIC BASEMENT
The Central Plateau, or Meseta, is a large plain plateau. Its origin was the slaty
Precambrian shield which emerged, during the Archaic Age, on the present Galicia. Later,
this shield was eroded and almost completely covered by the sea. During the Primary or
Palaeozoic Age, the Hercinian movement raised the Hesperian Massif. It was eroded, in the
Secondary Age, to create a plateau sloped at the Mediterranean Sea, which was finally
deformed by the Alpine orogeny, in the Tertiary Age, which sloped the Plateau at the Atlantic
Ocean, created the internal ranges with old materials/rocks, and folded some its northwestern,
eastern, and southern borders. The Alpine movement produced too volcanism in the Central
Plateau.
The Meseta is divided, by Central Range, in Northern and Southern Submesetas.
Northern is higher than Southern. Its materials are hard bedrocks, such as granite, slate,
quartzite, or gneis. They have been used historically in the building of castles and houses.
German scientist Alexander von Humboldt came to Madrid in 1798 looking for the
authorization of the King Charles IV for travelling the American colonies of New Spain,
about which he wrote his famous Ensayo politico sobre el reino de Nueva España. He was the
first to recognise the Spanish Meseta as a plateau, because before it was thought that it was
only a set of river valleys. Humboldt was one of the most important European timeless
scientists, a man ahead of his time, for instance, when he said that the social, economic, and
political issues are narrowly linked to environmental problems.
The Central Plateau landscape is mainly plain, due to long geological periods of
erosion accumulation. On this original peneplain -historically cropped with grain and
supporting sheep farming-, rivers eroded later, leaving the upper parts flat, where the stratum
is hard, and dugging the valleys where the softer materials were, resulting more fertile soils.
This wide flatness has caused that some writers had described the Central Plateau as a sea of
land.
Inselbergs, set up by harder materials surrounded by softer eroded, are frequent in the
Meseta. They had been utilised often for building castles upon. The Arapiles3 , southeastern
Salamanca, are one of the best examples of them.
The windmills of The Mancha4, the castles, the characters of Don Quixote or El Cid,
and the Antonio Machado’s poetry, are the symbols of this Central Plateau landscape.
Machado edited Fields of Castile in 1912. It is a collection of poems based upon his
reflections on the landscape of Castile, and, across it, the identity of Spain. Machado wrote it
in Soria, and it was revised in 1917. Some selected poems were published in English in 1959.
The Spain’s defeat in the Spanish-American War had echoed in arts and literature
under the tutelage of the Generación del 98, a group of young Spanish writers and
intellectuals who explored on the identity and destiny of Spain. Their key message was that
Spain was a country in crisis, and they wondered where had Spain gone wrong, and how
could the nation’s problems be solved. The Generation of 1898 reacted against the political
incompetence and corruption that were undermining Spain’s progress. They criticized the
social and cultural rules of the nation as well, especially those of the dominant class.
In attempting to tackle the identity question, the Generation of 1898 utilized words to
create vivid images of native landscapes, which they felt contained the spirit of the nation and
its people. Most of these thinkers expressed an emotional connection to the Castilian
countryside. The writers, including Machado, attempted to capture and reflect the reality of
the dry topography and, through it, the soul of Castile and its people. The desolate
countryside that the poet witnesses is matched by the decadence of Spanish life, as opposed
to Castile’s successful history.
ANCIENT MASSIFS INSIDE THE CENTRAL PLATEAU
The Central Plateau includes two tertiary chains: the Central Range, and the Toledo
Mountains. Both were made by the rejuvenation, during the Tertiary Age, of blocks of the
Palaeozoic basement. The Alpine tectonic forces broke this old basement, making a
Germanic relief driving some of these blocks up and burying others. Excepting the core area
of the Central System, it is a soft relief, due to the continuous process of erosion.
● Guadarrama, Somosierra, and Gredos, are the main chains of the Central Ranges.
They are strong mountains. Central Mountains have glacial relief in the higher peaks,
with cirques, lakes, and moraine depots. There is ice erosion too in the highest areas,
produced by the freezing of water infiltrated in the cracks in the rocks. This water
spreads when frozen, breaking the stones, and producing screes, a kind of rocky
ground.
● The highest peak of the Toledo Mountains is in the Villuercas Range, which is a good
example of an Appalachian relief. This is produced by the differential erosion of the
 fold layers: the harder are less eroded, and remain as ridges, while the softer are more
eroded, shaping the valleys.
