Valle Salado(Añana Salt Valley) Location: Salinas de Añana, Álava 01426, Spain (20 miles west of Vitoria Gasteiz) [map] Open: tours from 10am (some in English) Admission: 10€ Public transport: best not, only five buses a day Five word summary: harvesting salt the Roman way Website:vallesalado.com Time to set aside: an hour 10 photos:on Flickr
This is quite the place, a valley stacked with pure white terraces where salt has been produced for over 7500 years. Today they use more modern production methods, i.e. how the Romans did it, but salt scraped from these pans still finds its way to kitchens, cooking schools and top-class restaurants.
Five salty springs rise around this small triangular valley, overlooked by a small village whose residents have exploited them for centuries. The briny liquid is seven times saltier than the sea, hence its suitability for economic production, and is irrigated around the site in narrow gutterlike channels. From here it's scooped into small rectangular pans to a depth of a few centimetres, brushed flat and then left to dry out in the sun. Production tends to take place between May and September when evaporation is at its peak and before autumn rain gets a chance to reverse the process. If the temperature's right then by Day Two the salt crystals can be swept up into chestnutwood baskets and moved to storage under wooden arcades, and then the procedure restarts. Simple but laborious work, and all with a tasty outcome.
Valle Salado remained productive until the mid 20th century when competition from other sites encouraged the workers to cut costs. The clay pans were replaced by cement and the wooden structures around the site were insufficiently maintained so began to deteriorate, ultimately leading to the abandonment of salt production. Thankfully in 1984 the Spanish government declared this a culturally important site and pumped in money, leading to a recovery process that's thus far restored about a quarter of the valley. A cluster of pans at the lower end is used to make salt for restaurants and the shop, while the rest is less stringently maintained and left for tour groups to walk through. Ridiculously the river that runs between the salt pans comes from a different spring so isn't salty at all.
Parking isn't signposted so we missed the turning, cursed a lot while trying to turn the car round and only narrowly made the start of the tour. The others in our group included Americans, Brits and those from other European countries who thought they'd cope better with a guide speaking English than Spanish, Basque or French. It was a stonkingly hot day so we should perhaps have taken up the offer of a parasol rather than spending an hour baking across a highly reflective white surface. Our guide led us up one side of the valley and back down the other, pausing occasionally to explain in detail how everything worked. We were also encouraged to dip our fingers in the salty gutter (hell yes, that's strong) and to ask questions (which extended the tour by a good ten minutes). Our guide need not have apologised for her language not being up to scratch.
Towards the end we reached the commercial pans where today a staff of ten keeps things ticking over, rather than employing the whole of the village. We got a chance to peer in at the ladies packing the flakes for sale, a job which continues all year round, and obviously ended up in the shop where various salty products were available. But before that came a chance to dip our feet in the hypersaline waters of the Salt Spa, even to go for a paddle, remembering afterwards to rinse everything below the knee before heading off. For an additional fee you can visit the springs, go for a tasting or become a salt worker for yourself because the site tries to turn a profit, which quite frankly isn't bad going for a neolithic site employing Roman production methods.
