Sagarra's lesser spotted fritillary is the Iberian counterpart to the lesser spotted fritillary (Melitaea trivia), a butterfly found more widely in Italy and south-eastern Europe (and one I've never seen).

The species is very similar to some forms of spotted fritillary, a very variable butterfly. The most visible differences are a more straw-orange colour, rather than fiery red-orange, outwardly concave submarginal lunules on the upperside of the forewing and vaguely triangular black submarginal spots in the white on the underside of the hindwing (though they can appear triangular in the spotted fritillary, too). It is also slightly smaller than an average spotted fritillary, though spotted fritillaries vary greatly in size. More definitive, but harder to see, is the presence of the disco-cellular vein closing the cell on the underside hindwing. This vein is inconspicuous, and almost impossible to detect in the second half of its path across the cell, but with a very good view of the underside the beginning of it can be seen reasonably clearly.

In the past, Sagarra's fritillary (a name given by Leraut in his latest book on the butterflies of Europe) was treated as a subspecies of lesser-spotted fritillary. The most recent works on the genus Melitaea agree it is a separate species. It is found locally and uncommonly in parts of Spain, Portugal, Italy and just into France, in the Alpes Maritimes. Elsewhere in northern Italy there occur what appear to be hybrids between this species and the lesser spotted fritillary. I found it flying on a hot, dry, roadside edge in Aragón in North Spain in July 2017. Probably half a dozen individuals were zooming around and stopping very briefly to nectar at the end of the day. I was keen to get shots of the undersides - very difficult, given their constant movement - and rather omitted the uppersides.

The caterpillars feed on various species of Verbascum and like those of many Melitaea species hibernate gregariously in silken webs. There are two broods, the first flying in April-May and the second from June to August.