Town
Alicante · L'Alacantí
Muchamiel/Mutxamel
The centre of what survives of the Huerta de Alicante, an irrigated plain fed for four centuries by the dam at Tibi, one of the oldest large dams still in use anywhere.
The huerta and its water
A plain kept alive by a sixteenth-century dam
The Huerta de Alicante once spread across four municipalities. Today the cultivated huerta survives mainly within Mutxamel, threaded by acequias and dotted with the country houses of Alicante families.
It depends on the dam at Tibi, agreed in 1579 and closed in 1594, whose curved masonry wall created the first large reservoir of its kind in Europe and still holds water. The idea is credited to a miller from Mutxamel.
Fast facts
INE padrón, 1 Jan 2025
- Population
- 28,621
- Change since 2015
- +18%
24,256 in 2015
Read Mutxamel
One new contribution
New contribution · Summer 2026
Mutxamel: the huerta and the water from Tibi
How the Huerta de Alicante, the sixteenth-century dam at Tibi, the church of El Salvador and the scattered country estates make Mutxamel the last working piece of Alicante's irrigated plain.
Published 1 September 2026
Read the guide