Salinas de Chiclana, Spain

June 21, 2014

Chiclana is a town just 45 minutes south of Rota.  It's most famous feature is the 3.7 mile long beach. The town has around 3,000 hours of sun per year with December bringing the rains totaling 24 inches per year. The marsh surrounding Chiclana has a naturally high salinity making it perfect for harvesting salt.  This farm has four stops for the water before the salt gets harvested.  First is an estuary that is flooded periodically from the tidal river that goes through marsh where they also grow fish.  The next two steps are narrow and curvy channels where the water will evaporate from the strong and dry winds coming from the Saharan desert.  The last step is a series of rectangular ponds that get flooded from the curvy channels.  This water will evaporate and then get flooded totaling 5 layers of dried salt.  Three types of salt are harvested.  First, the virgin marine salt that comes from the bottom of the last pools and is rinsed with saltwater.  Second is the salt flour that is what solidifies on the surface and is very fine harvested by hand with nets.  Lastly is the flaky salt that comes from the middle layers from the bottom of the last pools and has the most intense flavor.  After the tour of the farm we had a lovely meal and got to taste all the different salts on the best foods to bring out the flavors. This farm is open to the public and operates as a kind of environmental center.

http://www.rotamwr.com/galleries/view/cata-de-sal-exploring-sea-salt