Pinedo Beach

This guide to Pinedo Beach in Valencia opens with soldiers landing during King James the First's conquest of Valencia, planting a stone cross that gave this shore the name Creu de la Conca. It explores why a conquest that should have opened the coast to settlers did the opposite: for five hundred years almost nobody built here, even though reeds, fish and rice paddies waited just behind the dunes. Barbary corsairs used this same flat shore to drag people off into slavery, prompting Spain to build a chain of coastal watchtowers. Walk the tide line and picture the fires once relayed along this coast.