Like the eastern imperial, the adult has a broad distinctive white band on the shoulder and leading edge of the wing, which is even more pronounced in the Spanish than in the eastern species, and a much paler tawny color on the nape and crown, unlike the golden-yellow color on a similar area in the golden eagle.

The juvenile Spanish imperial eagle is very different from adults and other large raptors in this range, being overall a uniform pale straw-sandy colour, contrasting with broad black bands on both the upper and lower sides of the wings.

It has a relatively longer neck, and generally much flatter wing profile in flight than the upturned dihedral typical of a golden eagle.

Its stronghold is in the dehesa woodlands of central and south-west Spain, such as in Extremadura, Ciudad Real and areas in the north of Huelva and Seville's Sierra Norte.

[13] Rising numbers of vagrant birds born in Spain and then electrocuted in Morocco have been noted;[14] some areas used by the species in Morocco could be becoming sort of a "drain" in terms of the species recovery and this is due to the fact that the country stands in a similar situation as Spain was in the early 1980s when it comes to insulation of transmission towers.

As rabbit population crashed they have been recorded feeding on a wide range of vertebrates with varied success depending upon prey populations and may become semi-specialized hunters of water birds especially Eurasian coots, ducks and geese, also taking some numbers of partridges, pigeons and crows and any other bird they happen to encounter that is vulnerable to ambush.

Several mammals may also be taken including various rodents, hares, mustelids, hedgehogs and even other large predators such as red foxes or—rarely, since they are not typically present in the eagle's habitat—domestic cats and small dogs.

[21][22] The Spanish imperial eagle is one of several rabbit-favoring birds of prey in Spain along with the similarly specialized Iberian lynx.

In one case, in protection their own nest, an adult Spanish imperial eagle even killed a cinereous vulture, the largest accipitrid in the world.

[1] Threats include loss of habitat, human encroachment, collisions with pylons (at some point in the early 1980s, powerlines were responsible for 80% of deaths among birds in their first year of life)[26] and illegal poisoning.

These positive trends are largely attributed to mitigation measures to reduce mortality associated with powerlines, supplementary feeding, reparation of nests, reintroductions and decreases in the disturbance of breeding birds, although some of the observed increases may be due to more thorough searches within its range.