The Salt Valley of Añana is the ultimate stopover for salt pans in Iberia that has been around for 6,500 years and was really important during the Roman times. Ancient evaporation methods are still on display, and actually still in use for cultural heritage reason. One you can also see the flawed concrete method that would crack by the salt and is not maintained for budgetary reasons. Salt production used to be very profitable as can be seen in other mines around the world, but once salt was easy to retrieve from other methods the valley stopped manufacturing commercial salt.

A tour is available in a multitude of languages. Arriving at 9:45 when the shop opens I was the only person to have booked the English tour (and the only person to be around but a ton of people would arrive by the time I left and quite sure they were all Spaniards). There was no problem in being the only tourist to take the tour and it gave me such a better control of understanding the salt valley and asking questions as much as I want. Once the big wooden key was used to open the gate the tour would begin. The valley beyond the visitor center is not that big and one can explore quite a bit of it on the tour, as well as taste the extreme salt content in the water, get working on getting water flow going into your (temporary) pan to get an idea how much work it is shifting the water around, and in the end you can enjoy a foot/hand bath in salty water (they call it spa). There are areas you don't go to as explained on a nice map but they are just going to be the same as you can see in the immediate surroundings. The most interesting part about the tour was probably the water distribution system which had to be shared among all the panners (is that a word?) in scheduled time slots.

Not knowing the history for the attempts to inscribe it into a WHS, the staff was explaining they are working hard on getting it ready to attempt, and are proud to point out the Concours Europa Nostra aware from 2015. Añana is also trying to go for a twofer with Mining History of Spain. Nevertheless its inscription I still have fond memories of the visit as well as my guide Noelia. Also don't forget to take some great salt home from the gift shop.