Starry skies, the darkest nights in Spain, guided or on your own.

On a moonless night high up on La Palma you see so many stars that it is hard to find the constellations you know from the city. That is the experience this page brings together: places in Spain where the darkness is protected or so vast that it is worth the journey, with someone to show you the sky or with a viewpoint to do it alone. They are La Palma, Teide, the summit of Gran Canaria at Tejeda, the Montsec, the Sierra de Javalambre, Prades, Riópar, Chulilla, the Cíes Islands and Monfragüe.

Altitude, few people and a law: why there

Three things make a dark sky. The first is height. In the Canary Islands the observatories sit above the sea of clouds the trade winds leave, at more than 2,000 metres, in dry, still air: that is why the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias has its telescopes at the Roque de los Muchachos and at Izaña. The second is the lack of light around. Javalambre and the Montsec are in districts with very few inhabitants and no big city on the horizon. The third is protection: since 1988 a national law has limited outdoor lighting on La Palma and on the part of Tenerife that can be seen from the observatories.

On top of this come the Starlight Foundation certifications, which you will see on signs and websites. A Starlight Reserve certifies that the sky is good and protected; a Starlight Tourist Destination adds that there are trained guides, viewpoints and accommodation prepared for it. La Palma, the Montsec, Gúdar-Javalambre, the Sierra del Segura at Riópar and Monfragüe have one or the other.

A guided night, step by step

You arrive with the last light and your eyes take a good twenty minutes to adjust. Then, with a laser pointer, the guide points out the Pole Star, the constellations of the season, whichever planets are up that night and, in summer, the Milky Way. The final part is at the telescope: the Moon if it is up, Saturn or Jupiter, a cluster, a nebula, perhaps a galaxy as a faint smudge.

The format varies. At Teide it is an hour at the cable car base station, from €35 and from age 8. On La Palma it is two hours of sky, three and a half with the journey, from €25, with a transport option. At Riópar, two hours with a workshop beforehand for €25, and under-10s do not pay. At Chulilla you walk about 4 km up to the Muela at dusk before looking. On the Cíes the route lasts an hour and is only for those staying at the campsite. And at the summit of Gran Canaria, Astroeduca sets up telescopes on fixed dates each month from €10.

If photography interests you, on La Palma there is a five-hour night landscape photography evening in groups of three to six, with your own camera and tripod, for €49.

What each observatory shows you

Research observatories are visited by day: you do not look through their telescopes, you go inside them. At the Teide Observatory, at Izaña, the visit lasts an hour and a half, costs from €21 and you look at the Sun through solar telescopes. At the Roque de los Muchachos you enter the domes of the large telescopes in almost two hours, from €15; the IAC does not run visits from December to March. Next door is the visitor centre, an astronomy museum at 2,426 metres. At Javalambre, the observatory visit runs from April to October, from age 12, and costs €40 with the museum.

Outreach centres are the ones that open at night. The Parc Astronòmic del Montsec starts in a 12-metre planetarium whose dome opens to the real sky and continues in the telescope park: two hours for €18, from age 10, with sessions in Spanish and Catalan. Galáctica, in Arcos de las Salinas, offers an hour and a half of observing for €25, and for those who want more, sessions with 60 and 80 cm telescopes from €60. The Parc Astronòmic de Prades has sessions by age from €15, one of them designed for small children.

The Moon decides the date

To see the Milky Way and the deep sky, go in the week of the new moon. In 2027 the new moon falls on 7 January, 6 February, 8 March, 6 April, 6 May, 4 June, 4 July, 2 and 31 August, 30 September, 29 October, 28 November and 27 December. With a full moon the sky is washed out and only the bright stars remain, but the Moon through a telescope is a spectacle: with children, the waxing crescent works well.

The Milky Way at its brightest, the part towards the galactic centre, rises low in the south. You see it in the small hours in spring and early in the night from June to August, which are its good months. In winter, more transparency and more cold.

Meteor showers peak on fixed dates. The Perseids, the best known, peak on 13 August 2027 with a waxing moon: wait for the Moon to set, after midnight. The Quadrantids, on 4 January, come almost at new moon, but their peak lasts only a few hours. The Geminids, on 14 December, coincide in 2027 with a full moon and only the brightest will be seen.

Mountain clothing at night

Take winter clothes even in August. At Teide and the Roque de los Muchachos you are above 2,000 metres and the temperature drops sharply when the sun goes down; at the Montsec or Javalambre, above a thousand, you stand still for two hours. Layers, a hat, gloves and something to sit or lie on. A torch with red light only, and your phone with the brightness at minimum.

Fitting it into the day

The night is the end of the day. On La Palma, visit the observatory in the morning and the caldera in the afternoon. At the Montsec, the Congost de Mont-rebei in the morning and the Parc at nightfall. At Javalambre, Galáctica's solar observation in the afternoon and the night session after dinner. To avoid getting back at all hours, sleep nearby: the Parador de Las Cañadas is inside Teide; Cal Maciarol, a kilometre from the Parc del Montsec, is Starlight certified; the Balneario de Manzanera presents itself as a Starlight Hotel; and the Hospedería de Monfragüe has an astronomical viewpoint in the garden.