Inland mountains create desert pockets on the Spanish coast
Geography
A wall of high mountains acts as a giant umbrella for the Spanish coast, blocking rain clouds to create a rare European desert with more sun than the tropics.
The white sands of Spain's Costa Blanca owe their famous glow to a geographic shield. While the surrounding Mediterranean can be humid and temperamental, the inland mountains create a rain shadow that blocks eighty percent of incoming storms. This creates a micro-pocket of desert-like conditions where the air stays crisp and the sky remains clear for three hundred and twenty days a year.