Village
Guardamar del Segura is a coastal city and municipality in the Vega Baja or Baix Segura, in the province of Alicante, beside the mouth of the Segura river, with 18,564 inhabitants. It has 11 km of coastline and beaches such as El Rebollo, mostly nudist, and others that have held the Blue Flag since 1987, such as Centro or Roqueta. It is known for its pine forest, planted in the early twentieth century to halt the advance of the shifting dunes that, since the eighteenth century, after the original forest was felled to build warships, had been invading the farmland; the dune defence and reforestation project was approved in 1897. The municipality is also home to the Torre de los Americanos, a 380 m naval antenna built by the United States Navy in 1962, the tallest structure on the Iberian Peninsula.
Nature
The Segura, mentioned by Rufus Avienus in his Ora maritima and known in Latin as flumen Tader, rises in the sierra de Segura, in the hamlet of Fuente Segura (Jaén), and after crossing Jaén, Albacete, Murcia and Alicante, flows into the Mediterranean at Guardamar, with a course of 325 km and a basin of nearly 15,000 km². It is one of the rivers with the greatest hydrological use in Spain, marked by an irregularity that causes major floods alternating with long droughts, and it has carried serious pollution problems in its lower course, now improving thanks to investment in water treatment. At its mouth, one of the most important dune systems in the Comunitat Valenciana is split in two, linked to the sediments it carries; it combines dunes, wetlands and paths, now undergoing ecological restoration.
Activity
Guardamar's patronal festival, of Interés Turístico Autonómico, honours San Jaime Apóstol; the main day, 25 July, includes a flower offering, a solemn mass and the procession of the patron saint accompanied by the Junta Central de Moros y Cristianos.
Nature
A former field of shifting dunes stabilised by a reforestation project begun in 1900 by the engineer Francisco Mira, which left a pine wood of some 800 hectares and close to 600,000 trees, popularly known as La Pinada.
Monument
The castle of Guardamar del Segura crowns a rocky hill beside the town, in the Baix Segura. Of Arab origin, it is an elongated enclosure divided into two parts: the upper one, polygonal in plan and dated to the first half of the 12th century, is the castle proper, of which few remains survive after the earthquake of March 1829; the lower one, larger, is surrounded by a Gothic wall modified in the 16th century, with stretches of wall, tower bases and the Baluard de la Pólvora (Gunpowder Bastion), the area of greatest archaeological value. The town lived within these walls until 1829, when it moved to the nearby plain. Today it is a consolidated ruin, partly restored and under excavation, and serves as a viewpoint over the mouth of the Segura and the coast of the district.
Historical milestone
The earthquake of 1829 razed the medieval town perched on the castle. Guardamar remade itself below, on the flat, with an orthogonal layout of perpendicular streets and low houses with wide courtyards, designed to withstand new tremors.
Historical milestone
Beneath the dunes of Guardamar a complex of cells and oratories of the 9th and 10th centuries was excavated: the oldest known Islamic ribat in the Peninsula. Its inscriptions date the building to 944 and document the devotees who withdrew there.
Food and drink
Small round pepper that is dried in the sun strung in ristras and used ground or whole to give colour and flavour to rice dishes, calderos and salmorretas. Its cultivation is traditional in the market gardens of Guardamar, beside the mouth of the Segura.
Food and drink
The king prawn caught off the mouth of the Segura gave its name to the seafarers' cooking of Guardamar. It is prepared on the griddle, boiled or in rice dishes, and its artisan fishery coexists today with the production of the coastal sea farms.