Village
Alhama de Murcia is a municipality of more than 24,000 inhabitants (24,163, INE 2025) in the Bajo Guadalentín, situated at the foot of the Sierra Espuña, whose Morrón peak reaches 1,444 metres within the regional park of the same name. The town, at 195 metres above sea level, sits on the foothills of the sierra de la Muela, between the Guadalentín valley and the sierra de Carrascoy, with a dry Mediterranean climate of mild winters and hot summers. It preserves Arab and Roman baths with more than 2,000 years of history linked to its thermal waters. In the Sierra Espuña, with its pine forests and scrubland of esparto grass, thyme, rosemary and rockrose, live the golden eagle, Bonelli's eagle, the peregrine falcon and the eagle owl.
Monument
Fortress of Islamic origin built between the 11th and 12th centuries on a hill overlooking the town, divided into an upper alcázar and a lower albacar; it is declared a Bien de Interés Cultural.
Monument
Roman baths of the 1st century AD built at the foot of the castle hill around a thermal spring, with two separate sets of rooms for leisure bathing and medicinal bathing; discovered in the 1980s and declared a Monumento Histórico-Artístico (Spain's heritage designation in force between 1931 and 1985) in 1983.
Monument
Spa built in the 19th century over the old Roman structures, using a spring that rises at 38 degrees and that has drawn settlement to the site for more than two thousand years.
Monument
Parish church in the old town of Alhama de Murcia, beside the Plaza Vieja at the foot of the castle hill.
Monument
Historic hermitage in Alhama de Murcia, one of the buildings which, together with the church of Santiago and the parish of San Lázaro, make up the municipality's religious heritage.
Monument
Circular structures of the 16th and 17th centuries at 1,400 metres above sea level on the southern slope of the Morrón de Espuña, used to gather, store and trade snow and ice until an ice factory opened in Totana in 1926.
Activity
One of the most characteristic festivals of Alhama de Murcia, with religious and popular events in honour of the Virgen de la Candelaria.
Activity
Los Mayos de Alhama de Murcia, in the Bajo Guadalentín, is a traditional festival linked to the arrival of spring, held on the first weekend of May; it was declared of Regional Tourist Interest in 1990 and of National Tourist Interest in 2018. Of pagan origin, linked to fertility rites of the land, it is celebrated with the creation of rag dolls called mayos, which carry social criticism, and with the corremayos, people dressed as jesters with bells and hats who parade through the streets. The programme includes night-time parades with folk music concerts and the mayo crosses, floral altarpieces that decorate various points around the town.
Activity
Early music festival bringing together performers from different countries in the setting of the Sierra Espuña regional park.
Curiosity
The municipality has five hamlets: the upper or mountain ones, El Berro and Gebas, on the foothills of Sierra Espuña, and the lower or valley ones, El Cañarico, Las Cañadas and La Costera, spread across the Guadalentín valley.
Nature
Sierra Espuña is a massif of the Baetic mountain range, in the Segura river basin, whose regional park protects 17,804 hectares across the municipalities of Alhama de Murcia, Totana and Mula; the whole mountain range covers more than 25,000 hectares and reaches 1,585 metres at Morrón de Totana. It is home to almost a thousand plant species and endemic fauna such as the Sierra Espuña squirrel. In the late 19th century the sierra was heavily degraded, having lost almost all its tree cover; in 1889 engineer Ricardo Codorníu began its reforestation, which became a model for the time. It was declared a Site of National Natural Interest in 1931 and a regional park in 1992, as well as a Special Protection Area for birds. Its traditional buildings use the dry-stone technique.
Monument
Visitor and management centre of the Sierra Espuña Regional Park at Alhama de Murcia, which acts as a reception and interpretation centre with exhibition and screening rooms on the natural and cultural values of the protected area.
Nature
The Morrón de Espuña, also known as Morrón de Totana, is at 1,585 metres the highest point of Sierra Espuña and one of the main hiking and climbing destinations in the regional park. The viewpoint of Collado Bermejo, on its slope, is an obligatory stop for those climbing to the summit.
