The traditional salt lakes of the Bay of Cadiz Natural Park are the result of the human transformation of the marshes, the most extensive in Spain, conditioned by the environment in which they are located, for a specific purpose: to obtain salt from seawater.

They imply a true labyrinth of channels that require a normal tidal regime and a climate that allows the friction of the warm, dry winds on the land. We are, therefore, talking about coastal environments protected from the open sea, where soft materials (mud) predominate and are easily excavated, and where the rivers have sufficient capacity to counteract the potential erosion caused by waves with their sediment contributions.

The tilling of the marsh determines a path for the seawater that is dammed to obtain the salt dissolved in it, leading from a lower salinity (that of the seawater) to degrees that allow the precipitation of the different types of salt. This is achieved by reducing the depth of each section of the saline and exposing the water along the way to the sweep of the prevailing winds in the area, poniente (westerly) and levante (easterly), which, through friction on the water, evaporate it and therefore increase the concentration of the dissolved salt (less and less water for the same quantity of salt).

The whole system of pipes, marshes and canals of the Bay, which make the presence of salt exploitations possible, is structured around two main axes: San Pedro river in the northern Bay, and the Sancti Petri stream in the south.

The operation of a salt lake is simple: store seawater, expose it to the prevailing winds, allow it to evaporate and collect the salt. However, the traditional way of doing this is respecting the cycles of nature, the cycles of tides, sunshine, wind patterns, thermal seasonality, humidity and water temperature. It is therefore a model based not on the consumption of external energy, but on the ecosystem’s own energy, mainly from the sun and the wind.

At a later stage, with the help of large blades designed for this purpose, the salt is extracted and the rest of the water that contained it, known as salmuera (brine), is discarded. The salt accumulates on the central aisle waiting to be removed in wagons to the salt cellar, where the salt is piled up and dried before being packaged.

The coasts of Cádiz were the first areas in Spain to produce salt by insolation because of its special climatic conditions: levante wind has a high drying power and evaporates the water, it enjoys more than 3,000 hours of sunshine a year, temperatures are moderate due to the influence of the Atlantic and rainfall is scarce in the months when the salt is harvested.

Of the more than 10,000 hectares of the Bay of Cadiz Natural Park, the salt flats alone cover an area of more than 5,000 hectares, more than 80 % of which are now abandoned.

 

Period/Occurrence:

Climate is the basis for the harvesting of artisanal salt, and the sun and the wind influence the evaporation of seawater, which is why the months of May to September are the harvesting months. The rest of the year, work is conducted on the maintenance of the salt lakes to favour the maximum harvest.

Sal almacenada. San Fernando. Photo: Víctor Gañán Álvarez. © Instituto Andaluz del Patrimonio Histórico

IAPH image under the conditions established under license cc-by 3.0 de Creative Common. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/

Salinas. Sanlúcar de Barrameda. Andalucía Turismo y Deporte. www.andalucia.org

Detalle salinas. San Fernando. Photo: Víctor Gañán Álvarez. © Instituto Andaluz del Patrimonio Histórico

IAPH image under the conditions established under license cc-by 3.0 de Creative Common. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/

Salinas. Sanlúcar de Barrameda. Andalucía Turismo y Deporte. www.andalucia.org

Extracción de sal. Photo: Víctor Gañán Álvarez. © Instituto Andaluz del Patrimonio Histórico

IAPH image under the conditions established under license cc-by 3.0 de Creative Common. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/

Turismoelpuerto. (2018). Salinas de Santa María en El Puerto de Santa María-Grupo ASAL. [Video File].

Reference:
Centro de Documentación y Estudios. Victor Gañán Álvarez, Atlas de Patrimonio Inmaterial. Fase 3. Zona 2. Extracción artesanal de sal en la Bahía de Cádiz, 2013.