Andorra sits inside a nearly 500-kilometre mountain wall
The Pyrenees stretch almost 500 kilometres from the Cantabrian junction to Cap de Creus on the Mediterranean, peaking at Aneto’s 3,404 metres in Huesca, Spain. The main crest mostly divides France from Spain, with Andorra wedged between—though medieval Aragon and Navarre once spilled across both flanks.
Classical writers disagree about the name. Silius Italicus ties it to Pyrene, daughter of King Bebryx, whom Hercules wronged during his labour against Geryon. Returning to find her torn body, the hero buries her in grief and cries her name until the cliffs echo it, commanding the peaks to keep it forever. Pliny the Elder links the tale to Lusitania but dismisses it as fable, and others point to the Greek pyr, fire, since Diodorus Siculus describes herdsmen’s blaze that scorched the slopes.
On the Spanish side the chain crosses Catalonia’s Girona, Barcelona and Lleida provinces, then Aragonese Huesca and Zaragoza, Navarre, and Basque Gipuzkoa. French flanks run through Pyrénées-Orientales, Aude, Ariège, Haute-Garonne and the two départements that share Pyrenees National Park. Andorra, an independent principality, is squeezed between the two national slopes in the eastern sector.
Geographers split the range into western, central and eastern sections within the wider Alpine System. From the Basque Mountains beside the Bay of Biscay heights rise steadily eastward. The Central Pyrenees, running from the Somport pass to the Aran Valley, hold the highest summits, including Aneto on the Maladeta ridge. In the east elevations stay strikingly even, apart from one break in Ariège, until the chain drops away abruptly in the Albères.
The two flanks differ sharply. Spain has most of the foothills, a large, tangled system reaching from Navarre across northern Aragon into Catalonia with summits near 2,600 metres, plus a distinct Sub-Pyrenees zone at the south-eastern end. On the French side the main slopes plunge steeply with almost no foothills, the Corbières Massif in the north-east being the exception. The hedgerow cranesbill, Geranium pyrenaicum, takes its scientific name from the range.
Source: Pyrenees
