Almoradí

The Saturday morning market starts at eight. By half past, the air smells of orange zest and strong coffee, and every pensioner in Almoradí seems to be circling the fruit stall where a kilo of clementines still costs less than a London takeaway coffee. No-one is speaking English. This is the moment most visitors realise they have stumbled into the Spain that brochures normally keep for themselves.

Almoradí sits nine metres above sea level in the middle of the Vega Baja del Segura, a flat quilt of irrigation ditches and citrus groves that begins thirty minutes south of Alicante airport. The town has 21,874 inhabitants, three times as many orange trees, and almost zero international tourism. The nearest beach is a fifteen-minute drive away at Guardamar, but the Segura river is the only water most locals bother with. They come here to fish for carp, jog under the poplars, or simply escape the inland heat that can nudge 40 °C in July while the coast catches the sea breeze.

A Town Rebuilt on Orange Juice

The earthquake of 1829 levelled much of the region. What rose again is practical rather than pretty: wide streets engineered for carts loaded with lemons, houses with deep internal courtyards that trap cool air, and a parish church whose neoclassical façade looks more civic than celestial. Inside San Andrés Apóstol the paint is fresh, the stonework is dull, and the guide leaflet costs €1.50 from a desk that doubles as the parish office. Drop the coins in the box and the sacristan will unlock the side chapel to show you the wooden Christ whose elbows still bear scorch marks from a firework that went astray during last year’s fiestas.

Across the Plaza de la Constitución the town museum occupies a former grain store. The exhibition is labelled only in Spanish, but the objects need little translation: a hand-forged irrigation key the size of a cricket bat, a 1940s spraying backpack made from copper tubing, black-and-white photos of men ankle-deep in rice paddies. Together they explain why the surrounding fields supply a third of Europe’s fresh citrus and why the Saturday market can undercut British supermarkets by half.

Eating Without the Coast Premium

Restaurants here price for neighbours, not cruise parties. A three-course menú del día still costs €9 and includes a carafe of wine that would be billed as “house” and marked up 300 % on the seafront. El Cruce, on the main road into town, photographs every dish so newcomers can point instead of parse Spanish grammar. The grilled rabbit arrives with chips, lemon wedges and a reminder that the meat came from the hillside rather than a factory shed. Vegetarians do better at Giovanni, an Italian-Spanish hybrid whose owner learnt English working in Benidorm but returned home to avoid, as he puts it, “the karaoke crowd”. Even in high season you can walk in at 21:00 and get a table, though locals start eating an hour later and the kitchen stays open until midnight.

Pudding is usually something involving anise. Rollos de anís look like doughnut hoops, taste like biscotti, and cost €2.20 a bag from the bakery on Calle Corredera. Pair them with café bombón (coffee sweetened with condensed milk) and you have the breakfast that powers the market stallholders.

Cycling Through a Perfume Factory

The Vega Baja is pancake-flat, and country lanes are arranged in a grid that even the most sense-of-direction-challenged visitor can navigate. Hire a bike from the shop behind the sports centre (€15 a day, helmet included) and you can pedal for kilometres under a canopy of citrus blossom. In late March the air is so saturated with orange-flower oil it feels mildly narcotic. Turn right at the cement factory, cross the iron bridge, and the lane narrows into a green tunnel of reeds and eucalyptus. Herons stand in the irrigation channels; the only traffic is the occasional farmer on a moped with a crate of lemons bungee-corded to the back.

Bring water and a bell: Spanish cyclists announce themselves at volume. If you prefer walking, the river path is shaded and stretches eight kilometres to the ruined Moorish watchtower at Benejúzar. Round trip takes two hours, plus however long you linger photographing the sunlit bark of the orange groves – which, for Instagram purposes, looks uncannily like Tuscany with better prices.

Fiestas Where You Are the Only Foreigner

Almoradí’s calendar is crowded, loud and almost entirely local. The Feria de Agosto turns the fairground at the edge of town into a thumping midway for ten days. Entry is free; ride tokens cost €3 each or five for €12. The highlight, unexpectedly, is an agricultural show where growers display oranges the size of cricket balls and compete for rosettes the colour of traffic lights. On the final night a brass band marches through the streets at 02:00, followed by teenagers hauling a cart loaded with cocas – pizza-sized pastries topped with candied fruit. Spectators are handed wedges; refusal is taken as personal insult.

Semana Santa is more solemn. Hooded processions leave the church at 22:00 and move to drumbeats that echo off the apartment blocks. Visitors are welcome to follow, but cameras are discouraged during the actual parades. Stand at the corner of Calle Mayor and Calle San Andrés and you will see the same elderly woman who sold you churros that morning now weeping silently as the Virgin passes. It is the kind of unguarded moment guidebooks promise and rarely deliver.

Getting There, Staying Sane

Alicante airport is 40 minutes by car via the A-7 toll road (€6.45 each way). Murcia International is closer – 15 minutes – but serves fewer UK routes. Without wheels the town is tricky: buses run to Orihuela and Torrevieja, but the last departure back is usually 19:00. Car hire desks at both airports stay open for late arrivals; book ahead in July or August when vehicles can sell out.

Accommodation is mostly self-catering apartments aimed at Spanish families visiting relatives. Expect tiled floors, adequate air-conditioning in the living room, and a bedroom that traps heat like a kiln. Bring earplugs: Spanish nightlife runs until the cleaners arrive. If you need English spoken, the medical centre has a 24-hour emergency unit and there is an English-speaking dentist five kilometres away in Ciudad Quesada, but shops and bars operate in Spanish. Attempting a few phrases earns disproportionate goodwill; pointing and smiling works for everything else.

The Catch

Almoradí is not picturesque in the chocolate-box sense. The outskirts are a sprawl of tyre fitters and agricultural wholesalers. Summer afternoons can feel oppressive when the Segura valley clamps down like a lid, and the mosquito population regards DEET as a condiment. In winter the town closes in on itself: bars reduce hours, the pool complex shuts, and you may find yourself the only customer in a restaurant that once fed three generations at once.

Come anyway, especially in late January when the almond blossom drifts across the citrus rows like confetti, or in early October when the nispero harvest ends and farmers celebrate by handing out the last of the season’s loquats. Stay long enough to be recognised in the bakery, to have your coffee order poured before you reach the counter, and you will understand why the British families who rent here year after year refuse to tell the estate agents exactly how good the place is. Some secrets, they reckon, are worth the effort of keeping – even if the oranges give them away every Saturday morning.