A Semana de la Sal is going on this week in Ses Salines and in Colònia de Sant Jordi, near Mallorca’s principal salt marshes in the Es Trenc-Salobrar de Campos area. When visiting Ses Salines, I happened upon a special organic sea salt which is collected manually from the Parque Nacional del Archipiélago de Cabrera, a nature reserve a few miles south of Colònia de Sant Jordi. The natural salt is washed by the sea into small rock pools on Cabrera island. When the sea water recedes, sun and wind conditions dry out the water from the pools. What remains in the rock pools are the flakes of the salt of the Mediterranean Sea. The flakes are laboriously gathered by hand, brought back to Mallorca, cleaned of impurities without any chemical or industrial treatment and sold in a gourmet shop in Ses Salines by the weight. The price amounts to 17 € per kilo which may sound quite expensive. But as the salt is sold without any packaging or fancy branding, it actually turns out cheaper than the lavish makes of Flor de Sal d’es Trenc or Llum de Sal, to name but two well-known Mallorcan gourmet salts. A small quantity like, let’s say, 125 g would only set you back around 2 €. I bought some, we tried some at home and, if asked, I would recommend the salt wholeheartedly. The salt is called Sal de Cocó, which is the name of the small rock pools from which it is gathered.

Allow me to elaborate on the merits of sea salt for your benefit, your health and well-being. Let me start by saying that in general, we all eat too much salt. We use salt, sometimes without knowing it, every day of our life. Without salt, animals cannot survive, and this includes us, the human animal. However, too much salt can be dangerous and cause illnesses, just as too little salt intake can cause dehydration.

Table salt is usually refined by industrial processes and thus, stripped of most of the minerals that are present in it when it is extracted from natural sources, i. e. the sea. The organic sea salt from Cabrera contains marine trace elements and is rich in minerals such as magnesium, sodium, potassium, zinc, sulfate and calcium. And it comes from a pollution-free nature reserve, miles away from cars and other polluters of modern civilization. Buy some if ever you get near Ses Salines. I do not think that this salt is marketed anywhere else nor, indeed, on the Internet.

The photo was taken in Ses Salines, Mallorca, Baleares, Spain. The date: April 15th, 2011. The time was 15:42:37.