La Rioja: vineyards, dinosaur tracks, and mountain monasteries
DOCa Rioja: 65,000 hectares of tempranillo
The DOCa Rioja designation spans three sub-regions — Rioja Alta, Rioja Oriental, and Rioja Alavesa — with 65,326 inscribed hectares of vineyard. Tempranillo accounts for 87 % of red grape surface. Haro holds Spain's highest density of century-old wineries: Muga, López de Heredia (founded 1877), CVNE, and Bodegas Bilbaínas share the Barrio de la Estación, one square kilometre next to the railway tracks. Every 29 June, Haro's Wine Battle goes through 130,000 litres of red wine sprayed from the crags of Bilibio.
Icnitas: 11,000 dinosaur footprints
The Riojan sierra preserves more than 11,000 icnitas (fossilised dinosaur footprints) across 150 sites — the highest concentration in Europe. At Enciso, a 3 km trail passes theropod and iguanodont tracks from the Lower Cretaceous (120 million years ago). The Palaeontology Centre in Igea displays a fossilised tree trunk 11 metres long, one of the largest on the continent.
San Millán, Suso, and the first texts in Castilian
At the Suso monastery (San Millán de la Cogolla), a 10th-century monk wrote the Glosas Emilianenses: notes in Navarro-Aragonese romance and Basque that rank among the earliest written records of both languages. The Yuso monastery, built in the 11th century just downhill, houses a library of medieval codices. The ensemble has been a World Heritage Site since 1997.