Ducks, not flamingos. That is the first thing to know about the second wetland reserve of Malaga province, the one almost nobody has on the list.
How many lagoons are in the Campillos reserve? Five or six, depending on which official page you read. The regional visitor portal names six, including Laguna Redonda, while the environment site of the same department lists five: Dulce, Salada, Camuñas, Capacete and Cerero. Neither page corrects the other, and every basin lies inside the municipality of Campillos.
The Junta de Andalucía puts “the large numbers of waterfowl, mainly ducks” at the top of what makes the reserve matter, and then names 6 species, from flamingo and black-winged stilt to common coot. The space covers 1,338.21 hectares, of which only 84.86 are reserve in the strict sense, and it has been protected since 1989. The Campillos monitoring station is also the only one in the province that exceeded the ozone threshold in 2024, and the reserve is one of 4 lagoon reserves in Malaga.
Ducks before flamingos
The Junta de Andalucía puts “the large numbers of waterfowl, mainly ducks” at the top of what makes the reserve matter, and then names 6 species: flamingo, black-winged stilt, northern shoveler, Eurasian wigeon, common coot and black-headed gull. The Campillos monitoring station also passed the ozone target value in 2024, as covered in Malaga air quality.
Read that list carefully and 3 of the 6 are ducks. The flamingo is on it, but it heads a roll where the supporting cast is wintering waterfowl, not a breeding colony.
No census, no total species count and no recommended season are published for the Lagunas de Campillos, so none are given here.
Two wetland reserves, not one
Three more wetlands in Malaga province carry the same protection label, and one of them is the famous one. The other two are Laguna de la Ratosa and the Archidona lagoons. The regional government gives Fuente de Piedra a lagoon of some 1,400 hectares, close to 9,000 counting its surroundings, declared a nature reserve in January 1984.
Campillos came five years later, in 1989, over 1,338.21 hectares, and it is not one lagoon but several small basins. That single structural difference explains the flamingos: a large permanent sheet of water breeds them, a scatter of shallow seasonal basins feeds passing ducks.
If the colony is what you came for, the figures are in Fuente de Piedra.
Water with no way out
Why a visit here changes so much from year to year is written into the official definition. The lagoons of Campillos are “of endorheic origin (they have no outlet to the sea), seasonal according to rainfall and with relatively high salinity in their waters”.
Three words, three consequences. Endorheic: water arrives and evaporates, and no river carries it off. Seasonal: the level is whatever the year’s rain decides. Saline: the concentration climbs exactly as the water drops.
The Junta de Andalucía publishes no depth, no salinity figure and no water-level record for the reserve, so the only honest advice is to treat a wet spring and a dry one as two different places.
Five, six, and the missing Redonda
Now the part that trips up anyone arriving with a printed list. Two pages of the same regional department publish two different counts.
- The visitor portal names six: “Laguna Dulce (the largest), Laguna Salada, de Capacete, de Camuñas, Laguna Redonda and Laguna del Cerero”.
- The environment site of that same department names five: “there are five lagoons forming this Nature Reserve: Dulce, Salada, Camuñas, Capacete and Cerero”.
- The one that vanishes from the short roll is Laguna Redonda, and neither page acknowledges the other.
Both counts are printed here because neither can be dismissed. What the two agree on is that Laguna Dulce is the largest, that no page gives a surface area basin by basin, and that everything sits inside the municipal boundary of Campillos.
The 84.86 hectares that are the actual reserve
The headline area is 1,338.21 hectares, and the small print underneath it is the most useful number on the sheet.
Only 84.86 hectares are reserve zones in the strict sense. The other 1,256.63 hectares are the peripheral protection zone wrapped around all the lagoons, which works out at roughly one hectare of core for every fifteen of buffer.
That buffer is why the drive in feels like farmland: it is farmland, held at a distance from the water on purpose. The reserve also carries SAC code ES6170015, plus SPA, SCI, a place on the Andalusian Wetlands Inventory and a Ramsar listing.
No dedicated facilities are published either: the sheet mentions visitor centres and information points in general terms but names none for this reserve. That is the practical gap with the Gaitanes gorge, Sierra Crestellina and Los Reales de Sierra Bermeja, the three sites declared the very same day, which do publish waymarked trails with distances and grades.
The comarca is Antequera, so the sensible day is the one already laid out in Antequera from Malaga or around the Antequera dolmens. It needs a car, with the caveats in hiring a car in Malaga, and it fits the map of day trips from Malaga.
Frequently asked questions about the Campillos lagoons
What birds can be seen at the Campillos lagoons?
Waterfowl above all, which the regional government describes as mainly ducks. Six species are named on the official sheet: flamingo, black-winged stilt, northern shoveler, Eurasian wigeon, common coot and black-headed gull. Three of those six are ducks, and no total species count is published.
How many lagoons are in the Campillos reserve?
It depends which official page you read. The regional visitor portal names six, including Laguna Redonda, while the environment site of the same department says five: Dulce, Salada, Camuñas, Capacete and Cerero. Neither page corrects the other, and all the basins lie inside the municipality of Campillos.
Is there always water in the Campillos lagoons?
No. The official description calls the lagoons endorheic, meaning they have no outlet to the sea, seasonal according to rainfall, and relatively saline. In a dry year the water surface shrinks a great deal, which is why the same visit can look completely different from one spring to the next.
What is the difference between Campillos and Fuente de Piedra?
Both are wetland nature reserves in northern Malaga province, but Fuente de Piedra is a single lagoon of some 1,400 hectares declared in January 1984, while Campillos is a complex of small basins over 1,338.21 hectares declared on 28 July 1989. The flamingo colony is at Fuente de Piedra.
Ducks over flamingos, five lagoons or six depending on the page, and a strict core barely one hectare in sixteen.