Salt is a fundamental component for living beings, in this sense plant organisms absorb the mineral salts to nourish themselves and incorporate them into their cells, one of the most important salts being sodium chloride or common salt. Being one of the most abundant elements on Earth, human beings have used it since ancient times being in nature in two states: solid, petrified, also known as rock salt or halite; or dissolved in water.

 

The human being has always been supplied with this nutrient by imitation of other mammals that lick rocks or salt to feed, later it has been used by numerous civilizations that have given him different uses throughout history (feeding of men and animals, medicine , industry, undo the snow of the roads), but the main utility that has had in the history has been the conservation of the foods, before existing the electrical energy that avoided its decomposition.

Its importance as a commodity of first necessity made the governors appropriate it with the purpose of collecting taxes for the coffers of the State. In this way, in the Kingdom of Valencia and in other regions of Spain, it became a product whose production and sale was in the hands of the State, until its liberalization in the 19th century.

The techniques to produce salt are three, of which the last two have been used very frequently in what is now the Valencian Community: the extraction of salt in mines, the obtaining of salt by evaporation of water, and a method that combines the dissolution of rock salt and evaporation. The climate of the Valencia region, with high temperatures and low rainfall, the saline water of the Mediterranean and salty springs, explain the presence of facilities both on the coast and inland.

In spite of this, the marine salt pans, such as the Salinas de la Mata and Torrevieja, due to their extension, abundant production and easy accessibility, have been the most exploited throughout history and continue to be exploited at present, however the Most of the salinas of the interior, such as the salt pans of Villargordo del Gabriel, have not reached our days because in our time the production of salt is not an elementary activity of human supply.

With these two images we finished our article on salt, an important resource of our culture and one of the bases of the economy of the Valencian Community.