Spain has put forward its biggest single expansion of ocean protection in years — a plan covering more than 22,000 square kilometers of water around the Canary Islands and Mediterranean, an area larger than the country of El Salvador.

  • 23 new marine protected areas proposed
  • 22,405 km² (8,651 mi²) of ocean waters covered
  • 24.53% of Spanish waters would be protected, up from 22.45%
  • 4 of the new sites sit in the Mediterranean; the rest surround the Canary Islands

A hotspot for whales, turtles, and deep coral

The proposal, put forward in July by Spain's Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO), targets waters primarily in the Macaronesia region around the Canary Islands, plus four sites off Valencia, Almería, Granada, and Mallorca, according to Mongabay. Seventeen sites, covering 2,209 km², would protect Canary Islands waters as sites of community importance; two special protection areas covering 14,855 km² would safeguard seabird feeding grounds, including habitat for the Barolo shearwater and Bulwer's petrel.

The designations target seagrass meadows, coral reefs, and submarine canyons, alongside migration and feeding areas for cetaceans and marine turtles. The region is known for exceptional marine biodiversity.

"The Canary Islands are in the heart of the Macaronesian waters... All of that region is a hotspot for whales. The islands themselves are in the middle of the ocean, so they are almost like giant pinnacles showing up, and there are a lot of sharks, there is seagrass, we have deep corals, we have a lot of species," said Carlos Mallo Molina, founder of the Canary Islands-based NGO Innoceana.

Closing the gap between paper and protection

The proposal is Spain's latest step toward a national commitment to protect 30% of its waters by 2030, part of the EU's broader biodiversity strategy. The plan would raise Spain's protected share of its waters by 2.08 percentage points, from 22.45% to 24.53%, according to the ministry's own proposal document. Public consultation on the plan runs until Sept. 15, 2026, after which the European Commission must approve the designations before Spain has six years to build formal management plans.

Conservation groups have previously flagged a gap between marine areas that are designated on paper and those that are actively managed. Helena Álvarez, a senior marine scientist at Oceana, told Mongabay that fewer than half of Spain's existing marine protected zones have management plans in place, and less than 0.1% of Spanish waters currently qualify as strictly protected.

That history is exactly why campaigners are watching the follow-through as closely as the announcement. Molina said he hopes the approval process brings local institutions, the private sector, and civil society groups into the plan from the start, so the new protections translate into enforcement — not just lines on a map. If they do, the Canary Islands' whales, turtles, and coral gardens will have real breathing room for the first time in decades.

The stakes for getting enforcement right are well documented. A 2025 study in Marine Policy found that 63% of the area covered by Spain's existing Mediterranean marine protected areas isn't shielded strictly enough to safeguard biodiversity, and bottom trawling has continued inside some protected zones despite the designation. That history is exactly why this proposal is being watched less as a finish line and more as a test: whether Spain can turn a map of protected water into water that is actually protected.