Walk round the gredas and work out that wind, not water, did most of this

Work out why it survives here: this is the driest corner of the Iberian peninsula

Stay off the formations themselves, which are soft and break under a hand

Walk west along the coast, which is 35 kilometres of largely undeveloped sand

Come at low sun, when the shapes read properly

At Bolnuevo, on the Mazarrón coast, a bank of clays formed from weathered igneous and metamorphic rock has been cut by wind — and much less by rain — into mushrooms, towers and overhangs standing directly behind the beach. It is one of the clearest pieces of wind erosion anywhere on the Spanish coast, and the reason it survives is that this is the driest corner of the peninsula. The Mazarrón coast behind it has 35 kilometres of mostly fine sand with almost no development on it outside the port and Bolnuevo itself.

Bolnuevo: Sandstone Sculpted by Wind

Go into the Roman salting factory in the middle of the town and find the vats

Work out what garum was and why an industrial plant for it was worth building here

Find out about the two Phoenician boats of the 7th century BC found in this bay

Work out why they matter: among the oldest ships recovered anywhere in the western Mediterranean

Look at the old mine workings in the hills and work out what was being taken out of them

The Romans ran an industrial fish-salting operation on this coast, and the factory at Puerto de Mazarrón — vats for salting and for making garum — has been excavated in the middle of the modern town. Offshore, two Phoenician boats of the 7th century BC were found in the bay in the 1990s, among the oldest ships ever recovered in the western Mediterranean, one of them lifted and conserved. The hills behind were mined for lead, silver and alum from antiquity to the 20th century, which is the other half of why anyone was here.

Mazarrón and the Roman Fish-Salting Coast

Walk into the pine forest and work out that every tree here was planted deliberately from 1889

Find out who Ricardo Codorníu was and what the massif looked like before he started

Find the pozos de la nieve, first built at the end of the 16th century, and work out how ice got from here to the hospitals of Murcia

Look for the arruí, the Barbary sheep introduced here, and for the Spanish ibex that has come back on its own

Climb towards Espuña itself for the view over the whole restored massif

Sierra Espuña was bare, eroded rock at the end of the 19th century, stripped by centuries of grazing and felling, and flooding off it was wrecking the towns below. From 1889 the engineer Ricardo Codorníu began a reafforestation that put pines back across the whole massif — a project that became a model for its time, and the reason there is a forest here at all; it was made a natural site of national interest in 1931 and a regional park in 1992. The pozos de la nieve inside it are stone wells begun at the end of the 16th century, where snow was packed in winter and distributed as ice to the hospitals and towns of the Kingdom of Murcia.

Sierra Espuña: A Forest That Was Planted on Purpose

Go into the Roman theatre, turned up by building work in 1988 under the old cathedral of Santa María la Vieja and not opened until 2008

Work out the sequence of the site: Roman theatre, then a market, then a cathedral, then houses, then a car park

Find out what Qart Hadasht was — the Carthaginian city Hannibal set out from, taken by Rome in 209 BC

Walk the Calle Mayor and find the Modernista buildings the 19th-century mining money paid for

Go down into the Civil War air raid shelters cut into the hill under the town

Look at the naval harbour, which has been a military port continuously for over two thousand years

The Carthaginians founded Cartagena around 227 BC as Qart Hadasht — new city, the same name as Carthage — and it was from here that Hannibal set out for Italy. Rome took it in 209 BC. Then in 1988 work on a new building turned up a complex of superimposed structures that nobody had known was there — a Roman theatre, buried under the old cathedral of Santa María la Vieja and centuries of housing. Excavation and the museum took until 2008. The town above is also one of the best Art Nouveau townscapes in Spain, built with 19th-century mining money.

