Jardines de Pereda, Santander

The Pereda Gardens is a public park in the city of Santander, in Cantabria. They are located on land reclaimed from the sea that was used as a port dock in 1805 and were officially opened in 1905 to coincide with the celebration of the Exhibition of Arts and Industries. It is a very busy space due to its centrality and proximity to the promenade, as well as the Botín Art Centre.

The gardens were dedicated to the Cantabrian novelist José María de Pereda. The sculpture to his person, made by Lorenzo Coullaut Valera, stands out. The engravings that can be seen surrounding the bust of Pereda represent scenes from his works.

The gardens are characterised by the tree groves of more than 200 trees that serve as shelter from September to March for thousands of small starlings, typical of the Santander winter. There are magnolias, holly trees, palm trees, cedars, horse chestnuts, pines, boxwoods, yews, lime trees and flowering apple trees.

With the construction of the Botín Centre nearby, a renovation of the adjoining gardens was carried out by the landscape designer Fernando Caruncho, which was completed in 2014. After the renovation, the Pereda gardens doubled their previous surface area of 48,000 m², doubling the areas of seating and tripling the green areas, as part of the road traffic of the Pereda promenade was buried by means of a tunnel.