Valencia

Overview

The Valencian Community is Spain’s mid-Mediterranean strip: Valencia city and the Albufera rice country at its centre, the Costa Blanca resorts of Alicante province in the south, and the quieter Castellón coast backed by walled mountain towns in the north. This is where paella comes from, where most of Spain’s export oranges grow, and where the country’s biggest fire festival burns a city’s worth of sculpture every March.

Three provinces (Valencia, Castellón, Alicante) share 518 km of coastline and a co-official language: valencià, the local variety of Catalan, which carries its own institutions, its own academy, and its own arguments about whether it’s the same language as the one spoken in Barcelona.

Valencia city is Spain’s third by population and an unusually walkable capital. The Llotja de la Seda, the late-Gothic silk exchange, was UNESCO listed in 1996; the cathedral holds the Holy Chalice the city claims is the original Grail; and the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències, Santiago Calatrava’s white complex on the bed of the diverted Turia river, is the modern silhouette. The old riverbed itself, abandoned after a catastrophic 1957 flood, became a 9 km linear park threading the city.

Las Fallas (15 to 19 March) is the headline festival: huge satirical papier-mâché monuments erected across Valencia and burned on the night of 19 March, with daily 14:00 mascletà firecracker barrages from 1 March. UNESCO listed it as Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2016.

The Albufera lagoon, 11 km south of the city, is ringed by the rice paddies that made the regional kitchen. Proper paella valenciana is rabbit, chicken, garrofó and bachoqueta beans, tomato, paprika, saffron, sometimes snails, and never chorizo; the seafood-and-meat paella mixta sold on tourist drags is an invention.

South of the Cap de la Nau begins the Costa Blanca, over 200 km of Alicante-province coast running from Dénia to Pilar de la Horadada, one of Europe’s most developed holiday shores. Benidorm and Alicante have their own guides; around them sit smaller towns (Calp, Altea, Xàbia, Dénia) and an interior of castles, palm groves and wine country that most beach visitors never see. Spring and autumn are the travel windows that make the whole region work: warm sea, open restaurants, and none of the August crush.

History & character

Iberians, Hannibal and Rome

Saguntum (modern Sagunt, north of Valencia) is where the region enters world history: an Iberian trading town that held out against Hannibal for months in 219 BCE before falling, the trigger for the Second Punic War. Rome founded Valentia in 138 BCE under the consul Decimus Junius Brutus, originally as a settlement for veteran soldiers.

Al-Andalus and the water inheritance

After the Muslim conquest of 711, the region became a productive corner of Al-Andalus, and the most durable inheritance is agricultural: the irrigated huerta around Valencia city, its network of acequias (irrigation channels), and the Tribunal de las Aguas, the water court that still meets every Thursday at the cathedral’s Apostles’ Door to settle irrigation disputes. UNESCO listed the tribunal as Intangible Heritage in 2009 and it is commonly described as Europe’s oldest functioning judicial institution.

El Cid (Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar) took the taifa city of Valencia in 1094 and ruled it until his death in 1099; his widow Jimena held out two more years before the Almoravids retook it.

The Kingdom of Valencia

James I of Aragon (Jaume I el Conqueridor) took Valencia in 1238 and set it up as a separate kingdom within the Crown of Aragon, with its own furs (statutes) and parliament. Catalan settlers brought the language that became Valencian. The Llotja de la Seda (1482 to 1548, UNESCO 1996) was built at the peak of the late-medieval commercial boom, when Valencia was one of the Mediterranean’s money centres.

The countryside stayed heavily Muslim long after the conquest. The moriscos (Muslims forcibly converted after 1525) remained the majority rural workforce until the Expulsion of 1609, which emptied much of the inland huerta and triggered a long agricultural crisis.

1707: Almansa and the end of the furs

Valencia backed the Habsburg side in the War of Spanish Succession and paid for it. The Bourbon victory at the Battle of Almansa in 1707 ended Valencian self-rule; Philip V abolished the furs through the Nueva Planta decrees and his troops burned the city of Xàtiva. Xàtiva’s fine-arts museum still hangs its portrait of Philip V upside down in protest.

Oranges, war and the diverted river

The 19th century built the citrus economy: Valencia oranges shipped to northern Europe through a modernising port that grew into one of the busiest container ports in the Mediterranean. During the Civil War, Valencia served as the Republican capital from November 1936 to October 1937 after the government fled Madrid. Franco’s regime then suppressed the language and the regional institutions for four decades.

