European Sahara: How a Spanish Town Was Transformed into a Date Palm Paradise (21 photos + 1 video)

Elche, Spain, has more palm trees than residents. Here, amidst the city's neighborhoods, lies a veritable forest, unparalleled in Europe: 200,000 to 300,000 trees in hundreds of gardens.





This green history has been going on for two and a half millennia. The first palm trees were planted here by the Carthaginians as early as the 5th century BC.



But the true oasis was created by Muslims at the end of the 10th century, when almost the entire Iberian Peninsula belonged to the Arabs. It was they who brought here the North African art of transforming the desert into a blooming garden, constructing complex irrigation canals that are still in use today.





From the outside, Elche's palm groves appear to be a dense forest, but in reality, they are tightly integrated into the urban fabric. The trees are planted in neat rows in square or rectangular plots, enclosed by walls or fences made of dried palm leaves.



The owner's house once stood in the center of such a garden, but today many of them are abandoned, and city authorities are gradually buying up the land. Now, some of the former farmland has been transformed into public parks, where you can relax in the shade of century-old palm trees and the gentle sound of running water in the irrigation ditches.



Originally, these gardens fed people. The palms produced dates, and their dense shade sheltered the vegetables from the scorching sun. However, the city grew, and in the 17th century, part of the groves were cut down for development.



The Industrial Revolution and the arrival of the railway in the 19th century completed the process: the palm orchards lost their former agricultural significance. Date harvesting became a symbolic ritual, and the produce went mainly to local markets or for home consumption.



Today, the Palmeral in Elche is no longer about food, but about beauty and the memory of ancestors. UNESCO recognized this in 2000 by inscribing the palm groves on its World Heritage List as a unique testimony to the transmission of culture from East to West and a living reminder of the genius of ancient engineers.







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