Cartagena: A Roman Theatre Under a Cathedral

Go up to the castle and walk the long fortified ridge above the town

Find the Holy Week embroidery workshops and work out why Lorca's processions are about silk, not statues

Work out what happened on 11 May 2011: magnitude 5.1, very shallow, on the Alhama de Murcia fault, at a quarter to seven in the evening

Find the repairs — this is a town that has rebuilt its Baroque churches within living memory

Walk the old town, the first historic-artistic ensemble declared in the Region of Murcia, back in March 1964

Lorca sits where the Guadalentín enters its valley, under a long castle ridge, and it has more archaeological sites than any other municipality in Murcia. Its old town and castle precinct were the first historic-artistic ensemble declared in the Region of Murcia, on 5 March 1964, and its Holy Week processions — famous for silk embroidery rather than sculpture — are of International Tourist Interest. On 11 May 2011 a magnitude 5.1 earthquake on the Alhama de Murcia fault struck at 18:47, shallow enough to do severe damage to a town full of Baroque buildings. Much of what you see has been repaired since.

Lorca: The Castle, the Embroidery and the Earthquake

Swim in water that is nowhere more than seven metres deep and several degrees warmer than the open sea

Walk or drive La Manga and work out that in places this sandbar is a hundred metres wide with sea on both sides

Take a dip in the mud at Lo Pagán, where people coat themselves in the lagoon's mineral mud and bake

Find out what happened: nitrates and phosphates off the farmland stripping the oxygen out, thousands of fish dead in October 2019 and tonnes more in August 2021

Work out what Spain did in October 2022 — granted the Mar Menor rights of nature, the first ecosystem in Europe to be given them

The Mar Menor is 135 square kilometres of saltwater lagoon cut off from the Mediterranean by La Manga, a sandbar 22 kilometres long and in places only a hundred metres wide — the largest lagoon in Spain, nowhere more than seven metres deep, and warm and calm enough that it has been a nursery sea for beginners for generations. It is also in crisis. Nitrates, ammonium and phosphates washing off intensive farming have stripped the oxygen out of it: thousands of fish died in October 2019 and four to five tonnes were removed in a single week in August 2021. In October 2022 Spanish lawmakers granted the lagoon rights of nature — the first ecosystem in Europe to be treated as a legal person.

The Mar Menor: Europe's Largest Saltwater Lagoon

Look up at the cathedral's 93-metre bell tower, the third tallest in Spain

Stand in front of the Baroque main façade, then find the chapel of the Vélez inside

Find the urn in the main chapel that holds the heart of Alfonso X the Wise

Go to the Museo Salzillo and find his nativity of 556 pieces and the processional figures of Good Friday

Murcia's cathedral was consecrated in 1467 and built up over the next three centuries, so its Gothic core carries Renaissance, Baroque and neoclassical additions: the bell tower, 93 metres high and the third tallest in Spain; the Baroque main façade, counted one of the masterpieces of Spanish Baroque; and the chapel of the Vélez. In the main chapel an urn holds the heart and entrails of Alfonso X the Wise. Across the old town the Museo Salzillo is given over to the city's Baroque sculptor Francisco Salzillo: the processional figures of the Cofradía de Nuestro Padre Jesús, which still go out on the morning of Good Friday, his nativity scene of 556 pieces, and some fifty of his preparatory models.

Murcia: Salzillo's Nativity and the Cathedral Tower

Book a guided visit to the Cañaica del Calar or Fuente del Sabuco shelters

Work out what Levantine rock art is and why the 1998 listing covers so many separate sites

Come at Easter for the tamborada, part of the same UNESCO inscription as Hellín's

Drive up into the Sierra de Moratalla, which is among the emptiest country in the south-east

Moratalla is one of the largest municipalities in Spain by area and one of the emptiest, running up into the Sierra de Moratalla in the far north-west of Murcia. Its rock shelters hold Levantine paintings that are part of the Rock Art of the Mediterranean Basin on the Iberian Peninsula, listed by UNESCO in 1998 — the Cañaica del Calar and Fuente del Sabuco among them. The town itself climbs to a castle keep, and the drum festival at Easter is part of the same UNESCO tamboradas inscription as Hellín.