Understand
Gandia (http://www.gandia.be/) is the capital of the county of La Safor, between the mountains and the beaches of The Mediterranean. Like its much larger neighbour Valencia, Gandia greets the arrival of springtime with a spectacular pyrotechnic festival known as Las Fallas. Various events and entertainments take place over the period of a few days, culminating in the Feast of Saint Joseph on 19 March. All the hard work put into the creation of giant figures of wood and paper go up in smoke in the great bonfires that take place in the evening as part of the Gandia Fallas celebrations.
The city of Gandia is situated some 65km south of Valencia and 116km north of Alicante and is one of the largest coastal towns and a rather well kept secret. Traditionally Gandia's tourism is Spanish based with a major part of it coming from Madrid. It seems though that the cat may be out of the bag with more and more foreign tourism coming to the area. With the foreign tourism, we have also seen a rise in the amount of people coming to live. Gandia is a thriving centre of commerce, and as such does not rely solely on tourism. The beach and the town are actually some 2km apart which succeeds in separating the summer tourism from day to day living. Imagine, in the middle of August being able to visit the bank in Gandia without fighting through hoards of people waving travellers checks and smelling of suntan lotion, to then be able to visit the beach and be right in the thick of it all. The same advantages also exist in the winter time. Unlike many coastal towns which become deserted as the colder months approach, Gandia itself stays populated and open.
Oranges are a considerable source of income, but also onions, tomatoes, peppers and many other natural crops in La Conca de la Safor, handled and packed in the many local stores, contribute to the obvious wealth of the area, together with the industries that make the most varied of goods, the shops that sell them and the tourism, which has an important hotel infrastructure distributed along the coastline.
All these products were exported, up until recently, via Gandia harbour, inaugurated in 1893 due to an English company that built the narrow-gauge railway from Alcoi to Gandia, where the company boats unloaded the coal that heated the factory boilers. The harbour was for many years the main point of export of Valencian oranges and, though it has not the traffic that it used to have in the sixties, Gandia harbour still has a fishing fleet of some importance, while land transport has replaced transportation by sea. This has generated the appearance of many transport companies owning long-distance truck fleets that travel the roads and motorways of Europe and carry the name of Gandia everywhere in the world where it deserves to be known.