Nature
Viewpoint of Collado Bermejo, at 1,201 metres above sea level, an obligatory stop on the way up to Morrón de Espuña and to the old snow pits, in the municipality of Alhama de Murcia. It offers one of the best panoramas of the whole sierra: the umbría of Peña Apartada, the cerro de la Garita, the green valley of the río Espuña and the barrancos de Gebas in the distance, the Morrón de Espuña to the north and, to the west, the barranco de Enmedio, El Purgatorio and the cerro de Pedro López.
Nature
Hiking route PR-MU 59 of Sierra Espuña, 6,570 metres long, from the Centro de Visitantes Ricardo Codorníu to the Collado Bermejo, a viewpoint at 1,201 metres above sea level from which the Umbría de Peña Apartada, the cerro de la Garita, the valley of the río Espuña and, in the background, the barrancos de Gebas can be seen.
Curiosity
Sierra Espuña, protected since 1978 and declared a Regional Park in 1992, extends across the municipal districts of Alhama de Murcia, Totana and Mula, in the geographical centre of the Region.
Monument
Archaeological museum of Alhama de Murcia, opened as an archaeological centre on 24 May 2005 and recognised as a museum in 2008, in a modern building designed by architects Alberto Ibero and Jesús López López next to a garden and the old thermal complex. It preserves the 1st-century Roman baths, built beside the castle to make use of the hot-water spring that gives Alhama its name, with two enclosures separated by sex, one recreational and the other for medicinal bathing. Also on display is the Roman mosaic of black and white tesserae found next to the Church of San Lázaro Obispo. The route includes the Islamic baths, with rooms for men and women, and the remains of the 19th-century Hotel Balneario, built in 1848, which drew bathers from across Spain until the closure of the spring in the 1930s ended its popularity.
Monument
Church in Alhama de Murcia declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection), on a square next to the thermal baths and at the foot of the castle hill, referred to since the 14th century as a place of pilgrimage for the healing powers attributed to its patron saint. Built on medieval foundations, it was rebuilt in Baroque style in the first half of the 18th century by the architect Lorenzo Alonso; its portal, in limestone shaped like an altarpiece, is topped by a niche with the Virgen de Gracia (Our Lady of Grace) and was crowned by sculptures of San Lázaro (Saint Lazarus) and his sisters. In 1798 the architect Salvador González Ros added the Capilla de la Comunión, with a four-panelled dome, and a neoclassical camarín. It preserves an 18th-century monstrance and a Niño de la Bola (Christ Child with the Orb), and was restored in 1995 by the diocese of Cartagena.
Monument
An 18th-century Baroque church restored between 1978 and 1994, which houses a carving of Jesús Nazareno of the Salzillo school and works by the Cuban painter Manuel Wssel de Guimbarda.
Monument
Granary house located on Calle Larga in Alhama de Murcia, built in 1755 by order of the Marquis of los Vélez to store the tercio (one third) of the municipality's grain harvest. It is a sober two-storey building with brick and rubble-masonry walls and a square plan, structured around four central pillars supporting nine bays of ribbed vaulting. On the façade, its only decorative feature, is the coat of arms of the Marquisate of Villafranca and los Vélez, for which the building is declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection).
Monument
Former 17th-century regulator of the grain trade, with vaulted ribbed ceilings on the ground floor, located on Calle Fulgencio Cerón Cava in Alhama de Murcia. In addition to regulating the grain trade, the building was used to grant loans of public funds. It has a rectangular plan, built in brick and rubble masonry, with two levels: the ground floor, divided by the ribbed vaults into small exhibition spaces, and the upper floor, more open, arranged around several pillars. Today it serves as a municipal hall for temporary exhibitions.
