The Canarian salt pans: how salt is still made by hand
From the road they look like a chessboard laid flat along the coast: grids of water shifting colour from green to pink, depending on how concentrated the brine is and which microorganisms are living in it.
These are salt pans, and few are still working in the Canaries. What makes them interesting is that the ones still running do it exactly as they did more than a century ago, with rakes and wheelbarrows, because nobody has invented anything better for the job.
How sea salt is made, in four steps
The process has not changed, and understanding it doubles the value of the visit:
Seawater comes in, sometimes by gravity with the tide, sometimes pumped, into an initial reservoir.
It is fed through progressively smaller and shallower ponds. At every step the water loses volume to evaporation and gains concentration.
When the brine reaches the right point, it moves into the final grids. There the sun and wind finish the job and the salt crystallises.
It is gathered by hand, heaped up and left to drain.
The colours of the chessboard are not decorative: they tell you which stage each pond is at. The greens are usually the early ones, the pinks the most concentrated, where algae and archaea that tolerate that salinity tint the water.
Why it works here
You need three things at once, and few coastlines have all three: plenty of sun, constant wind and little rain.
The eastern islands have all three. That is why the large salt pans are on Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, and not in the humid north of Tenerife or La Palma, where the process would be interrupted every few days.
The two you can visit
The Janubio salt pans on Lanzarote are the largest in the archipelago and the only ones still active on the island. Their origins go back to 1895, and today they account for around 75 per cent of all salt produced in the Canaries.
They sit in a former lagoon closed off by a sand bar, in the southwest of the island, and you can take in the whole layout from the roadside viewpoint. There is a guided visit of about an hour and a half, following the process from the evaporation ponds through to extraction.
One detail most people miss: this is one of the best places on Lanzarote for wading birds. The ponds are a resting stop on migration routes.
The Fuencaliente salt pans on La Palma are smaller, producing roughly half what Janubio does, and they sit at the southern tip of the island between two volcanoes, with the lighthouse alongside. Their salt is an emblematic product of La Palma's cooking.
The combination of white, volcanic black and sea blue makes this one of the most photographed landscapes on the island, and deservedly so.
How to visit without spoiling the photo or the work
Three things worth knowing before you go:
The best light is at the end of the day. At midday the white glares so hard that a camera cannot separate the pond colours.
The low walls between grids are working structure, not a path. They break easily, and a broken grid is lost salt. Stay where you are directed.
Check in advance whether there is a visit that day. These are working operations, and the calendar follows the production cycle, not tourism.
If you are on Lanzarote, our island guide helps you fit them into the southwest route. If the plan is La Palma, the La Palma guide does the same for the south.
And if this kind of production interests you, ecotourism in the Canaries collects farms, wineries and visits in the same spirit: places that work and also open their doors.
Sources
Salinas de Janubio, the operation's own information on its origin (1895), its share of Canarian production and its guided visits.
Comparative production figures between Janubio and the Fuencaliente salt pans. Exact tonnages depend on the year and the company, which is why they are not quoted here.
Cover photo: Salinas de Janubio, Yaiza, Lanzarote. Photograph: Jorge Franganillo, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.