The saprolites are another typical form of relief in this mountainous sector of the
Meseta. They are accumulations of rounded blocks, made by the chemical erosion of granitic
domes. It produces cracks, called diaclases, where water introduces and becomes ice due to
the low temperature, breaking the rock, whose pieces are rounded later by the erosion. When
one of these round rocks is on one of their smaller sides, it is named roca caballera (literally, a
gentleman rock). Berrocal is a common name of Spanish villages located in this kind of
landscape, such as in Huelva.
THE MOUNTAINOUS EDGES OF THE CENTRAL PLATEAU
● Galician Massif. Cabeza da Manzaneda is its highest peak. As Central Mountains,
they are old and hard Precambrian materials which were broken and rejuvenate during
the Alpine orogeny, with a Germanic structure in raised and collapsed blocks, which
we can see in the Tuy valley, or in the rías. So, the Galician Massif has many faults.
● Cantabrian Mountains. Its highest peak is in the Picos de Europa. The Eastern sector
is Alpine limestone. The Western half is palaeozoic rejuvenate by the Alpine orogeny
too, with a structure of Appalachian relief following the almost N-S Armorican line:
alternation of quartzite and slate, this last flattened by erosion. The Alpine orogeny
reactivated the erosion, which was stronger on slate. So, rivers are fitted in the lower
slate valleys, surrounded by lines of quartzite mountains. This Armorican line was
formed by the Hercinian orogeny during the Primary Age, across the European
western coast from Normandy to Andalusia. Finally, during the Quaternary Age,
cirque glaciers were formed in its higher mountains.
● Iberian System. Moncayo is its highest peak. It has mainly materials from the
Secondary Age, like red sandstone, gypsum, dolomites, and limestone. The chemical
erosion by water had produced karsts on these kinds of rocks. The karst relief includes
features such as lapiés, canyons, hoces, land-locked valleys or poljés, sinkholes, caves
and chasms.
● Dark Mountains. This range is a long Palaeozoic flexion/fault5 , eroded by rivers
which run taking the Armorican line, down the Guadalquivir. Its highest peak is in the
Cazorla Mountains, in its east end, because this range falls east to west until sinking
in the Atlantic Ocean, in Cape Saint Vincent.
THE EXTERNAL ALPINE FOLD RANGES
They were produced by the Alpine orogeny, during the Tertiary Age, from the Secondary
materials deposited on the bottom of the sea trenches between the Palaeozoic massifs, when
the Meseta was sloped at East. They are limestone mountains, younger and rugged, external
of the Central Plateau:
● Basque Mountains. Limestone rock, with low height, and soft relief.
● Pyrenees. It has a Palaeozoic axial or central zone, with hard crystalline rocks, and,
southern, the pre-Pyrenees, with a longitudinal lower area between both, where cities
as Pamplona, Jaca, Sabiñanigo, or Tremp, are. The structure is the same in the French
side. Aneto is the highest peak.
● Catalan Coastal Range: Palaeozoic northern half, and limestone southern, wich
includes the island of Minorca. It has two lines, separated by a tectonic valley. These
 mountains are separated of the east end of the Pyrenees with faults, over which the
volcanic region of Olot-Ampurdan, with 30- 40 volcanic cones, appeared. Their last
activity was in 1427.
● Baetic Mountains. It includes, running southwest to northeast, the limestone
Subbetica Sierra, a chain of inland depressions or Intrabetico Groove, and the
Palaeozoic Penibetica Range. Mulhacén, 3,478 m, is the highest peak of the
Peninsula. Majorica and Ibiza belong to this set. Flysh is very frequent in the
Subbetica Sierra. It origins landslides, due to the rain water which goes through the
limestone rock, but not the waterproof loam, softing it. Its combination with slope
produced, along geological time, that part of the mountains disjoints of the range up to
40 km. This is the origin of inselbergs as the Gibraltar Rock. In the northeastern
inland depressions of the Intrabetico Groove, the dryness origins the badlands over
the soft Tertiary and Quaternary clay and gypsum sedimentary soils, accumulated on
the fluvial valleys, with gullies or cárcavas originated in the zones with more
torrential rainfall.
During the Quaternary Age, a glacier relief was formed in the higher mountains of
Pyrenees and Sierra Nevada, with valley and cirque glaciers. Limestone, the material of these
Alpine mountains, is a hard bedrock, but soluble in water, organizing a karst relief too. There
are examples of karst on gypsum rocks, as in Sorbas.
SEDIMENTARY BASINS
There are three inland sedimentary basins in the Central Plateau: Douro, Tagus, and
Guadiana. As the mountains, they were formed during the Tertiary Age too. These basins
have a Germanic origin, because they are ancient collapsed blocks, covered by flat shapes of
sediments. These valleys have a hard-upper stratum, and a lower soft, which causes the
alternation of moors, the plain highest areas, slopes, and valleys. Sometimes, the erosion
isolates all around a monadnock, a typical component of the landscape of the Central Plateau.
