Las Salinas
One of the oldest saltworks in Andalusia, the Phoenicians and Romans already supplied common salt from La Malahá to Sexi (Almuñécar) and (Salobreña), for the production of garum and other salting industries. The saltworks was defended by Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, ‘El Gran Capitán’, and was part of the negotiations for the Capitulations of Granada in 1491. In the mid-twentieth century, it had 97 pools, seven heating systems, and a twelfth-century warehouse or granary, a water wheel in the tower, watchtowers, a main house, and a house for employees. It covered an area of 3.3 hectares. Three underground springs and one above ground, called “El Charcón”, supplied the pools with saltwater, and salt was harvested during the summer months. The pools were divided into two areas, called Salinas Altas (Upper Saltworks) and Salinas Bajas (Lower Saltworks), or Las Salinillas, where the new warehouse is located today. Some pools were special, where the whitest, highest-quality salt was extracted. Many of the pools were divided by wooden planks, and the floors were paved with flagstones from the Cerro de Pingurucho.
The twelfth-century warehouse, or granary, measured 25 x 7.5 x 5.9m, with a sturdy roof structure supported by pillars and buttressed on the interior with fourteen masonry piers. It had a capacity of 22,000 fanegas (1,100,000 kg) of salt. The inner waterwheel, or Torreón, drew water from the spring using an animal-powered waterwheel. A mule turned the wheel, raising metal buckets that brought the water to the surface, where it was channelled to the heaters. The second waterwheel used the same system for drawing water. It was also built with large masonry blocks, but it was only at ground level. Once drawn from the pond or spring, either by waterwheel or pump, the water reaches the heaters, large pools where the salt concentrates throughout the winter. Later, during the spring months, the water is transferred to the distribution system, which fills the pools where it remains during the warmer months where the sun’s rays cause evaporation. According to the harvesters, the warmer the weather, the better the quality of the salt.
Before the three harvests in July, August, and September, the pools are replenished with water from the spring to compensate for the constant evaporation. When a salt layer reaches a depth of eight to ten centimetres, the water is drained from the top, and the harvesting from the bottom begins. Using iron hooks, the dumper extracts the solidified salt, turning it over and pulverizing it. It then deposits the salt onto the wheelbarrow after the piles have been accumulated in each of the pools. A continuously rotating conveyor belt carries the still-damp salt into a warehouse, where it is piled up for later packaging. Before the harvesting process was mechanized, workers broke up the salt with hoes, others with rollers or trestles, and still others stacked it. Teams of donkeys transported the salt; each trip a donkey made from the piles to the warehouse earned one real. The piles of salt were marked with a tag to ensure they hadn’t been tampered with for theft. The tag read “Salinas Nacionales” (National Saltworks).