On a map of Europe the Pyrenees look like a straight line drawn with a ruler between France and Spain. That impression is close to the truth. The range runs from the Bay of Biscay in the west to the Mediterranean in the east, and for most of its length the crest is the border. Few mountain ranges do such a clean job of separating two countries.
Three countries, one crest
France holds the northern slopes and Spain the southern ones. Squeezed between them in the eastern half is Andorra, a small landlocked country that sits entirely in the mountains. Andorra is the only state whose whole territory lies inside the range, and on a detailed map it looks like a notch cut into the border.
The border has a few oddities worth knowing before you read a road map:
- Val d’Aran is a Spanish valley on the northern side of the crest. Its river is the young Garonne, which flows north into France.
- Llívia is a Spanish town surrounded by French territory in the Cerdanya plateau, a leftover of old treaty wording.
- In the far west, the Basque Country straddles the range, with Basque spoken on both sides of the frontier.
West to east, a change of climate
The western Pyrenees catch moist air from the Atlantic. Hills are green, valleys are full of pasture and rain falls often. Moving east, the mountains rise and the weather dries. By the time the range reaches the Mediterranean at Cap de Creus, the slopes carry scrub, vineyards and cork oaks.
The difference between north and south is just as sharp. UNESCO describes the northern slopes as having a humid maritime climate, while the southern slopes enjoy a drier Mediterranean one. On the French side the valleys are short and steep. On the Spanish side they are longer, with deep canyons and wide basins that open toward the Ebro.
The high central section
The highest summits stand in the centre of the range. Aneto, in the Maladeta massif in Spanish Aragon, is the highest peak of the Pyrenees, and it still carries one of the range’s last glaciers. Nearby, Monte Perdido (Mont Perdu in French) anchors a limestone massif that crosses the border.
That massif is a World Heritage site. UNESCO inscribed Pyrénées, Mont Perdu in 1997, and the property covers 30,639 hectares on both sides of the frontier. It includes deep canyons on the Spanish side, such as Ordesa and Añisclo, and the great cirque walls of the French side, among them Gavarnie. UNESCO notes that the Spanish part matches the Ordesa y Monte Perdido National Park, created in 1918.
Shepherds who ignore the border
The same UNESCO listing explains why the Pyrenees are more than a frontier. Livestock has been moved to high summer pastures here since the Middle Ages, and by ancestral agreements Spanish farmers still graze their herds on the French side. Valleys on both slopes often had more in common with each other than with the lowland towns below them. Old mule paths, hospices and pastoral huts mark these routes on any hiking map.
The passes
The range was always hard to cross, which is why its passes carry so much history. The best known include:
- Roncesvalles, in Navarre, where the main pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela enters Spain from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port.
- Col du Somport, between the French Aspe valley and Aragon, now doubled by a road tunnel.
- Col du Tourmalet, entirely in France, famous as one of the climbs of the Tour de France.
- Col du Perthus, near the Mediterranean, the low crossing used by the main motorway between France and Catalonia.
High road passes close for part of the winter, so a route that looks short on a map can turn into a long detour between November and spring.
Walking the whole range
Three long trails follow the Pyrenees from sea to sea, and they make a good way to read the map. The GR10 stays on the French side, the GR11 on the Spanish side, and the Haute Route Pyrénéenne keeps as close to the crest as terrain allows, crossing the border many times. Hikers often pick sections rather than the full traverse, using villages in the valleys as resupply points.
Regions on each side
On the Spanish side, four regions share the range from west to east: the Basque Country, Navarre, Aragon and Catalonia. On the French side, the departments of Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Hautes-Pyrénées, Haute-Garonne, Ariège, Aude and Pyrénées-Orientales follow the same order. Catalan is spoken at both ends of the eastern Pyrenees, including in Andorra, where it is the official language.
Reading the Pyrenees with the rest of Europe
The range is the hinge between two regions covered on this site. The map of Western Europe shows how France meets the Iberian Peninsula, and the map of Southern Europe puts Spain and Andorra in context. For a comparison with a larger range, the map of the Alps shows a mountain system shared by eight countries instead of three. The eastern end of the Pyrenees drops straight into the sea described in the map of the Mediterranean.
UNESCO publishes the description, maps and boundaries of the cross-border site on its Pyrénées, Mont Perdu page, which is the most reliable reference for the central massif.
