Spain · Comunitat Valenciana · Elche
Arenales del Sol, Elche — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Los Arenales del Sol is a coastal settlement of Elche in the province of Alicante, built around a beach that was almost untouched until the 1950s.
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Where to stay in Arenales del Sol
How the choice of base plays out on the ground.
The beach runs four kilometres. Los Arenales del Sol grew from it, and the town is fifteen kilometres from Elche, five from the El Altet airport and eleven from the provincial capital. Dunes back the sand.
Wooden walkways built under the Plan E of 2009 carry walkers over them, which is what keeps one of the few important dune systems in Spain intact. El Altet and Balsares are the nearest settlements.
About Arenales del Sol
What are the main landmarks in Arenales del Sol?
Six bunkers stand in the Clot de Galvany. They are casemates that were never used, and accounts differ on who built them, the Republican army or the Nazi army with Franco's approval against an Allied landing on the south-east coast. All six have been restored.
Machine-gun nests, command posts and heavy anti-aircraft positions were inside them, and the central one, the largest, served as a command centre and stands surrounded by water in the rainy season. The wetland around them is protected. The Consell de la Generalitat Valenciana declared the Clot de Galvany a municipal natural site on 21 January 2005, and its pools, salt flats and hills carry both hill scrub of palmito, mastic and thyme and the reed and tamarisk of the marshes.
What is the history of Arenales del Sol?
The beach was almost untouched until the 1950s. Tomás Durá Bañuls pushed through the hotel that changed it, and the first buildings followed his lead. Juan García García built most of what still stands.
He put up nearly all the blocks on the first and second lines of the beach, which makes him the second founder of the place. The hotel did not last. It was declared ruinous in the 1980s and finally demolished at the start of 2022, and the rubble has since been cleared away.
Apartments took over at the turn of the century. Building rose sharply in the late 1990s and early 2000s, mostly houses and flats used through the summer, and it has continued over the largest fossil dunes in the area.
Where is Arenales del Sol?
Los Arenales del Sol lies on the Mediterranean coast in the east of the Elche municipality, with four kilometres of beach, the Clot de Galvany wetland inland and the sierra del Cabo de Santa Pola to the south.
Updated September 2026