Mar Menor

Los Alcázares (Spanish: [los alˈkaθaɾes]) is a municipality and a coastal spa town and former fishing village on the western side of the Mar Menor in the autonomous community and province of Murcia, southeastern Spain. The Mar Menor (little sea) belongs to three other municipalities: San Javier, San Pedro del Pinatar and Cartagena and is Europe's largest saltwater lagoon. Connected to the adjacent Mediterranean sea by several channels, the Mar Menor has a surface area of almost 20 km2 and the fact that it is typically 2-4 degrees warmer than the Mediterranean, makes it a very popular destination for sailing, windsurfing, kiteboarding and other water sports enthusiasts. Los Alcazares has a resident population (2018) of 15,674 which rises to over 100,000 during the peak tourist summer holiday season. On 13 October 1983, the town was granted municipal autonomy, in respect of which it holds an annual week-long celebration featuring live music, shows, windsurfing competitions and firework displays. Besides the annual celebration of municipal autonomy, like many Spanish towns and cities, Los Alcazares also plays host to numerous fiestas and festivals throughout the year, including a large medieval market at the end of every March, and during the last two weeks in August, 'La Huerta' an international folklore festival and feast in celebration of the region's status as the market garden of Spain. Los Alcazares was used as a location for the 2008 movie of Ernest Hemingway's posthumous novel The Garden of Eden, starring Jack Huston, Richard E. Grant and Mena Suvari. A partly disused historic military air base at the southern end of the town was also used for location filming for the 2010 war movie, Green Zone featuring Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear and Jason Isaacs.

El Carmolí is an area in Los Urrutias, Cartagena municipality, in the Campo de Cartagena comarca, Region of Murcia, southeastern Spain. It used to be the site of a military air base, located near a homonymous hill in the flat Mar Menor area. One noteworthy spot in the territory is a hill which name is also El Carmolí and is an ancient volcano that started erupting seven million years ago.The El Carmolí zone is part of a protected area called Parque Natural de Espacios Abiertos e Islas del Mar Menor.

Torre-Pacheco (Spanish pronunciation: [torepaˈtʃeko]) is a municipality in the autonomous community of Murcia in southeastern Spain. It covers an area of 189.4 km² and its population in 2019 was 35,676. The only high ground in the municipality is Cabezo Gordo hill, the location of the protected Sima de las Palomas archeological site. The town has one secondary education institution, the I.E.S. Gerardo Molina. The municipality is known for its golf courses, and its windmills are known region wide.

El Algar is a district of the Spanish municipality Cartagena. It is located in the east of Cartagena and has an area of 26.659 km2. It shares borders with Lentiscar at its north, San Félix at its east, La Unión municipality at its south east, El Beal at its south-west and a coastal salty lagoon named Mar Menor at its north-west. In 2019, 7,961 people were registered as inhabitants of the district.

Torre de la Horadada is a Spanish town located on the Mediterranean Sea with an estimated population of 2.676 inhabitants and comes under the jurisdiction of Pilar de la Horadada, which in turn has a total population of 22.967 according to the National Statistics Institute. Both of these towns are located in the most southern point of the Alicante province in the southeast of Spain and therefore shares a border with the province of Murcia. The name of the town has its origin in two factors: the first, the 16th century watchtower; and the second, the site where the tower is found: the point of Horadada (el horadada) which comes from the Spanish word for "bore through" as it is situated on rocks made up of small caves developed by the water boring the rock.

Los Nietos, Spain is a small fishing village with its own individual marina on the Mar Menor, which began as a very small fishing settlement and was later urbanised to allow more holiday homes by the Mar Menor. It is now a busy community with many visitors, especially in the summer, with some events at other times. Many foreigners, mainly British, live there. The village is at the eastern terminus of the Cartagena-Los Nietos commuter railway line. The Mar Menor has a 73 km coastline perimeter with numerous beaches with clear, shallow water (maximum depth 7m). The Mar Menor lagoon covers an area of 170km2 – making it the largest Saltwater lake in Europe. The average annual temperature is 17 °C, winters are mild, with average temperatures not falling much below 10 °C. La Manga del Mar Menor itself is a narrow strip of land between two seas, the Mediterranean and Mar Menor, measuring up to 300m in breadth & 21 km in length. It has over 40 km of sandy beaches, a casino, hotels, and is close to the airport, Murcia central, and to one of the oldest cities in Spain, Cartagena. Los Alcazares is an old fishing village of 20 km2 with 7 km of beaches from Los Narejos to Punta Brava. There is good transport to Los Alcazares and other nearby places. Santiago de la Ribera appeared in 1888 around a hermitage named after the apostle Santiago, and founded by Friar Jose Maria Barnuevo Rodrigo de Villamayor, who was a knight of the Military Order of Santiago – for this reason the town was named Santiago de la Ribera. Cabo de Palos is a bay on the Mediterranean side of La Manga just before the strip itself. The village has been built on a volcanic backbone of the Murcian coast where fishing has remained one of the livelihoods of the area although it has been modernized. Playa Honda, Mar de Cristal, Islas Menores, Los Nietos, Los Urrutias and Punta Brava are small hamlets and villages following the coastline.