The flood of 14 October 1957 devastated central Valencia and led to the Plan Sur, which rerouted the Turia river south of the city; the dry riverbed became the Jardín del Turia park. Autonomy returned with the 1982 Statute, which restored Valencian as co-official.

Today

The economy runs on tourism, citrus and vegetables, ceramics in Castellón, footwear around Elche, and the port. The City of Arts and Sciences remade the region’s international image in the 2000s, at a cost that remains a political argument.

The defining recent event is the DANA flood of 29 October 2024, when torrential rain (Turís recorded 184.6 mm in a single hour, a Spanish record, and Chiva close to 500 mm in the day) sent flash floods through the towns south and west of Valencia city. Around 238 people died, most of them in Valencia province, with Paiporta alone losing 62; the official phone alert went out at 20:11, hours after the flooding began, and the delay brought down careers and reshaped how seriously the region treats weather warnings.

See & do

Valencia city

The full guide is the Valencia city page; the short version for planning. The cathedral holds the Santo Cáliz, the agate cup the church presents as the Holy Grail. The Llotja de la Seda is the late-Gothic silk exchange with its twisted-column hall. The Mercado Central, a 1928 glass-and-iron Modernist hall with around 300 stalls, is one of Europe’s biggest covered food markets. The City of Arts and Sciences fills the far end of the Turia park with Calatrava’s planetarium, science museum, opera house and the Oceanogràfic, the largest aquarium in Europe.

The Albufera and the rice country

Eleven kilometres south of the city, the Albufera is a 21,120-hectare freshwater lagoon separated from the sea by a pine-forested sand bar, surrounded by rice paddies and protected as a natural park. The standard visit is a sunset boat trip from El Palmar or the El Saler embarcadero, plus a long rice lunch in El Palmar, the lagoon village where restaurant kitchens have been cooking paella and all i pebre (eel and potato stew) for generations. Go September to October and the paddies are golden before harvest; go in winter and they’re flooded mirrors full of birds.

Sagunt and the Castellón coast

Sagunt, thirty minutes north of Valencia by Cercanías, layers an Iberian-Roman-medieval hilltop fortress above a Roman theatre and a well-preserved Jewish quarter. Further north, Peñíscola pushes its walled old town onto a rock peninsula under the Castillo del Papa Luna, where the Avignon antipope Benedict XIII sat out his deposed papacy from 1411 until his death in 1423.

Morella

Morella is the fortified capital of the Els Ports comarca in inland Castellón: a town of 2,500 people at 984 m, completely enclosed by 2.5 km of medieval walls pierced by seven gates, under a castle rock that El Cid is reputed to have refortified. Come for the walls, the Gothic church of Santa María, winter truffle markets and flaons (sweet cheese pastries); stay overnight if you can, because the town empties beautifully when the day coaches leave.

The drive up from the coast is part of the point: the Maestrazgo hill country between Morella and the sea is dry-stone terraces, empty roads and big-sky ridgelines, some of the least-visited landscape on Spain’s Mediterranean side.

The Costa Blanca

Alicante province’s coast runs over 200 km from Dénia to Pilar de la Horadada, and its name was coined in the 1950s to sell holidays. Benidorm is the high-rise capital of it and Alicante the urban anchor; both have their own guides. The stretch worth a slow drive is the northern Marina Alta: Dénia with its hilltop castle, Balearic ferries and UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy title (2015), Xàbia between the capes of Sant Antoni and la Nau under the 750 m Montgó massif (a natural park since 1987), whitewashed Altea, and Calp under the Peñón de Ifach, the 332 m limestone monolith that is the coast’s landmark.

Elche

Elche (Elx) holds two UNESCO listings at once. The Palmeral, around 200,000 date palms planted from Carthaginian times onward and organised into irrigated orchards under the Caliphate of Córdoba, is Europe’s largest palm grove, inscribed in 2000; the Huerto del Cura garden inside it grows the seven-stemmed Imperial Palm. The Misteri d’Elx, a medieval sung mystery play performed every August in the Basilica of Santa Maria, was listed as Intangible Heritage in 2001. The Lady of Elche, the Iberian stone bust found nearby in 1897, is in Madrid’s archaeology museum; Elche keeps a replica and the grievance.

