Parque Natural de las Salinas de Santa Pola

The Salinas de Santa Pola Natural Park covers 2,470 hectares along the Santa Pola Bay shoreline, between the municipalities of Santa Pola and Elche in Alicante province. Declared a natural park by the Valencian regional government in 1994, the site is listed under the Ramsar Convention as an internationally important wetland and classified as a Special Protection Area for Birds (ZEPA). Its landscape is a mosaic of active salt pans, freshwater pools, dune ridges, beaches and farmland where saltwater and freshwater habitats alternate within metres of each other. Historically, the salt pans and the nearby El Hondo Natural Park formed part of an extensive wetland known as the Albufera de Elche.

Salt production, which started in 1890 with the Pinet and Brac del Port operations, has created an artificial wetland that ranks among the most significant birdwatching spots on the Spanish Mediterranean coast. The greater flamingo is the park's most visible species: during the breeding season the colony can reach 8,000 individuals, clustering on the shallow salt-pan pools and forming pink patches against turquoise water that shift with the midday breeze. Alongside the flamingo, the park hosts avocets, black-winged stilts, little terns, shelducks, marbled teal, shovelers, grey herons, coots and moorhens. Ornithologists record over 170 species throughout the year, with diversity peaks during the spring and autumn migrations.

The park's biodiversity extends beyond birds. The Santa Pola salt pans sustain one of the world's strongest populations of the Spanish toothcarp (Aphanius iberus), an endemic Mediterranean fish classified as vulnerable, inhabiting brackish pools where salinity can reach three times that of the open sea. Halophytic vegetation lines the pool margins: glassworts and other Amaranthaceae adapted to these extreme concentrations. On the coastal dunes, marram grass and sea daffodils stabilise the sand against the easterly levante wind. Brine shrimp (Artemia salina), a tiny crustacean thriving in the highest-concentration pools, is responsible for the pink and orange tints that colour the water and forms the dietary base for many of the park's birds.

The park has an interpretation centre near the main entrance, where the salt-production process and the wetland's history are explained, and several bird hides along its signed trails. The paths are flat and accessible, making the park suitable for families with small children and for visitors with reduced mobility on certain stretches. From the raised hides, the view takes in evaporation pools where salt crystallises, Artemia-tinted water sheets, and beyond them the blue line of the Mediterranean. Tabarca Island appears on the sea horizon roughly 11 kilometres offshore, reachable by boat from Santa Pola harbour in about 25 minutes.