Llano del Beal (also known as El Llano del Beal or El Llano) is a town in the municipality of Cartagena in the autonomous community of the Region of Murcia in Spain.

La Unión is situated in the Region of Murcia in the southeast of Spain. It has an area of 24.6 km², and had a population of 19,907 on 1 January 2018. It has an elevation of 86 m. Its average annual temperature is 17 °C. It has balmy winters. The sun shines 320 days per year. La Unión is situated in one of the sunniest areas in Europe; this kind of climate makes possible the many leisure activities, popular fiestas, sports, and cultural activities that are held in the town. The town is linked by a regular train to Cartagena which allows views of the past industrial heritage of the area (lead, alum and silver mining) and the more modern occupations of agriculture and tourism. La Unión lies within the built-up area of Cartagena and is surrounded on all landward sides by the City of Cartagena. The rich mines of La Union provided most of the silver and lead needed by the Late Roman Republic, as it was studied by the archaeologist Eulalia Sintas Martínez.

Rincón de San Ginés is a district of the Spanish municipality Cartagena and is located in the south-east end. The territory is adjacent to the Mediterranean Sea in its south and east and is adjacent to a coastal salty lagoon named Mar Menor in its east. It has an area of 59,33 km2 and had a population of 10,558 in 2020. The Calblanque Regional Park occurs in this district. The Cabo de Palos lighthouse is located in the east end of the territory. The following localities are included in the territory: Los Nietos Viejos, which is located in the north-west end and was inhabited by 198 people in 2020; Los Nietos, which is placed in the north-west and is home to 1,081 people; Los Belones, which is located in the north-west and had a population of 2,332; Islas Menores, which is placed in the north and was inhabited by 221 people; Playa Honda, which is located in the west of the northwestern quarter and was home to 1,145 people; Playa Paraíso, which occurs in the east and was inhabited by 449 people; Atamaría, which is located in the southwestern third and had a population of 427; Las Barracas, which occurs in the north-west of the south-western quarter and was inhabited by 181 people; Cobaticas, which is placed in the west of the south-eastern quarter and was home to 43 people, Cala Reona, which is located in the east and has a population of 727; and Cabo de Palos, which occurs in the east and was inhabited by 1,025 people.

Sierra Minera de Cartagena-La Unión is a mountainous formation that extends east–west along 26 km of coastline from the city of Cartagena to Cape Palos, through the municipality of La Unión, in the Region of Murcia in Spain. Its maximum elevation is located on the Sancti Spíritus hill near Portmán, at 431 m altitude.This mountain range was intensely exploited for its silver and lead mines and other metallic minerals in ancient times. The control over these mining resources was one of the main causes of the establishment of the Carthaginians in southern Spain and the subsequent Roman occupation. The prosperity generated by mining made the city of Carthago Nova, now Cartagena, one of the most flourishing in Roman Hispania, until the end of the 1st century, due to the depletion of the best deposits, along with the scarce Roman technology, it was abandoned. The mines were not exploited again until the 19th century, when new industrial technologies made mineral production in the Sierra de Cartagena profitable again, and there was a new mining and related industries boom. After the Spanish Civil War, extensive open-pit mining was introduced, which caused serious environmental problems until mining activities ceased definitively in 1990. As a consequence of this long historical process of industrial exploitation, the landscape of the Sierra de Cartagena-La Unión is marked and transformed by centuries of intense human activity and treasures valuable cultural, archaeological and industrial testimonies of its mining past. For all these reasons, it has been declared a good of cultural interest (in Spanish: Bien de Interés Cultural) with the category of historic site.

La Manga Club Football Stadium is a stadium in La Manga Club, south of La Manga, Spain. It was a resort stadium and was used to friendly matches and as a resting and training place for the Spain national football team.

Portmán is a locality in the Region of Murcia, Spain, located to the south of the municipality of La Unión at the foot of the mining mountain range of Cartagena-La Unión in a bay bathed by the Mediterranean Sea. Its territory has a very rugged topography, surrounded by mountains that surround the coastal plain, where the population center is located. To the north is the Sancti Spiritu hill, 434 meters high, which is the highest point of the entity, with Fortuna hill further south and the Cabezo de las Lajas, 283 meters above sea level. To the west are located the cabezo of El Pino (271 m above sea level) and the cabezo of La Galera (177 m above sea level), whose slopes plunge towards the Mediterranean Sea; to the east are the Peña del Águila (387 m above sea level) and the Monte de las Cenizas (307 m above sea level), integrated in the regional park of Calblanque, Monte de las Cenizas and Peña del Águila. About 3 kilometers from the town, on a promontory to the east of the Portmán inlet, stands the lighthouse of the same name.