SPAIN

Placed in the Bahía de Cádiz Natural Park, the Salinas de Chiclana Environmental Resources Center has an area of ​​approximately 30 hectares which contain numerous natural and cultural resources with enormous interpretive and educational potential, which allows the development of an action plan linked to environmental education, public use and the conservation of this ecological and cultural legacy.

The center has a rehabilitated traditional coastal salt mill called Santa María de Jesús, which has recovered part of its original appearance along with its different components for regulating the water regime and extracting salt in an artisanal way.

Salinas de Chiclana offers a wide variety of unique experiences that you can develop in its facilities, from bathing in its crystallizers to tasting foods that are produced there such as salts, fish and algae.

Located in San Fernando (Cádiz), it is one of the few artisanal salinas that continue to produce salt in the province and it does so without interruption from Roman times. This salina has always been dedicated to the activities of a salina such as the production of salt and the Despesque of its Esteros. The traditional Despesque consists of obtaining the fish that enter the estuary in a natural way. These are caught with net flake and later cooked in a traditional way on firewood and sapina embers. Sapina is the set of saline flora, using for the most part the «limonianstrum Monopetalum» which in the saline jargon is known as «salao», which gives it a characteristic flavor that is hardly comparable with other forms of cooking. fish. This salina offers an unforgettable show where history and gastronomy come together.

The Preciosa and Roqueta salinas (Marambay) are once again an attraction thanks to their reopening in 2020 after more than 50 years of abandonment of the facilities. The first step was to rehabilitate the salt house and use this building as a multipurpose room. Now, Marambay embarks on taking advantage of its privileged environment in the Bahía de Cádiz Natural Park to obtain the cultivation of microalgae and integrate them into gastronomy.

The Machamalo salt flats constitute one of the most unique natural spaces in the Mar Menor environment and have five protection figures, four of them international (SCI, ZEPA, SPAIM, Ramsar Wetland and Protected Natural Area). Despite this, the abandonment of the salt activity about 25 years ago has led to a progressive deterioration of the facilities that has caused enormous damage to the salt infrastructure, both in the warehouses and offices and in the salinas themselves. ANSE acquired at the end of 2019, through its Foundation, the administrative concession of the eastern area of ​​the salt flats, and a 7,000 m2 plot with a ship in ruins, to promote a project to recover the salt activity.