Sabinar de Calatañazor, Nature reserve in Calatañazor, Spain

The Sabinar de Calatañazor is a juniper forest set on limestone terrain at about 1000 meters elevation, where individual trees grow above 14 meters tall with substantial trunk widths. The landscape feels raw and open, with gnarled trees that look like wooden sculptures rising from the rocky ground.

The forest has existed since the Tertiary period and some individual trees are over 2000 years old, making this place a living archive of landscape history. Protected now, the reserve preserves these ancient specimens for future generations.

Sorianos call the sabina albar (Juniperus thurifera) "enebro", though it is a juniper, not a true enebro. Its extremely hard wood releases an incense-like smell when burned, which gave the species the name thurifera, "incense-bearing". The reserve's declaration also aims to protect the uses and customs practised here and to spread knowledge of its natural and ethnological values.

The reserve lies in the northwest of Soria province, south of the Sierra de Cabrejas, in the Calatañazor municipality beside Muriel de la Fuente. The interpretation centre for the Sabinar and the adjoining Fuentona monument stands between the two spaces, with interpretation and administrative facilities in the Palacio de Santa Coloma. The reserve covers 30 hectares, 22 of them wooded.

The reserve covers 30 hectares, 22 of them juniper woodland, and forms part of the proposed Sabinares Sierra de Cabrejas site of community importance. It is public utility mountain number 248 of Soria province, and the Santa Coloma palace in Calatañazor houses the interpretation and administrative facilities for it and the adjoining Fuentona monument.