Activity
The Mercado de Abastos of Alhama de Murcia, built in 1928 by the architect Pedro Cerdán, has a round-arched entrance framed by two plain pilasters, and an interior arcaded courtyard around which the stalls are arranged, sheltered under the arcades. Located next to the historic Jardín de los Patos, it still functions today as a market.
Monument
18th-century mansion that housed the town hall of Alhama de Murcia between 1923 and 1986 and today houses the municipal library and an exhibition hall. It has two storeys plus an attic, with a monumental ashlar doorway, large openings with balconies and an eaves finish. Its façade features a coat of arms declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection), which came from the old town hall opposite, from where it was moved. It stands on the Plaza Vieja, at the foot of the castle hill.
Nature
A hill rising from the 100 metres of the Guadalentín valley to 1,066 metres, with one of the finest holm oak woods in the Region of Murcia, part of the Carrascoy and El Valle Regional Park.
Nature
A sandstone plateau of 1,600 hectares protected since 1992 north of the town of Alhama, offering walking and paragliding, and home to the centuries-old specimen known as El Pino Gordo.
Nature
The Barrancos de Gebas form a landscape protected since 1995, covering 2271 hectares, shared between the municipalities of Alhama de Murcia and Librilla, next to the hamlet of Gebas. It is a badlands formation made up of cárcavas, canyons and small ravines of lunar appearance, formed on gypsum-rich terrain by the erosive action of the waters of the rambla de Algeciras and its basin. Its characteristic fauna is of steppe type, with rodents and small mammals, while its flora corresponds to gypsum steppes of the Gypsophiletalia or to sub-steppe formations of grasses and annual plants of the Thero-Brachypodietea type. Its greatest interest lies in the geomorphological structure of this landscape, one of the most distinctive in the Region of Murcia.
Nature
A protected natural area of the Region of Murcia formed by an extensive alluvial plain of a saline nature, located around the Guadalentín river, at the level of the municipal boundaries of Alhama de Murcia and Totana. Its humidity, of a continental type, differs from the usual image of a wetland, which is why it is classified as a cryptowetland; a damp subsoil and a steppe-like surface coexist within it, linked to each other by evapotranspiration processes. This saline steppe, with almarjo and sosa jabonera vegetation, gives refuge to steppe birds such as the black-bellied sandgrouse, the little bustard and Montagu's harrier, and holds the largest European population of almarjo, Halocnemum strobilaceum, a critically endangered species.
Curiosity
Gebas, a scattered hamlet of Alhama de Murcia, had 36 inhabitants in 2024. By the mid-19th century it was already recorded as a cortijo belonging to the municipality of Alhama, and its name also appears in historical documents under the variant Gevas. Today it lives off rural tourism and is a neighbour of the protected landscape of the Barrancos de Gebas.
Curiosity
An outlying village of Alhama de Murcia at 600 metres above sea level within Sierra Espuña, with rural accommodation, a camping area and the remains of a former tuberculosis sanatorium; its church of Nuestra Señora de los Dolores was blessed in 1868.
Monument
One of the 17th- and 18th-century snow wells preserved in Sierra Espuña, used to store compacted snow for preserving food and for medicinal purposes.
Curiosity
A historic reforestation centre in Sierra Espuña, with experimental gardens and projects to recover protected flora, the origin of the 19th-century reforestation of the massif.
Historical milestone
John I of Castile handed over in 1387 the town of Alhama, with its castle and its thermal baths, to Alonso Yáñez Fajardo in payment for his services; thus was born the seigneury of the most powerful lineage of the kingdom of Murcia, the future marquisate of Los Vélez.
Historical milestone
The residents of Alhama took the marquis of los Vélez before the Chancery of Granada to dispute with him the ownership of the waters that rise in the springs of Sierra Espuña, in one of the many clashes between the council and its lord.
Food and drink
A meatless stew made with chickpeas, green beans, potato, pumpkin and pears, whose mixture of sweet and savory surprises the outsider; it is one of the most frequently repeated dishes in the traditional kitchens of Alhama.