The village of Las Salinas del Carmen in Fuerteventura

In ancient times, salt was a rare and sought-after commodity, to the point that it was used as currency: so, the Roman soldiers were paid in salt grain: this is the origin of the word “salary”. The internal presentation shows, through texts and photographs, the importance of salt in the world and in particular the Canary Islands. The different sections present the salt production site in the world, the salt formation, history (from China in 6000 BC and salted fish discovered in Egyptian tombs), saline ecosystems, salt into the culture (beliefs, customs and medicinal uses), salt of the applications (food preservation and so on), the salt of the Canary islands and the salt of the saline El Carmen.

In the museum shop you can buy - including memories of the island - a sample of the salt produced by the Salinas del Carmen.

The walk includes a tour of ancillary buildings, such as the lime kiln (horno de cal), which was produced lime for maintenance of saline, and the cistern (aljïbe), used to collect water.

The saline El Carmen has a total area of 26100 sqm and a heating surface of 11,250 m²; they produce 300 to 400 tons of salt per year. This low production is consumed locally in Fuerteventura, or as a souvenir by the visitors of the museum.

Once most of the water has evaporated, dusting extract the substance of salt, heaps in camelles the edge of the eye and allowed to drain. Then he picks it up and carries it to the warehouse.

Formerly the rails came out of the warehouse to facilitate boarding salt to dock El Muellito. This is the only example in the Canary Islands, where the salt of transportation was used. Salt was transferred to the central islands or factories cured there was to Fuerteventura in the last century.

The Council of the Canaries took the initiative to expose the skeletons of stranded cetaceans in the archipelago in order to make these marine mammals. This project, called the “Cetacean Route” (Senda de los Cetàceos) has other specimens in Jandia for example.

Saline birds can be divided into three groups: waders, fishermen and swimmers divers.

Shorebirds birds they feed on invertebrates that live in the mud or water from shallow pools. Flamingos, avocets and storks are best suited to saline birds. Other species are the spotted redshank, black tailed godwit, plover, ringed plover and turnstone. Three species stay longer in the Canary Islands: the Kentish plover (Charadrius alexandrinus) and the black-winged stilt (Himantopus himantopus), which nest there, and the Sandpiper, which winters there.

Fishermen birds found especially the gray heron, osprey and gulls. The heron is 90 cm high, with legs and a long neck. The fish eagle flies at very high speed near the surface of the water and when it detects its prey swoops on it, capturing it with its beak and talons. Seagulls fly over coastal areas.

Swimmers, divers birds they feed in water, in deeper areas. Ducks, which are very good swimmers, have been domesticated and therefore also in the rural areas. Grebes are smaller and plunge permanently.

In the Canary Islands are concentrated salt 56 with a successful and profitable business. This enabled the salt industry eastern islands give work to hundreds of people throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth.

Some like salt Janubio (Lanzarote) Fuencaliente (La Palma), Tenefé and Playa de Vargas (Gran Canaria), are the last representatives of this cottage industry of salt.

According to the Chronicle of the Conquest, the Aborigines were not using this resource, although some researchers think otherwise, or they used sea water to promote your conservation dried meat they consumed.

The chroniclers also tell that the island had "... large amounts of salt, Ocean coast, and on the other side, beautiful sites to create salt marshes ... "

The natural salt marsh belonged to the Territorial Lord, although the residents had the right to freely collect salt they needed for their consumption. Island Council dictated standards that protected this right, "he agreed to make public that no one should attempt to embark, or sell it to anyone who would ship it, and can not be sold between the inhabitants, without any of them could benefit from any lien on the salt collected in puddles ... because it is the property of all ... "(1641).

"... Nobody remains several days on the coast to collect salt, but it won only one who may have been harvested in a day and he needs for himself, if another resident arrives and see the salt picked up, he can take it, by paying the one who has collected three reals a fanègue (Spanish measure about 60 liters), and leaving him the salt it needs ... "(1700).

In 1677, the lord of the island, Don Fernando Matias Arias y Saavedra, obtained permission from the King to build the salt marshes. It begins implantation to 1681, in the marshes of Gran Tajal, but apparently they have not been completed, because in 1700 the Commission stated "there have no salt on the island, but only a few basins, not giving little salt ... ".

Subsequently, the Territorial Lord Don Francisco Bautista de Lugo y Saavedra, exercising the Royal authorization which had been granted to his ancestor, opened a saline in La Hondurilla, south of Caleta de Fustes.

In the twentieth century new salt marshes were constructed: those of El Carmen in 1910; those of El Matorral (Jandia) and El Marrajo (south of the island of Lobos) 1935; and those of El Charco (Puerto del Rosario) in 1940.

The only ones who have lasted until today are the salt marshes of El Carmen, which gave the name to the hamlet where they stand.

The construction of these salt marshes is considered to transitional type because we find both simple eyelets, built of clay, that carnations covered with stones.

In 1995, the Municipality of Fuerteventura has acquired the salt marshes of El Carmen, which belonged to the heirs of Mr. Manuel Velázquez Cabrera, to conserve, restore and rehabilitate, in a cultural objective. The historical, ethnographic, ecological and landscape that represent the salt marshes of El Carmen, allowed them to be a “Special Protection Plan” in 1995 and be declared “of Cultural interest” 2002 in the category Monument.

Museo de la Sal

Address: Carretera general Salinas, FV2.Las Salinas del Carmen. Antigua.

Hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 10 am to 18 pm.

Phone: 00 34 928 174 926

Entrance fee: 5 €.

German tour guides, English, Spanish, French and Italian.