The National Parks Autonomous Agency (OAPN) is an autonomous agency of the Spanish central government that manages the National Parks Network and the Spanish Biosphere Reserves Network, as well as mountains, farms and other patrimonial assets of its property.

The law, defined the national parks as "those exceptionally picturesque, forested or rugged sites or places of the national territory, which the State consecrates, declaring them such, with the sole purpose of favoring their access through adequate means of communication, and respecting and to ensure that the natural beauty of its landscapes, the richness of its fauna and its flora and the geological and hydrological participles that they enclose are respected, thus avoiding with the greatest efficiency any act of destruction, deterioration or disfigurement by the hand of the man".

[7] A year later, the Aiguas Tortas y Lago de San Mauricio National Park was created.

This law also brings with it the reclassification of several parks, with the notorious expansion of Doñana and Ordesa y Monte Perdido.

[13] In the beginning of the 80s, the Garajonay National Park is created, one of the best world representations of the laurel, relict vegetation of the Tertiary Era.

[14] The Natural Spaces and Wild Flora and Fauna Conservation Act of 1989 gave a decisive push to the National Parks Network.

This law officially creates the Network and it contained a clause where it is detailed which parks are part of it and their ecosystems.

In 1995, the Constitutional Court declared unconstitutional the fifth additional provision of the law[18] and in 1997 the Spanish Parliament reformed the 1989 Act to establish a shared system of managing between the central government and the regions.

On June 23, 1995, because of the devolution of powers to the regions, the Minister of Agriculture Luis María Atienza approved a royal decree merging two other agencies, the Institute for the Conservation of Nature (ICONA) and the National Institute for Agrarian Reform and Development (IRYDA) to create the current OAPN.

The Constitutional Court was forced to interpret the law and it established in 2004 that the shared system consisted on a day-to-day management by the regions (including the appointment of all the officials and the heads of the national parks) but this management must to be finance by the regional governments, and the superior supervision and coordination of the Network was granted to the central government by giving to it the authority to create or extend national parks and to establish the general guidelines of action.

The National Parks Network Act of 2007 assumed the interpretation of the Constitutional Court and it granted the supervisory power to the Department of Environment, through its Autonomous Agency.

This law reinforces, for its singularity, the protection of those parks and it establish an improved coordination and support system with the central government.

In addition to the equipment and infrastructures for public use, all the national parks of the National Parks Network have at least one administrative office and a basic resource for their maintenance, surveillance and own monitoring (vehicles, forestry machinery, technical material, etc.).

The Constitution of 1978 established a decentralized system and in 1997 most of the regions assumed the managements of the active national parks within its territories.

This committee aims to deepen collaboration and coordination mechanisms, study possible common effects, reconcile the implementation of programs and actions in national parks, exchange information and experiences, and facilitate the dissemination of knowledge between the national parks administrations.