Xàtiva

Xàtiva, an hour south of Valencia on the C-2 Cercanías line, drapes a double castle along the ridge above town: an Iberian-founded Minor Castle and a Roman-founded Major Castle, together once counted the strongest fortress in the Kingdom of Valencia. Two Borgia popes were born here, Callixtus III and Alexander VI, and the town runs on that Renaissance notoriety plus an older claim: Arab papermakers made 12th-century Xàtiva one of Europe’s first paper-manufacturing centres.

Climb to the castle in the morning before the heat; the walk up passes the collegiate basilica, La Seu, begun in 1596 over a former mosque.

Inland Valencia: wine and tomatoes

Requena and Utiel, on the high plain an hour inland, are the towns of DO Utiel-Requena, where the native Bobal grape makes dark, sturdy reds that have improved sharply since the 1990s. Buñol, 35 km west of Valencia, hosts La Tomatina on the last Wednesday of August: roughly 20,000 ticketed participants and a town centre ankle-deep in crushed tomato within the hour.

Towns & cities

València

València is the capital and Spain’s third city: 824,340 people in the municipality, around 1.6 million in the urban area. Cathedral, silk exchange, Mercado Central, the Turia park and the City of Arts and Sciences, with the Albufera half an hour south. Base yourself here for anything in the central province.

Alacant (Alicante)

Alicante is the southern capital, 358,608 people, with the Castle of Santa Bárbara on Mount Benacantil above the harbour and the Explanada promenade paved with 6.5 million marble tiles in a wave pattern. Its Bonfires of Saint John (23 to 24 June) are the southern answer to the Fallas.

Elx (Elche)

Elche is Alicante province’s second city, around 230,000 people, with the UNESCO palm grove wrapped around its centre and the Misteri played every August. A footwear-industry town at heart, easy as a half-day from Alicante on the Cercanías.

Castelló de la Plana

Castellón’s low-key capital, around 170,000 people, sits a few kilometres back from its port and beaches at the Grau. Few foreign visitors stop, which is part of its appeal as a base for the Castellón interior.

Benidorm

Benidorm is the Costa Blanca’s skyscraper resort, around 70,000 residents and several times that in season, with two long beaches either side of an old-town headland. Read the full guide before dismissing it; the place is stranger and better organised than its reputation.

Dénia

Ferry port for the Balearics, castle above the town, and a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy since 2015, with the local red prawn as the flagship ingredient. The most food-serious town on the Costa Blanca.

Xàbia (Jávea)

A bay town of around 30,000 between two capes under the Montgó, where half the resident population is foreign; old town inland, fishing port and beach districts on the water. The calas south of town are the draw.

Calp and Altea

Calp sits under the Peñón de Ifach with beaches either side of the rock; Altea, one bay south, is the pretty one, a whitewashed old town stacked above a blue-domed church. Both are quieter alternatives to Benidorm, fifteen minutes away.

Sagunt (Sagunto)

Sagunt, around 66,000 people, pairs a gritty industrial port district with one of Spain’s great hilltop ruins: the kilometre-long castle ridge and the Roman theatre. An easy Cercanías day trip from Valencia.

Gandia

Beach town of the southern Valencian coast with a serious history: the Borja (Borgia) dukes held court here, and the noodle dish fideuà was invented by its fishermen. Big domestic summer scene, dead quiet in winter.

Xàtiva

Hilltop castle town of 30,378 and birthplace of two Borgia popes, an hour inland by train. The best single day trip from Valencia that isn’t the Albufera.

Morella

The walled mountain town of northern Castellón, 2,501 people at 984 m. Truffles in winter, the six-yearly Sexenni festival, and full medieval circuit walls.

Peñíscola

The fortified peninsula town of the Castellón coast, small in winter and heaving in August, under the castle of the antipope Benedict XIII.

Orihuela

Southern Alicante’s old ecclesiastical capital, with a medieval cathedral and the family-home museum of the poet Miguel Hernández; its diocesan museum holds a Velázquez, The Temptation of St Thomas Aquinas.

Torrevieja

The retirement-and-expat city of the far south, beside working salt lagoons where flamingos feed in pink water. Not a sightseeing town; the salinas are the reason to detour.

Requena

Chief town of the inland wine plateau and the DO Utiel-Requena, where Bobal is the grape to ask for. Cool nights even in summer, and a good sausage-and-red-wine lunch culture.

