Thermes Puente Viesgo — La Hermida

Thermes La Hermida draws bicarbonated geothermal springs from the walls of the deepest gorge in Cantabria, the Desfiladero de la Hermida, a twenty-kilometre slot canyon where the Deva river has cut through a limestone massif to create a passage so narrow that sunlight reaches the valley floor for only a few hours each day and the thermal springs emerge directly from the canyon walls in a setting of extreme geological drama. The gorge walls of La Hermida reach 1,500 metres in height at their tallest points and the village itself, with its Romanesque hermitage and its thermal establishment built against the cliff face, occupies a terrace barely wide enough for a road and a river in one of the most claustrophobic and magnificent natural corridors in northern Spain. The bicarbonated waters, used since Roman times when the gorge served as the main passage between the Cantabrian coast and the Liébana valley, offer a spa experience embedded in one of the most physically dramatic gorge landscapes on the Iberian Peninsula.