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Greater flamingos and smaller waders feeding across shallow working salt pans at Santa Pola
Reviewed August 2026
La Marina Subjects

The Salinas de Santa Pola: salt making, flamingos and a living wetland

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West of Santa Pola, the N-332 crosses a broad, flat world of shallow water, low dykes and white salt mounds. This is the Parque Natural de las Salinas de Santa Pola, a 2,470-hectare working wetland shared by the municipalities of Santa Pola and Elche. It is both an industrial landscape and one of the most important places for waterbirds on the southern Alicante coast.

From coastal lagoon to salt pans

The salinas are a surviving part of the old Albufera de Elche, the coastal lagoon that once extended across much of the Bajo Vinalopó. Sediment, drainage and cultivation steadily changed that larger wetland. Commercial salt works established here in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries reshaped the remaining marsh into evaporation ponds linked by channels and dykes.

Salt making did not simply replace the wetland. It kept large areas open and wet. Sea water enters the system and passes through ponds of increasing salinity before crystallising, while operators alter depths and flows as part of production. The result is a mosaic of deep and shallow brine, mud margins, saltmarsh, dunes and cultivated ground. Different birds can feed and rest in each part.

Flamingos and smaller specialists

Greater flamingos are the most conspicuous birds. Numbers vary with season and water conditions, and the best view may be a pale line far across a pan rather than the dense pink spectacle suggested by edited photographs. Pied avocets and black-winged stilts work the shallower edges, while terns, herons, ducks and small waders use the broader wetland through breeding, migration and winter.

The salt itself selects for specialised life. Salt-tolerant plants such as glasswort grow on the margins, tiny organisms flourish at high salinity and those organisms feed invertebrates and birds. The system sits within a wider chain of protected wetlands that includes El Fondo inland and the lagoons of La Mata and Torrevieja to the south. Birds move between them as water levels and food change.

A protected workplace

The Valencian government first protected the salinas in 1988. They are also included in the Ramsar list of wetlands of international importance and designated for their birdlife under European conservation rules. The salt companies continue to work within that protected setting. This coexistence is valuable but it is not effortless: water management, disturbance, pollution and changes around the park all affect its habitats.

Seeing the salinas

  • Begin at the salt museum and interpretation centre in Santa Pola. It explains the production system and gives current information about public routes.
  • Use marked paths and recognised viewpoints. The N-332 carries fast traffic and its verges are not informal birdwatching stops.
  • Bring binoculars and expect distance. Staying back protects feeding and nesting birds and often gives a better view of the wetland as a whole.
  • Water levels, salt work and bird numbers are seasonal, so no single visit shows every part of the system at its peak.

The salinas explain the western approach to Santa Pola, but the town continues east around its fishing harbour and towards the cape. Across the bay, Nueva Tabarca protects a different coastal habitat below the water.

Sources

Reviewed in August 2026 using the Generalitat Valenciana park record, the regional tourism service's natural-park guide, the official wetland inventory and the Ramsar designation record. Access, water levels and wildlife concentrations change, so use the park centre's current advice when visiting.