Food & drink

Rice is the regional starch the way pasta is Italy’s, and the wide flat pan it’s cooked in gave the most argued-over word in Spanish food its name. Everything else orbits it: Mediterranean fish, huerta vegetables, citrus, and a sweet tooth trained by four centuries of almonds and tiger nuts.

Paella valenciana

The strict traditional paella is rice, rabbit, chicken, garrofó (a big flat white bean), bachoqueta (a flat green bean), tomato, paprika, saffron, olive oil, water and salt, sometimes with snails or duck; never chorizo, never peas. It’s cooked shallow over wood or gas and eaten from the pan, and the prize is the socarrat, the toasted crust on the bottom. Seafood versions and the meat-plus-seafood paella mixta exist everywhere; they’re just not the original, and Valencians will tell you so unprompted.

The other rices and fideuà

Ask for arròs a banda (rice cooked in fish stock, the fish served after), arròs negre (squid ink, alioli on the side), or arròs al forn (oven-baked with chickpeas, morcilla and pork). All i pebre, the Albufera’s eel-and-potato stew with garlic and paprika, is the lagoon dish to try in El Palmar. Fideuà swaps the rice for short toasted noodles; it was born in Gandia as a fishermen’s variation and is always served with alioli. Coca, a flat topped bread eaten as a snack or starter, fills the bakery windows.

Horchata and turrón

Horchata de chufa is the regional drink: cold, milky, pressed from tiger nuts grown around Alboraia under the Xufa de València designation, drunk with fartons, long soft pastries made for dipping. Turrón, Spain’s Christmas almond confection, is an Alicante-province industry with two protected styles: soft ground-almond Jijona and hard almond-brittle Alicante, both from the town of Xixona.

Seafood does the rest of the work on the coast. The red prawn landed at Dénia is the prestige shellfish of the northern Costa Blanca, the town’s gastronomy title built partly on it.

Wine

Three DOs cover the region. Utiel-Requena, on the inland plateau, is Bobal country: a thick-skinned native red grape making dark, structured wines that were long sold off as bulk and are now the region’s quality story. DO Valencia is the mixed central zone, known among other things for sweet Moscatel. DO Alicante’s inland Vinalopó valley grows Monastrell and keeps alive Fondillón, a long-aged, solera-matured Monastrell wine that was famous across Europe in the 1500s and is now made by only a handful of producers.

Agua de Valencia

The terrace cocktail: cava, fresh orange juice, gin and vodka, invented in 1959 at a Valencia café and now on every rooftop menu in the city. Treat the orange juice as camouflage; it’s stronger than it tastes.

Nature

The region’s nature splits into three bands: a wetland-and-dune coast, a dry limestone middle, and genuinely high mountain country inland, all within a couple of hours of each other.

Albufera de València

The flagship: a 21,120-hectare freshwater lagoon and rice-paddy complex 11 km south of Valencia, a Ramsar wetland since 1989, separated from the sea by the pine forest of the Devesa. The paddies now hold much of the wildlife the lagoon itself has lost: waterbirds crowd the flooded fields in winter, eels and mullet still support a small fishery, and the invasive American blue crab, established since the 1980s, has become an unplanned local catch.

The high interior

The highest ground in the region is on the border ranges of the Sistema Ibérico: the Calderón (1,839 m) in the far west of Valencia province is the actual high point, though Penyagolosa (1,813 m) in Castellón is the emblematic mountain, the one Valencians climb and put on posters. Behind Morella, the Els Ports and Tinença de Benifassà country along the Aragonese and Catalan borders is wild, sparsely populated karst with serious walking. Closer to the coast, the Sierra Calderona gives Valencia city its day-hike pine forests, and the Aitana and Mariola sierras do the same for inland Alicante.

Coastal rock

The Montgó massif (over 750 m) rises straight from the sea between Dénia and Xàbia, a natural park since 1987, with trails to the summit and along the Cap de Sant Antoni cliffs. The Peñón de Ifach at Calp, a 332 m limestone monolith joined to the town by a sandy isthmus, is a natural park with a summit path (numbers are controlled; book ahead in season). The same limestone gives the Costa Blanca its winter climbing scene.

Palms, salt and an island

The Palmeral of Elche is nature as agriculture: 200,000 date palms in irrigated orchards, UNESCO listed in 2000 and currently defended against the red palm weevil with traps and biological controls. South of Alicante, the salt lagoons of Torrevieja and La Mata run pink with brine organisms and feed big flamingo flocks within sight of the motorway.

