The southern wetlands & its value enhancement

Place: Santa Pola and Elche (CAV)
Date: 2010
Developer: Valencia government
Design/direction: Miriam García García & Alejandro Alférez
Team: María Carmona, Lys Villalba

The aim of this landscape project is the enhancement of the territorial area that spreads south of the city of Elche down to the Nature Park of “El Hondo” and the saltpans of “Santa Pola”. This area houses an extraordinary cultural, environmental and ethnographic heritage, which requires strategies to stop the degradation that is putting it at risk and to revitalize the whole area. The strategies focus on 2 dimensions: Water and its landscapes. The reservoir of “El Hondo” and the saltpans of “Santa Pola” act as the core of an integrated irrigation system, typical of traditional Mediterranean agriculture that spread all over the world. As for the countryside of the city of Elche and the wetlands, it is in need of a full-scale landscape project that will optimize the potential compatibility of eco-tourism and traditional agriculture.