Village
El Pinós, or Pinoso, is a municipality of El Vinalopó Mitjà, in the west of Alicante, bordering Murcia, with 8,523 inhabitants (INE 2025) and a linguistic predominance of Valencian. Its territory, of 126.9 km², is dominated to the south-east by the Cabezo de la Sal, an 893-metre gypsum and salt diapir exploited for centuries, and it borders the Sierra de Salinas to the north and the Sierra del Reclot, rich in marble, to the south. The climate, as cold and dry as that of La Mancha, and sparse vegetation mark the landscape. The oldest remains, from the Upper Palaeolithic, gave way to stable settlement in the Bronze Age and to intense Romanisation, with four villae located. In 1296 James II of Aragon incorporated the comarca into the Kingdom of Valencia. The municipality is celebrated today for its wines and its gastronomy.
Nature
The vineyard landscape surrounding El Pinós, in the comarca of El Vinalopó Mitjà, covers some 3,830 hectares devoted mainly to the monastrell variety, used to make high-strength red wines. Vine growing became the municipality's most representative activity as early as 1880, and in 2001 Pinoso was the largest wine producer in the whole province of Alicante. This native grape is also the source of fondillón, a wine traditionally associated with local gastronomy.
Nature
A natural salt outcrop in the municipality of El Pinós, a singular landscape with 230 million years of geological history. It is a salt diapir still under mining exploitation: 700,000 tonnes of salt are extracted annually from the Cabezo de Sal del Pinoso, by dissolution with water; the resulting brine is then sent to the salina de Torrevieja, where the process of obtaining the salt is completed.
Curiosity
El Pinós, together with Algueña and La Romana, is renowned for its cured sausage tradition, one of the distinctive food products of the comarca of El Vinalopó Mitjà.
Activity
El Pinós's patronal festivities, from the 1st to the 9th of August, honor the Virgen del Remedio, while its hamlet of Rodriguillo separately celebrates, every 17th of May, the feast of San Pascual Bailón.
Monument
The church of San Pedro Apóstol of El Pinós, whose construction began in 1743, was remodelled in the 19th century and stands in the Plaza de España, in the centre of the village. It is the municipality's parish church and houses the image of the Virgen del Remedio, patron saint of El Pinós, in whose honour the patronal festival is held between 1 and 8 August.
Monument
Tower designed in 1887 by the Alicante architect José Guardiola Picó at the request of the mayor Francisco Rico Lucas. The clock, with three bells and four dials in a wrought-iron cage, was bought in Madrid in 1899 for 11,000 pesetas and works manually with three weights of 500, 200 and 100 kilos, which have to be wound daily. It stands on a small hill in the old part of town, next to the old road towards Yecla and Villena.
Monument
Hermitage of Santa Catalina, in El Pinós (Vinalopó Mitjà, Alicante), carved into the rock of a small hill in 1989. It was built on the same spot where, between 1926 and 1974, there was a drinking-water reservoir for the municipality.
Nature
The Monte Coto of El Pinós is a natural area protected against the environmental impact of the nearby quarries, surrounded by a wooded mass of pines and holm oaks. Within it is the Aula de la Naturaleza, an environmental education centre that hosts outreach activities about the natural environment of the Vinalopó Mitjà comarca.
Curiosity
El Pinós was born as the hamlet of Casas de Costa, dependent on Monòver, until it obtained the title of royal town in 1826. The settlement that gave rise to the village belonged to Monóvar and bore that name; at the start of the 18th century it had barely some 20 inhabitants, who grew to more than a thousand in under a century thanks to the agricultural colonisation of the area. In 1826 the municipality became independent from Monóvar on receiving the cédula de Real Villa, an event commemorated today every year with the festival of the Día del Villazgo.
Activity
Festival of El Pinós (El Vinalopó Mitjà, Alicante) which commemorates the granting of the cédula de Real Villa and the resulting municipal independence from Monòver, an event that took place in 1826. It is celebrated every year on the Sunday closest to 12 February, the date on which the town remembers its separation and the start of its life as an independent town.
Activity
Patron saint festivities of El Pinós, in the Vinalopó Mitjà comarca (Alicante), in honour of the Virgin of the Remedy. They are held between 1 and 8 August, dates on which the municipality centres its annual festive calendar on its patron saint.
Historical milestone
Phylloxera came late to the Alicante vineyard, already into the twentieth century, and forced the vines to be pulled up and replanted grafted onto American rootstock. Many dryland plots were not replanted and passed to the almond, which since then has shared the landscape with monastrell.
Food and drink
Dryland rice cooked in a paella pan with jointed rabbit, mountain snails, tomato and rosemary, with nothing from the sea. It is made over vine-shoot firewood and it is the food of the work gangs in the fields and of the great days of the town's festivities.