Offshore, Tabarca island, reached by boat from Santa Pola or Alicante, sits in waters declared Spain’s first marine reserve in 1986; the snorkelling over its seagrass and rock is the best easy underwater day in the region.

Long routes

The Vía Verde de Ojos Negros, Spain’s longest greenway at 159.7 km, follows a 1903 iron-ore railway from Teruel province down through the hills to the coastal plain near Sagunt, and is the region’s classic multi-day cycle. Waymarked PR and GR trails cover the sierras; the coastal and inland long-distance paths are well maintained in the natural parks and patchier between them.

Climate

The coast is classic Mediterranean and the numbers are gentle: Valencia averages 16.8°C daytime in January, 28 to 32°C on July and August afternoons, and around 459 mm of rain a year, most of it in autumn. The sea runs 14 to 15°C in winter and 25 to 26°C in high summer, swimmable from roughly June to October.

The south is drier again: Alicante is semi-arid, with only around 284 mm of rain a year, which is why the far southern coast fills with northern European winter residents. Inland is a different climate altogether: the wine plateau around Requena and Utiel sits at altitude with cold winters, and Morella at 984 m gets snow while the coast an hour away is at 18°C.

The regional weather hazard is the autumn gota fría, technically a DANA: cold upper air over a still-warm Mediterranean, producing short, violent, very local deluges, mostly September to November. The 29 October 2024 event was the extreme case, with close to 500 mm falling on Chiva in a day. For a traveller the practical rule is simple: an autumn beach holiday here is a good bet, but take orange and red weather warnings literally.

When to go

March: Las Fallas

Las Fallas of Valencia runs 15 to 19 March, with the daily 14:00 mascletà in the town-hall square from 1 March: hundreds of satirical monuments built by around 400 neighbourhood commissions, paraded, judged, and all but one burned in the Cremà on the night of the 19th, children’s falles first, the town-hall falla last. UNESCO listed the festival in 2016. One figure, the ninot indultat, is voted a pardon and retires to the Fallas museum, a tradition running since 1934.

April to June

The best all-round window: warm, green, pre-crowd. Moros y Cristianos season peaks with Alcoi’s festival in late April, mock battles in costume between Moorish and Christian “armies” that inland Alicante towns stage on their own dates through the year. Alicante’s Bonfires of Saint John close the season on 23 to 24 June with monumental figures burned at the solstice and five nights of fireworks after.

July and August

Beach season, with the whole coast at maximum occupancy and prices to match. Two big set pieces: the Misteri d’Elx, sung in Elche’s basilica in mid-August as it has been since the medieval period, and La Tomatina in Buñol on the last Wednesday of August, ticketed since 2013 at around 20,000 places. Inland is uncomfortably hot at midday; the high sierras are the escape.

September and October

The second sweet spot: sea still warm, crowds gone, harvest in the rice paddies and the Utiel-Requena vineyards. The trade-off is rising DANA risk through October. The 9th of October is the regional day, marking the entry of Jaume I into Valencia in 1238, with processions and marzipan sweets exchanged between couples.

November to February

Mild on the coast and the quietest, cheapest months everywhere. The far southern Costa Blanca stays busiest thanks to its winter residents and semi-arid sunshine. Winter is also truffle-market season in Morella and the Els Ports towns, and turrón season everywhere. If your visit lands in a Sexenni year, Morella’s once-every-six-years festival takes over the town for nine days in late August.

Getting there

By air

Two airports matter. Valencia (VLC), 8 km west of the city, handles European full-service and low-cost routes plus domestic shuttles, with Metrovalencia lines 3 and 5 running to the centre. Alicante-Elche (ALC) is far bigger and heavily seasonal, one of Spain’s busiest airports and the main door to the Costa Blanca, with dense traffic from Britain, Ireland, Germany and the Nordics; the C-6 bus links it to Alicante’s centre. Castellón’s small airport sees a handful of seasonal routes.

By train

The Madrid to Valencia high-speed line opened in December 2010 and puts the capital 1h45 away; Madrid to Alicante is similarly direct. Three operators compete on the Madrid runs (Renfe, Iryo, Ouigo), which keeps fares reasonable if you book ahead. Along the coast, Euromed and AVE services link Barcelona, Castellón, Valencia and Alicante.

