Village
San Pedro del Pinatar is a municipality of about 29,700 inhabitants situated on a small peninsula between the Mediterranean and the Mar Menor, with fourteen kilometres of coastline divided between the two seas. Until the 17th century it was called El Pinatar, after the mass of pines where wild boar were hunted; after Franciscan friars built a hermitage there dedicated to Saint Peter the Apostle, patron of its fishermen, it took its present name, and its inhabitants are still known as pinatarenses. Its historic salt and fishing industries have given way to tourism, favoured by beaches such as La Puntica and those of La Llana. To the north lies the Salinas y Arenales nature park, with almost 900 hectares of wetlands, and its traditional festivals are held in summer.
Nature
An 856-hectare wetland between the Mar Menor and the Mediterranean, the most important in the Region of Murcia as a breeding and resting area for waterbirds, shared between the municipalities of San Pedro del Pinatar and San Javier. It combines working salt pans, a natural 7-kilometre dune belt, pine woods, salt marshes, reed beds and encañizadas linking the Mar Menor to the Mediterranean. Declared a nature reserve in 1985 and a regional park in 1992, it has been on the Ramsar List of Wetlands of International Importance since 1994 and a Special Protection Area for birds since 1998. It can be visited along signposted trails from the Las Salinas Visitor Centre, open since January 2002 at the park entrance.
Nature
Pools of grey mud beside the salt pans of Lo Pagán, with therapeutic properties known since ancient times for their high content of calcium, magnesium, potassium and other minerals; they make up the largest free mud-bathing area in Europe.
Curiosity
After the Reconquest, Felipe II ordered the building in 1602 of an armed and garrisoned watchtower to protect the coast from Barbary pirate attacks, which remained in service until the 18th century; now gone, its image lives on in the municipal coat of arms.
Activity
The festivities of the Virgen del Carmen are held every year on 16 July in San Pedro del Pinatar and in the district of Lo Pagán, on the shores of the Mar Menor, in honour of the patron saint of fishermen; they have been declared a festival of Regional Tourist Interest since 1965. The pilgrimage and seafront procession of the image are documented from 1792, although the festivities as such have been held since 1892. The day begins at the church of San Pedro Apóstol, from where the image is taken to Lo Pagán to be put to sea and carried around the Mar Menor; after landing, an open-air Mass is held and popular dishes are served, such as caldero, a rice dish with local fish. Around midnight, after the fireworks, the return procession begins, reaching the church of San Pedro Apóstol at dawn.
Activity
The patronal festivities of San Pedro del Pinatar are held at the end of June in honour of its patron saints, with the main day centred on the feast of San Pedro y San Pablo, 29 June. They coincide in the town's festive calendar with the festivities of the Virgen del Carmen, patron saint of this fishing town, held later, on 16 July, between the centre of San Pedro del Pinatar and the district of Lo Pagán, on the shores of the Mar Menor.
Monument
The church of San Pedro Apóstol, on the plaza de la Constitución in San Pedro del Pinatar, was built by the Franciscans in the 17th century, with a Latin-cross plan, a south-facing façade and a central nave flanked by two lower side naves with seven chapels. The four-tier tower ends in the bell tower beneath a triangular frontispiece crowned by a cross. After its construction it was decorated with paintings from the school of Nicolás de Villacis, of which remains with coats of arms, altarpieces and Renaissance motifs still survive. The temple came to house several sculptures by Francisco Salzillo, among them the image of the Apóstol San Pedro, all destroyed during the civil war in 1936 and of which only pictorial record remains.
Nature
Beach of the Parque Regional de las Salinas y Arenales de San Pedro del Pinatar, on the Mar Menor side, next to Villananitos and the Playa de las Salinas, within a protected wetland of 856 hectares. Beside it lies the pond where mud baths are traditionally taken, one of the best-known uses of this stretch of the park.
Activity
Semana Santa in San Pedro del Pinatar, declared of Regional Tourist Interest.
Nature
Playa de Villananitos is an urban beach about 700 metres long, located in the Los Cuarteros neighbourhood, next to Lo Pagán, at one end of the Mar Menor, within the municipality of San Pedro del Pinatar. It lies next to the Club Náutico and has a large number of services, including year-round cleaning.
Nature
Playa de La Puntica is an urban beach about 500 metres long near Lo Pagán (San Pedro del Pinatar, Murcia) and the oldest in this Mar Menor town: it has been used as a bathing spot since the late 19th century, as well as having served as an anchorage for fishing boats. It extends as a continuation of Playa de El Castillico, next to the Ciudad del Aire, as far as the Oceanographic Institute, and nautical sports such as canoeing and sailing are practised there.
