Museo de la Sal

Museums

The Salt Museum is located in a former salt factory within the Nature Reserve. As well as learning about the salt extraction process and its history, this museum gives a lot of useful information on the Nature Reserve, from where a route can be followed to observe Flamingos, Marbled Teals, Common Shelducks, Little Egrets, Caspian Gulls, Black-winged Stilts… This beautiful Nature Reserve, protected since 1988 and recognised as a “Special Important Birds Area”, has been included in the list of “North African and European Humid Areas”. Stretching over 2,496 hectares, this wetland managed to survive thanks to the setting up of salt flats at the end of the last century. Salt extraction is the main economic activity in this area and, to a great extent, makes up the current ecosystem. The salt flats work this way: seawater flows into a circuit of ponds to get a gradual salt concentration as a consequence of evaporation. Mediterranean salt flats are of great biological interest owing to the fact that water flow doesn’t stop in winter. The ponds remain flooded all year through, so the ecosystem stays unaffected. Birds feed on fishes and invertebrates that go into the salt flats while salt production benefits from mineral richness brought by the birds’ excrements.