By road and sea

The AP-7 motorway runs the whole coast from the Catalan border to Murcia and is now toll-free; the A-3 comes in from Madrid and the A-23 from Zaragoza in Aragón. Intercity buses (ALSA and others) fill the gaps rail leaves, and for some Costa Blanca towns the bus beats the train outright. Ferries to the Balearic Islands sail from Valencia and from Dénia, the short crossing to Ibiza; Baleària is the main operator.

Getting around

Rail and tram

Cercanías Valencia covers the central province from the city: the C-1 south along the coast to Gandia, the C-6 north to Castellón, other lines inland including the C-2 to Xàtiva. Metrovalencia, run by FGV, is the city’s metro-and-tram network, reaching the airport on lines 3 and 5.

The Costa Blanca has its own line: the TRAM d’Alacant, a tram-train running from Alicante along the coast to Benidorm and on towards Dénia. It’s slow and that’s fine; the coastal stretch north of Benidorm is one of Spain’s more scenic commuter rides. South of Alicante, Cercanías trains link Elche, Orihuela and Murcia.

Bus and car

ALSA and regional operators connect the cities and the inland towns the trains miss; town-to-town coastal buses are frequent in season. Driving is the only practical way to reach Morella, the Maestrazgo, the calas and most of the wine country. The AP-7 is toll-free but crawls near Benidorm and Alicante on summer Friday and Sunday evenings, historic centres have scarce parking (use the edge-of-centre car parks), and the autumn rule bears repeating: never cross a flooded rambla.

Cycling

Valencia is one of Spain’s most bike-friendly big cities, with the Turia park as a 9 km car-free spine and the Valenbisi share scheme for casual use. For touring, the Vía Verde de Ojos Negros gives 159.7 km of traffic-free gravel from the Teruel highlands to the coastal plain.

Practical info

For Spain-wide basics (currency, plugs, time zone, tipping, entry rules), see the Spain country guide. What follows is Valencian-specific.

Flood warnings

ES-Alert, Spain’s cell-broadcast emergency system, pushes flood warnings to every phone in an affected zone with no sign-up needed. After the 29 October 2024 disaster, in which the alert famously arrived hours late, the system is now used early and aggressively in this region; treat any alert as real. During autumn downpours: stay off roads that cross ramblas, avoid basements and underpasses, and move upward in a building rather than outward. The flat country south and west of Valencia city is the most flood-prone.

Language

Valencian is co-official with Spanish and is the same language linguists call Catalan; you’ll meet it on signage everywhere and in speech mostly inland and in the north. Spanish works with everyone, and English goes a long way on the Costa Blanca. Place names appear in Valencian first on most signs: Alacant for Alicante, Elx for Elche, Xàbia for Jávea.

Fallas survival

Fallas week (especially 15 to 19 March) means firecrackers underfoot all day, the 14:00 mascletà shaking the town-hall square, and the Cremà fires on the final night. Bring ear protection if you’re sensitive to noise (the mascletà is felt in the chest, not just heard), keep small children’s hands covered around street petards, and budget double the time for crossing the city; whole districts close to traffic.

Eating the real paella

For the traditional valenciana (rabbit, chicken, garrofó, bachoqueta, no chorizo), head where the rice grows: El Palmar and the Albufera villages, or the towns of the rice belt. Central-city terraces selling photo-menu “paella” at dinner time are serving reheated mixta for tourists; a real one is cooked to order at lunch and takes half an hour or more.

Tomatina logistics

La Tomatina in Buñol (last Wednesday of August) has been ticketed since 2013, roughly 20,000 places sold through the official channel, and the fight itself lasts one hour from 11:00. Wear clothes you’ll bin, protect your eyes, and bring a waterproof pouch for phone and ID; tickets via latomatina.info.

Beaches and small-island access

Tabarca island runs on boat capacity: crossings from Santa Pola are short and frequent in season, but summer weekends sell out, so book the return before you sail. On the Albufera side, sunset boat places in El Palmar are first-come in summer; weekday evenings are calmer.

Emergencies

The European 112 number covers everything, including mountain rescue in the inland sierras and maritime rescue on the coast. The three provincial capitals all have major public university hospitals, and the big resort towns have public hospital cover as well; for anything minor, town pharmacies (green cross signs) handle a lot and always post the nearest on-duty farmacia de guardia.