Nature
Playa de La Mota, also known as Playa de Los Molinos, is a semi-urban beach of San Pedro del Pinatar fitted with a promenade alongside the ponds of the Salinas de San Pedro del Pinatar, within the Salinas y Arenales natural park. It takes its name from the old salt mills preserved next to it, that of Quintín and that of la Calcetera. Located on the shore of the Mar Menor, it is a popular spot for kitesurfing, windsurfing, sailing and canoeing, and its stretch ends next to Playa de Villananitos.
Nature
Playa de la Torre Derribada lies on the other side of the harbour from Playa de El Mojón, in San Pedro del Pinatar, and takes its second name from an old watchtower demolished in the area. Like the other towers built along the Murcian coast in the 16th and 17th centuries, it served to spot the incursions of Berber pirates.
Curiosity
The municipality was formerly called 'El Pinatar', an extensive pine wood mentioned in the Libro de la Montería of Alfonso XI; it took its present name around the 17th century from the hermitage that fishermen dedicated to San Pedro Apóstol.
Monument
The original hermitage of San Pedro Apóstol y Pescador was built around the 17th century by the fishermen of the old Pinatar, dedicated to San Pedro as fishing was the main trade of its inhabitants; from this dedication the town took its present name, San Pedro del Pinatar, replacing the former El Pinatar. The Franciscans founded the hermitage, and in 1709 don Francisco Sáez was appointed its first permanent chaplain. The church was registered as a parish from 1787 onward, though it continued to depend on the parish of San Javier until its separation, already in the 19th century.
Monument
A 19th-century salt mill beside the pans of the Salinas Regional Park, used to grind salt and to raise water into the pans; today it is one of the town's photographic emblems.
Curiosity
The seafaring cuisine of San Pedro del Pinatar, tied to the Mar Menor's fishing and salt-making tradition, has in the caldero its most representative dish: a rice of intense flavour made with grey mullet, gilt-head bream or gallina (called cabracho elsewhere, a local name for scorpionfish), cooked with a broth of small assorted fish and a sauce of ñoras (dried sweet peppers) crushed with garlic, tomato and parsley. The soupy rice is served apart from the fish slices, accompanied by aioli, known here as ajo perete. Alongside the caldero, typical of the Cartagena coast and the Mar Menor, soupy rice with fish is also common.
Historical milestone
The salt pans, which had belonged to the Crown since the Christian conquest, passed into private hands in 1869 within the disentailment process; the industrial exploitation of salt transformed the landscape of the coast and its economy.
Historical milestone
Detached from the council of Murcia, the municipality held in 1836 its first session with José Imbernón Ruiz as mayor; until then the settlement of fishermen and salt workers had depended administratively on the capital, more than fifty kilometers away.
Historical milestone
Emilio Castelar y Ripoll, born in Cádiz in 1832, an orator, historian, journalist and the last president of the Executive Power of the First Republic between 1873 and 1874, died in San Pedro del Pinatar on 25 May 1899, at the Casa del Reloj, where he used to spend periods seeking relief from his illness. An opponent of the monarchy of Isabella II, he was sentenced to death in 1865 and went into exile in Paris, returning with the revolution of 1868; as a republican leader he was minister of State, president of Congress and head of State, until General Pavía's coup brought about his fall in 1874. Remembered as one of the great orators in the history of Spain, his death turned the town into a place of republican pilgrimage.
Food and drink
Rice cooked in the broth of the fish of the lagoon, pounded with ñora and garlic, which the fishermen prepared in the iron cauldron itself on board or on the shore; it is served with allioli and the fish is eaten separately.
Food and drink
The roe of the grey mullet caught in the Mar Menor is salted, pressed and dried until it forms an amber bar that is cut into very fine slices; its intensity has earned it the nickname of the caviar of this coast.
Food and drink
The salt of San Pedro del Pinatar is obtained by evaporation in the ponds of the salt works that remain in operation within the Parque Regional de las Salinas y Arenales, a wetland protected since 1985 and declared a regional park in 1992, located at the northern end of the Mar Menor and shared with the neighbouring municipality of San Javier. This sea salt, produced since ancient times, has been used to preserve fish and to cook it in a salt crust, and it underlies the cured fish products of the whole comarca.