If you want to rent beach bikes in the Cabanyal (Valencia), Santa Marcelita Bikes has a large choice of bicycles. We fell in love with this district, with its out-of-time atmosphere, but also its fishing influence and our shop has been located there ever since.

In case Valencia is all new to you, you may not know the story of the Cabanyal, so today we will try to bring you some interesting facts about the area.

A people living on fishing with little resources

Before becoming the place it is now, in the XIIIth century, it was a poor and independent neighborhood made of shacks, where the inhabitants lived from fishing. Most of these sorts of houses were small but appropriate to the little number of furniture and fishing tools they had.

In the meantime, King Jaime I wanted sailors and fishermen to live closer to the sea. Therefore, he sought ways to make the area more attractive to turn it into a village.

We owe the first representation of this quarter to painter Wijngaerde, who in 1563 portrayed a gathering of people outside the walls of the Grao and the number of people kept on growing from that time on. From the XVIIIth century, representations showed that the shacks were built linearly along the beach.

Major fires and changes for El Poble Nou de la Mar

Sadly, between the late XVIIIth and the XIXth century, three fires occurred, some people even thought they were intentional, and of course, the shacks did not help to stop them. The most notable blaze was the first one and happened in 1796. It destroyed an important part of the area, even if some old depictions from before still exist.

At the beginning of the XIXth century, the economic activity of this place and the creation of the first quay of the harbor attracted more and more people, including the aristocracy, as testified in the book The Mayflower from Blasco Ibáñez in 1895. In 1837, the community took the Valencian name of El Poble Nou de la Mar, which means the new sea people, and it matched the current coordinates of both the Cabanyal, the Canyamelar and the Cap de França.

The last known blaze took place in 1897. The shacks were then seen as a threat, thus two security measures were taken. At first, it was not allowed to build new shacks anymore and when the remaining ones were damaged, it also became prohibited to rebuild them more than three times. Simultaneously, some colorful streets started to replace them.

Becoming the Cabanyal in Valencia, a good spot to rent beach bikes

The same year, the zone got attached to Valencia and became the Cabanyal. The construction of houses was concentrated around the sea, thanks to the growth of the beach and the help of the City Council, giving rise to a new street alignment.

Nowadays, the Cabanyal is still a fishermen’s district that has kept its old-fashioned air. It is characterized by its colorful buildings, ceramic facades, several fishermen’s houses and fish markets. Its small streets make us forget that it is now part of a big city.