Get to one of the coves and work out that this is what the whole coast looked like before the 1960s

Walk the clifftop coast path between the beaches rather than driving between them

Find the fossil dunes and the salt flats behind the beaches

Work out why it survived: protected in time, and cars stopped at the gate in summer

Climb one of the low sierras behind for the view over the whole park and the Mar Menor beyond

The Murcian coast south of the Mar Menor was comprehensively built on, and then it stops. Calblanque is a regional park of low sierra, fossil dunes, salt flats and coves of pale sand with nothing behind them — no hotels, no promenade, no bars. It was protected in time, and the way it stays that way is that in summer private cars are stopped at the entrance and a bus runs instead. Walking in from the gate is the other option, and the coast path along the top of the cliffs is the best of it.

Calblanque: The Coast the Mar Menor Development Missed

Swim in water that is nowhere more than seven metres deep and several degrees warmer than the open sea

Walk or drive La Manga and work out that in places this sandbar is a hundred metres wide with sea on both sides

Take a dip in the mud at Lo Pagán, where people coat themselves in the lagoon's mineral mud and bake

Find out what happened: nitrates and phosphates off the farmland stripping the oxygen out, thousands of fish dead in October 2019 and tonnes more in August 2021

Work out what Spain did in October 2022 — granted the Mar Menor rights of nature, the first ecosystem in Europe to be given them

The Mar Menor is 135 square kilometres of saltwater lagoon cut off from the Mediterranean by La Manga, a sandbar 22 kilometres long and in places only a hundred metres wide — the largest lagoon in Spain, nowhere more than seven metres deep, and warm and calm enough that it has been a nursery sea for beginners for generations. It is also in crisis. Nitrates, ammonium and phosphates washing off intensive farming have stripped the oxygen out of it: thousands of fish died in October 2019 and four to five tonnes were removed in a single week in August 2021. In October 2022 Spanish lawmakers granted the lagoon rights of nature — the first ecosystem in Europe to be treated as a legal person.

The Mar Menor: Europe's Largest Saltwater Lagoon

Go into the Roman theatre, turned up by building work in 1988 under the old cathedral of Santa María la Vieja and not opened until 2008

Work out the sequence of the site: Roman theatre, then a market, then a cathedral, then houses, then a car park

Find out what Qart Hadasht was — the Carthaginian city Hannibal set out from, taken by Rome in 209 BC

Walk the Calle Mayor and find the Modernista buildings the 19th-century mining money paid for

Go down into the Civil War air raid shelters cut into the hill under the town

Look at the naval harbour, which has been a military port continuously for over two thousand years

The Carthaginians founded Cartagena around 227 BC as Qart Hadasht — new city, the same name as Carthage — and it was from here that Hannibal set out for Italy. Rome took it in 209 BC. Then in 1988 work on a new building turned up a complex of superimposed structures that nobody had known was there — a Roman theatre, buried under the old cathedral of Santa María la Vieja and centuries of housing. Excavation and the museum took until 2008. The town above is also one of the best Art Nouveau townscapes in Spain, built with 19th-century mining money.

Cartagena: A Roman Theatre Under a Cathedral

Float in the Laguna Rosa and work out that you cannot sink in water this saline

Work out what makes it pink — halophilic bacteria and algae in water nothing else survives in

Find out what happened between 1389 and 1482 when the crown tried to make it a fishery

Go across to the La Mata lagoon, which is green rather than pink, and work out why

Look for flamingos, which feed on the same organisms that make the water pink

The lagoons of La Mata and Torrevieja have been worked for salt since at least 1321, when the crown gave Torrevieja's to the city of Orihuela, and they are still one of the largest salt operations in Europe. The Torrevieja lagoon is bright pink, from halophilic bacteria and algae living in water far too saline for anything else, and the salinity is high enough that you float in it the way you do in the Dead Sea. In 1389 the crown tried to turn it into a fishery and gave up in 1482 when it became clear no fish would enter water that salty.

