First of all, the main descriptive elements of vegetation used in the Spanish Forest Map on scale 1:200,000 (MFE2C) are put forward. Secondly, this paper includes an explanation of how plant cover maps are a supplementary tool for forest inventories in order to evaluate the actual state of vegetation. As an example, there is a description of characteristics of the current Spanish vegetation regarding the 4 descriptive elements of MFE2C: large climatic domains, structure, evolution level and dominant plant communities.