Valencia & Murcia

Iberian peoples lived along this coast, and their carved stone bust, the Lady of Elche, is one of Spain's best-known ancient artworks. Carthage founded Qart Hadasht, now Cartagena, around 227 BC as its Iberian base, and Hannibal's siege of Saguntum, the ally of Rome north of Valencia, in 219 BC set off the Second Punic War. Rome took Cartagena as Carthago Nova and founded Valentia in 138 BC. Under Muslim rule the plains were irrigated into the rich market gardens called the huerta, and Murcia was founded in the 9th century.

El Cid captured Valencia in 1094 and held it until his death in 1099, but the city returned to Muslim rule until James I of Aragon conquered it in 1238. The Kingdom of Valencia, part of the Crown of Aragon, kept its own laws until 1707. Murcia fell to Castile in the mid-13th century. Valencia's golden age came in the 15th century, when its silk exchange was built and the Borja family from Xàtiva produced two popes. The expulsion of the Moriscos in 1609 emptied many villages.

Cartagena became Spain's chief Mediterranean naval base in the 18th century and rebelled as an independent canton in 1873. Valencia briefly served as the Republic's capital during the Civil War. After a flood in 1957, the Turia river was diverted around Valencia and its old bed turned into a long park. Mass tourism transformed the coast from the 1950s, beginning with Benidorm, and the Valencian Community and Murcia became autonomous in 1982. In October 2024 flash floods killed more than 200 people around Valencia.

Valencian, the local form of Catalan, is co-official with Spanish in the Valencian Community and is widely spoken in the coastal plains and countryside, less so in Alicante city and the Spanish-speaking inland districts. Its status and name are political topics. Murcia is Spanish-speaking, with a distinctive accent.

The festivals are loud. The Fallas of Valencia, listed as UNESCO intangible heritage, fill the city in March with huge satirical figures of wood and papier-mâché that are burned on the night of 19 March, after days of firecracker displays called mascletàs. Alicante burns its own figures at the Hogueras de San Juan in June, Buñol hosts the Tomatina tomato fight, and Alcoy and many other towns stage Moors and Christians parades. Elche performs the Misteri, a medieval sacred drama, each August, also on the UNESCO list. Murcia's Holy Week processions carry baroque figures by Francisco Salzillo, followed by the Bando de la Huerta, a day of traditional dress, and the Burial of the Sardine.

The irrigation tradition survives too: Valencia's Water Tribunal still meets outside the cathedral each Thursday, and it and Murcia's Council of Good Men are recognised as UNESCO intangible heritage. Crafts include ceramics from Manises and the porcelain of Lladró.

About 5.2 million people live in the Valencian Community and about 1.6 million in the Region of Murcia. Valencia, Spain's third-largest city, has about 800,000 people; Alicante about 350,000, Elche about 235,000, Castellón about 175,000, Murcia about 470,000 and Cartagena about 215,000. Benidorm has only about 70,000 residents but many times that number of visitors in high season, and foreign residents, many of them retirees from northern Europe, form a large share of the population in parts of the Costa Blanca.

The economy combines tourism with intensive farming — citrus, rice, vegetables and fruit grown under irrigation for export — along with the port of Valencia, car making, ceramic tiles around Castellón, footwear around Elche, toys and textiles inland, and the naval base and refinery at Cartagena. Water is a constant issue: farmers depend on transfers from other river basins, and pollution from farming has damaged the Mar Menor lagoon.

Days follow the Spanish pattern, with long lunches and late dinners, and beach life dominates summer weekends, when many families move to second homes on the coast.

This is the land of rice. Paella valenciana is cooked in a wide, shallow pan over a fire, with chicken, rabbit, green beans, large white garrofó beans, saffron and sometimes snails, and eaten at lunch. Other rice dishes include arròs a banda, rice cooked in fish stock, arròs negre, rice blackened with squid ink, and arroz al horno, rice baked with pork and chickpeas. Fideuà, a noodle version of seafood paella, is credited to Gandia, and all i pebre is an eel stew from the Albufera.

Horchata, a sweet chilled drink of tiger nuts, is served with fartons, long sugar-glazed pastries. Turrón, the almond nougat eaten at Christmas, comes from Xixona near Alicante, both hard and soft. Valencia's oranges are famous, and agua de Valencia mixes orange juice with cava, vodka and gin.

Murcia's huerta supplies its kitchen: zarangollo is courgette and onion scrambled with egg, pastel de carne a meat pie, and caldero, rice cooked in fish stock. Paparajotes are lemon leaves dipped in batter and fried, the leaf discarded before eating. Cartagena's café asiático layers coffee with condensed milk and brandy. The region's reds come from the Monastrell grape in Jumilla, Yecla and Bullas, while Utiel-Requena grows Bobal and Alicante makes the aged sweet Fondillón.

Valencia combines an old centre — the cathedral and its Miguelete tower, the Gothic silk exchange, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the Central Market — with the City of Arts and Sciences at the end of the Turia gardens, city beaches and the Albufera lagoon and rice village of El Palmar to the south. Xàtiva has a hilltop castle, and far to the north Peñíscola's walled old town and castle stand on a rock above the sea, with the fortified hill town of Morella inland.

Alicante has the Santa Bárbara castle and the palm-lined Explanada, and Elche's palm grove is also on the UNESCO list. The Costa Blanca runs north through Benidorm, with its high-rise skyline and long beaches, to Altea's white old town, Calp's Peñón de Ifach, Xàbia and Dénia, while inland El Castell de Guadalest sits on its crag.

In Murcia, the regional capital has the cathedral with its baroque façade, the Real Casino and the Salzillo Museum. Cartagena has its Roman theatre and the remains of its Punic wall along with a naval museum. Nearby are the Mar Menor, a salt lagoon separated from the sea by the strip of La Manga, the unspoilt coves of Calblanque, the mountains of Sierra Espuña, the castle of Lorca, and Caravaca de la Cruz, a pilgrimage town.