Torrevieja: A Pink Lake You Can Float In

Go into the Roman salting factory in the middle of the town and find the vats

Work out what garum was and why an industrial plant for it was worth building here

Find out about the two Phoenician boats of the 7th century BC found in this bay

Work out why they matter: among the oldest ships recovered anywhere in the western Mediterranean

Look at the old mine workings in the hills and work out what was being taken out of them

The Romans ran an industrial fish-salting operation on this coast, and the factory at Puerto de Mazarrón — vats for salting and for making garum — has been excavated in the middle of the modern town. Offshore, two Phoenician boats of the 7th century BC were found in the bay in the 1990s, among the oldest ships ever recovered in the western Mediterranean, one of them lifted and conserved. The hills behind were mined for lead, silver and alum from antiquity to the 20th century, which is the other half of why anyone was here.

Mazarrón and the Roman Fish-Salting Coast

Walk round the gredas and work out that wind, not water, did most of this

Work out why it survives here: this is the driest corner of the Iberian peninsula

Stay off the formations themselves, which are soft and break under a hand

Walk west along the coast, which is 35 kilometres of largely undeveloped sand

Come at low sun, when the shapes read properly

At Bolnuevo, on the Mazarrón coast, a bank of clays formed from weathered igneous and metamorphic rock has been cut by wind — and much less by rain — into mushrooms, towers and overhangs standing directly behind the beach. It is one of the clearest pieces of wind erosion anywhere on the Spanish coast, and the reason it survives is that this is the driest corner of the peninsula. The Mazarrón coast behind it has 35 kilometres of mostly fine sand with almost no development on it outside the port and Bolnuevo itself.

Bolnuevo: Sandstone Sculpted by Wind

Look up at the cathedral's 93-metre bell tower, the third tallest in Spain

Stand in front of the Baroque main façade, then find the chapel of the Vélez inside

Find the urn in the main chapel that holds the heart of Alfonso X the Wise

Go to the Museo Salzillo and find his nativity of 556 pieces and the processional figures of Good Friday

Murcia's cathedral was consecrated in 1467 and built up over the next three centuries, so its Gothic core carries Renaissance, Baroque and neoclassical additions: the bell tower, 93 metres high and the third tallest in Spain; the Baroque main façade, counted one of the masterpieces of Spanish Baroque; and the chapel of the Vélez. In the main chapel an urn holds the heart and entrails of Alfonso X the Wise. Across the old town the Museo Salzillo is given over to the city's Baroque sculptor Francisco Salzillo: the processional figures of the Cofradía de Nuestro Padre Jesús, which still go out on the morning of Good Friday, his nativity scene of 556 pieces, and some fifty of his preparatory models.

Murcia: Salzillo's Nativity and the Cathedral Tower

Walk down the terraces and work out that the whole city is built on three levels with the caliph at the top

Go into the Salón Rico and look at what has been pieced back together from the rubble

Work out the timeline: begun 936, destroyed 1010 to 1013, standing for under eighty years

Find out why it was built at all — a new caliph needing to outshine the Fatimids in North Africa

Go to the museum first, which is underground and explains the site before you see it

Abd al-Rahman III declared himself caliph and then did what a caliph was expected to do: founded a new city to prove it. Medina Azahara went up from 936 to 940 and on through his reign and his son al-Hakam II's, eight kilometres outside Córdoba at the foot of the Sierra Morena, explicitly to outshine the Fatimid caliphate in North Africa. Then Almanzor moved the administration to his own new city, and in the civil war of al-Andalus Medina Azahara was destroyed between 1010 and 1013 and quarried for its stone. UNESCO listed it on 1 July 2018.

Medina Azahara: A Capital Built and Destroyed in Seventy Years

Walk the huerta and find the azudes and channels — the irrigation the Moriscos built and the valley still runs on

Work out what happened here: exempted from the 1609 expulsion, then expelled anyway by a decree written against them in 1614

Find out who wanted their land, and what happened to it in the 18th century

Walk between the valley villages — Ricote, Ojós, Ulea, Villanueva — which sit in a line along the Segura

Come in February or March when the apricot and peach blossom is out across the whole valley floor

The Ricote valley on the middle Segura is still called the Moorish Valley, and for good reason. When the 1609 decree expelled the Moriscos from Spain, the people here argued successfully that they were genuinely Christian and were let alone — the only community in the country to manage it. It did not last. Local landowners wanted their property, a fresh decree aimed specifically at them was issued in 1614, and at the end of that year they were put on ships at Cartagena. They were the last Moriscos to leave Spain. What they left is the irrigation system that still waters the valley.