Ebro and Guadalquivir are the pre-Alpine depressions, external to the Meseta. They are
ancient sea-arms, filled by the sediments transported by the rivers over geological time. Both
are a clay soil countryside, softly undulating, with limestone small plateaus and inselbergs. In
the Quaternary Age, fluvial terraces were formed in all those Peninsular rivers, due to the
alternation of glacial and postglacial periods.
3. Relief of the Canary Islands
During the Tertiary Age, the breaking triggered by the Alpine orogeny in the bottom of the
sea produced the emergence of the volcanoes which gave rise to the Canary Islands6 .
Volcanism had produced several characteristic features in Canary, such as: volcanic cones,
cauldrons, badlands, stacks, ravines, basaltic columns in the coastline, caused by fracture of
lava during its in situ cooling, and low islands or lavic deltas called fajinas.
At least the central and western Canarian volcanoes are active. The last volcanic
events have been :
- Eruption of Chinyero Volcano, part of the Teide complex. This complex has had 13
eruptions along the last 2,000 years, and 6 from 1492, so it is fully active .
- Birth of Teneguia Volcano
- Birth of Tagoro Volcano, at 150 m under the sea level.
- Cumbre Vieja.
4. The Peninsula coast
The Peninsula coast have close connection with relief, due to its proximity to the sea. There
are four main sectors: Cantabrian Sea, Galician, Gulf of Cadiz, and Mediterranean Sea.
CANTABRIAN SEA.
It is a steep coast, because the Cantabrian and Basque mountains are very close of the sea.
The cliffs are very frequent in this sector, with only few beaches, often associated with the
small rivers estuaries.
The rasas8 are a specific coastal feature in the Basque Country and Cantabria. They are cliffs
produced during the Alpine folding, which emerged and turned vertical the old sea floors of
flysch, later eroded by the waves; but its part under the high tide level is not subjected to this
wave’s erosion, and these rocks are in open with the low tide, so they are not eroded then
either. Rasas are possible only on two conditions: a location in the coast of oceans, where the
tidal range is enough high; and that the rock was flysch, an alternation of thin layers of
limestone and loam. The most impressive rasas are in the Province of Gipuzkoa, between
Deva and Zumaia.
GALICIAN COAST.
It is a rocky coast too. Estuaries, named rías, are its most important unit. These are divided in
Rías Altas, and Rías Bajas. The rías are the collapsed blocks of the Germanic relief, which
are sunk in the ocean due to the westward slope of the Central Plateau.
GULF OF CADIZ.
Costa de la Luz, Bay of Cadiz, Cape Trafalgar, and Tarifa Point, are, from West to
East, its most important features. The strong stream from the Atlantic produces estuaries in
the river mouths. As it is a rising coast, there are marshes where coastal lakes were. Doñana,
in the Low Guadalquivir, is the most famous, in the place where, in Roman times, the
Licustinus Lake was.
The oceanic SW stream pushes the sediments of the rivers until forming long coastal
sand spits, longitudinal to the coastline, and growing to the East. Originally, El Portil, the left
bank of the Tinto-Odiel mouth, or Doñana, were this kind of sand spits, which closed El
Portil Lagoon, the Palos Lagoons, and the Licustinus Lake/marshland, respectively.
The beaches are wide because the mountains are far away from the sea. They have
fine sand and, where the urban growth has allowed it, dunes systems. There are mobile dunes
in Doñana, which form the Corrales, pinewoods among two lines of these dunes, which live
over 30 years before being buried under the sand.
MEDITERRANEAN SEA.
It is a steep coast of narrow beaches and coarse sand because the proximity of the
mountains to the sea, excepting in the Valencia Plain, a coastal lowland which reaches the 40
km wide. It has inselbergs, which separated from the range thanks to faults, and moved across
waterproof loams by gravity. This kind of movements have resulted in coastal rocks as
Gibraltar, Ifach, the Benidorm Islet, or Peñíscola.
Coves are a specific feature in Balearic Islands and Catalonia. They are small beaches
hemmed in between cliffs, produced by little streams, but with enough power of erosion due
to the high slope. They are one of the main tourist attractions in this coast.
As Mediterranean is a closed sea, and smaller than Atlantic, the sand spits close
completely the coastal lagoons, as in the Albufera of Valencia, or the Minor Sea. These sand
lines are named restingas. Another consequence is that the rivers form deltas in their mouths,
as the Ebro, because the river flow strength is over the marine stream. So, the sediments can
advance and accumulate into the sea.