What's an Especial Climb in Cycling?

An Especial climb is the Vuelta's, the third grand tour of the year, equivalent to the Tour de France's Hors Catégorie climbs. They are the toughest climbs offered up by La Vuelta, and similar to the tour, offer the most amount of points in the King of the Mountains classification.

The climb immediately preceding an Especial climb in terms of difficulty is a Category 1 climb. Climbs than distinguish themselves in descending order until Category 4. Typically the points offered by each category, starting with the Especial level is 20,15,10,5 and 3 respectively.