Village
Xàbia (Jávea) is a municipality in the province of Alicante, in the Comunitat Valenciana, located in the comarca of La Marina Alta, on the province's north coast. It has around 30,600 inhabitants. Its coastline culminates at Cabo de la Nao, the point that reaches furthest into the sea of this whole part of the peninsula, alongside the capes Negro and San Martín and the islands of Portichol and Descubridor. Inland rises the Montgó, over 750 metres high, which shields the municipality from northern storms and contributes to a mild climate, with an average temperature of about 18 °C. The Gorgos River, dry for most of the year, crosses the comarca from west to east. It preserves a historic town centre and offers routes of viewpoints over the sea.
Activity
Xàbia's patron saint is San Sebastián, whose festival is held from 21 to 25 January; the parish of San Bartolomé, whose feast day falls on 24 August, gives its name to another notable celebration on the local festive calendar.
Monument
The church of San Bartolomé, on the Plaza de la Iglesia in Xàbia, is a fortified temple whose tower-apse dates back to the 14th century, while the rest of the building, in Valencian Gothic style and with defensive elements such as machicolations and sentry boxes against Barbary attacks, was built in the 16th century under the direction of Domingo Urtiaga. In medieval times it served both a defensive and a religious function. It is built entirely of local sandstone, known as piedra tosca, traditionally quarried mostly from the Cova Tallada, at sea level below Cape San Antonio. It has been declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) since 1931, when it was recognized as a historic-artistic monument of the Tesoro Artístico Nacional (then Spain's highest category of protection for artistic heritage).
Monument
Former telegraph station built in 1860 for the submarine cable linking the Peninsula with the Balearic Islands, laid between Xàbia and the Ibizan town of San José over 113 kilometres under the sea, along the shortest possible stretch between the two coasts. The service, which because of its strategic importance came to require military protection, suffered several breakdowns — one of them in 1870 — and remained operational until the 1950s. In the early 21st century the town council converted the building into a cultural centre and exhibition space.
Monument
A group of eleven windmills from the 14th to the 18th centuries in Xàbia, used for grinding grain. They stand on a spur of Mount Montgó towards Cape San Antonio, within the natural park, facing south above the town of Jávea. They are cylindrical structures about 6 metres in diameter and 7 in height, which were fitted with a conical roof and a set of sails. Today only the cylindrical structures survive, although the town council of Jávea planned in 2024 to restore and recover the three mills it owns.
Nature
The Xàbia side of the Montgó massif, with vertical cliffs over 150 metres high and the Cape San Antonio Marine Reserve, created in 2002 to protect the posidonia meadows and rocky seabeds. The massif, declared a natural park on 16 March 1987 and spread across Xàbia and Dénia over 2117 hectares, reaches 753 metres in altitude and gathers more than 650 plant species, some endemic such as the Valencian rock violet or the rock scabious. Among its crags nest Bonelli's eagle, the peregrine falcon, the eagle owl and Audouin's gull, and wild boar, rabbits, foxes and badgers live on the mountain.
Nature
The Cala de la Granadella, in Xàbia (La Marina Alta, Alicante), is a beach bordering Benitachell that is very popular with tourists, named Spain's Best Beach in 2012. It combines medium and large rounded pebbles with rock formations ideal for diving: to the right two small coves open up, and to the left there are rocks from which people jump into the water.
Curiosity
The settlement of Xàbia was moved two kilometres inland in medieval times because of Barbary pirate raids, remaining fortified until 1877.
Activity
The Living Chess of Xàbia (La Marina Alta, Alicante) is an annual theatrical performance with boys and girls acting as pieces in a game of chess, held on the port esplanade on the last Saturday of July. It first took place in 1996, as an activity within the municipality's festival programme. Recognized as a Fiesta de Interés Turístico Nacional (Spain's national tourist-interest festival designation), the same declaration at international level is in progress, and it has been performed on special occasions outside Xàbia, in Thiviers (France), Morelia (Mexico), Vitoria, Linares and Alcoy.
Activity
The Bous a la Mar are a form of popular bull festivity held in a square open to the sea, in the harbour or on the beaches, in which runners jump into the water to dodge the bull's charges. It used to be celebrated in several Catalan towns, now banned there, and today survives only in three municipalities of the Comunidad Valenciana: Benicarló, Dénia and Xàbia, where it remains linked to the festivities of Our Lady of Loreto.
Food and drink
Seafarers' stew of rock fish cooked in a tin or shallow dish with potato, tomato, ñora pepper and paprika, without rice. The fishermen prepared it on board with what was not sold at the fish market and today it figures on the menus of the port's restaurants.