Salt pans

Introduction

The salt pans lie between the town and the Ria Formosa, and they have produced salt for more than two thousand years. According to the designation of origin description for Tavira salt, there are traces of salt extraction from the 4th century BC, the Roman fish-salting works at Balsa must have got their salt from here, and in 1266 the king reserved all the salt pans in Tavira for himself. Most of the craft disappeared in the 20th century. A few producers held on, and today salt and flor de sal are harvested again every summer with the same method as a hundred years ago. The flamingos in the pans are a bonus.

Historical highlights

Salt for Balsa

The oldest traces of salt production at Tavira date from the 4th century BC. The Romans turned fish into an industry. In the port town of Balsa, six kilometres to the southwest at Torre de Aires, there were salting works where fish was preserved and garum made, and the salt must have come from the lagoon here. It is no accident that the pans lie where they lie. The lagoon gives calm, shallow water, and the summer gives enough sun and wind to evaporate it.

The king's salt

When Afonso III gave Tavira its charter in 1266, he reserved for the crown "all bread ovens and all salt pans, built or yet to be built, in Tavira and its district", and he forbade the sale of any salt in the town other than the king's. Salt was state revenue. Around 1532 the crown's pans at Tavira were so extensive that "much salt was worked" there; a later tradition speaks of 28 new pans under João III. In 1520 Manuel I called Tavira the most important trading port in the Algarve, and Forte do Rato out at the river mouth, built under D. Sebastião late in the 16th century, guarded the entrance. The salt travelled far: in the 18th century almost half of Sweden's salt imports came from Portugal.

The marnoto's work

The salt worker is called a marnoto. The work has not changed much. Seawater is led into large basins, where it settles and evaporates, on to concentration basins and finally out into the small crystallisation pans, where the salt is raked together and carried out in heaps. Flor de sal is the thin crust that forms on the surface in still weather; it is skimmed off by hand before it sinks. The Algarve's small pans are harvested five to seven times a year, and the season is summer.

Almost gone, then back

Industrial salt, refrigerators and new eating habits took the market in the mid-20th century, even though the 1960s were the heyday of salt in Portugal. Around 136 salt pans were in operation in the Algarve then, many of them around Tavira; by about 2000 around 15 were left in the whole region, kept going by a few producer families. Since then demand for hand-harvested salt has returned, and the Algarve was the first in Portugal to sell flor de sal as a speciality. In 2013 Sal de Tavira and Flor de Sal de Tavira were granted protected designation of origin. Tavira holds over 40 percent of the salt pan area in the Ria Formosa nature park, where the pans are also a larder for flamingos and waders; the avocet breeds in the park only in the salt pans.

Practical

The pans are best seen from the road towards Quatro Águas and from Forte do Rato, and the flamingos often stand closest late in the afternoon. Only one salt pan in the park has a marked path; do not walk out on the dykes in the working pans, it disturbs both the work and the birds.

Timeline and context

Timeline

• 4th century BC Oldest traces of salt extraction at Tavira.
• Roman period – Fish preserving and garum at Balsa, six kilometres to the southwest.
• 1266 Afonso III's foral places all salt pans under the crown and gives the king a monopoly on sales.
• c. 1532 The crown's salt pans at Tavira are described as extensive.
• Late 16th century Forte do Rato is built at the river mouth.
• 1738-1790 Portuguese salt covers on average 46 percent of Sweden's salt imports.
• 1917 Two canneries in Tavira with 185 workers; the salt goes to the canning and chemical industries.
• 1960s Heyday of salt; about 136 pans in operation in the Algarve.
• 1987 Ria Formosa becomes a nature park.
• c. 2000 Around 15 pans left in the whole Algarve.
• 2013 Protected designation of origin; the Algarve accounts for about 95 percent of Portugal's salt.

Salt and fish belong together

Tavira's history can be read as one long salt chain. The Romans salted fish at Balsa. The crown held on to the salt from 1266. When the canneries Balsense and Tavirense opened in 1917, the pans still lay right outside the door. Every time the fishery has gone up or down, the salt has followed.

What remains

The small number of pans in operation produces a salt that is sold as a speciality, and that is what has saved the craft. The abandoned pans have become bird habitat inside the nature park. It is a better fate than most closed industries get.