Alicante · Vega Baja
Dolores
An eighteenth-century town founded through Cardinal Belluga's drainage works, where a regular civic centre sits inside a landscape of azarbes, huerta and wetland margins.
Alicante · Vega Baja
An eighteenth-century town founded through Cardinal Belluga's drainage works, where a regular civic centre sits inside a landscape of azarbes, huerta and wetland margins.
A town founded by drainage
Dolores was created in the early eighteenth century after Cardinal Belluga organised drainage channels across low, waterlogged ground owned by Orihuela and Guardamar. The new fields, houses and parish formed part of the Pious Foundations.
The same network of acequias and azarbes still defines the surrounding huerta. It also makes clear that cultivated ground and surviving wetlands belong to one connected water system rather than opposing landscapes.
Fast facts
INE padrón, 1 Jan 2025
7,246 in 2015
Read Dolores
How Cardinal Belluga's Pious Foundations turned waterlogged ground into a planned town and a huerta threaded by drainage channels.
Published 2 September 2026
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