Comunitat Valenciana, Spain — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Comunitat Valenciana known for?

The region draws sun-seekers to the Costa Blanca, the white-sand coast that runs south from the city of Alicante past the high-rise resort of Benidorm. Valencia, the capital, sits further north and gave the world paella, the rice dish cooked outdoors in the fields around the Albufera lagoon. Every March the capital burns giant papier-mâché figures in the streets during the Falles, its fire festival.

Inland the land climbs into dry, craggy mountains, but most visitors keep to the shore.

Where is Comunitat Valenciana?

The Valencian Community forms a long, narrow band down the eastern edge of the Iberian Peninsula, facing the Mediterranean Sea. It stretches roughly north to south. Catalonia lies over its northern border, Aragon and the plateau of central Spain rise to the west, and the Region of Murcia adjoins it in the south. The whole eastern flank is coast.

Some six hundred kilometres of shore run from the Costa del Azahar in the north down through the Costa Blanca, and the Balearic Islands sit out across the water to the east. The land divides sharply between coast and interior. A fertile coastal plain, watered by rivers like the Turia that reaches the sea at Valencia, carries the orchards, the rice fields and nearly all the cities.

Behind it the ground rises fast. The mountains of the interior belong to the Iberian System in the north and the Baetic ranges in the south, dry and thinly settled by comparison. That steep, irregular terrain long made travel inland hard, which is one reason the region has always faced the sea.

What is Comunitat Valenciana like?

Food and fire sit at the heart of the local culture. Paella was born in the rice fields around the Albufera lagoon south of Valencia, where farmers cooked rice with rabbit, chicken and beans over an open flame, and the region still treats it as its own. Rice is more than a dish here.

The Moors laid down the irrigation channels that turned the coastal plain into orchard and paddy, and oranges from those groves became the region's signature export. That medieval inheritance runs through the architecture too. Language marks the place as much as the cooking.

Alongside Spanish, many people speak Valencian, the local form of Catalan, and street signs, place names and schools carry both. The calendar turns on festival. Each March the capital fills with towering ninot figures for the Falles, sculpted for a year and then set alight in a single night of bonfires.

The character is coastal, agricultural and loud, closer to the fields and the sea than to the Spanish interior.

What is the history of Comunitat Valenciana?

The region traces its shape to 1238. In that year James I of Aragon took the Moorish city of Valencia and founded the Kingdom of Valencia as a self-governing realm within the Crown of Aragon, with its own laws, the Furs. It kept that separate standing for centuries.

The kingdom's institutions survived until 1707, when Philip V abolished them after the War of the Spanish Succession and folded the territory into a centralised Spain. The modern autonomous community, restored to self-rule in the twentieth century, is the heir to that medieval kingdom.

What is the climate of Comunitat Valenciana?

The coast is warm and dry. A Mediterranean climate holds along the shore, with hot summers, mild winters and little rain, which is why the Costa Blanca draws sun-seekers through much of the year. Rain, when it comes, tends to arrive in short autumn bursts rather than steady falls, and the fields lean on irrigation more than on the sky.

Inland it is a different story. The mountains of the interior run colder in winter, and the higher ground away from the sea can see frost that the beaches never do.

How do you get to Comunitat Valenciana?

Two airports do most of the work. Alicante's airport handles the bulk of the Costa Blanca traffic in the south, while Valencia's airport at Manises serves the capital and the northern coast. Both draw budget and scheduled flights from across Europe.

High-speed trains link Valencia and Alicante to Madrid in a couple of hours, and the coastal motorway runs the length of the region past every resort. Cruise ships and ferries to the Balearic Islands call at the port of Valencia.