Travesía Navidad - Playa del Postiguet

Rising 166 meters straight out of the Mediterranean shore, the limestone crag of Mount Benacantil casts its shadow over the sheltered curve of Playa del Postiguet. The Travesía Navidad - Playa del Postiguet is an open water winter swimming race held in the calm Mediterranean Sea along the city strand of Alicante, in the Valencian Community. Swimmers gather on the sand beneath the palm-lined city promenade for a festive December dip that combines competitive circuit swimming with local holiday tradition. The start and finish gates sit right in the sheltered El Cocó corner at the eastern end of the beach. Swimmers take on distances of 800, 1,500, or 3,000 meters, competing in the inaugural fixture of the Copa Alicante open water league and the municipal Alc-Nado sports circuit.

Safety is closely managed along the bay, with tow buoys strictly mandatory for every competitor slicing through the winter swells. While most participants pull on neoprene suits for thermal comfort, hardier swimmers can enter the traditional skin category with authorization and a signed liability declaration. A mass start off the sand can bring the usual frantic rush of jostling elbows and churning kickboards, but the pack quickly strings out into clear, open water. Even when the winter air feels sharp along the shore, the protected Mediterranean here remains remarkably gentle, and the sea temperature feels surprisingly manageable once your stroke settles into rhythm. Beyond the individual distances, the event features a popular solidarity relay whose proceeds go directly to ASPANION to support children with cancer across the region.

The atmosphere on the beach feels genuinely celebratory, with upbeat music, entertainment, and prize drawings for families bundled up along the tide line. Coming out of the surf, swimmers are welcomed with generous finish-line refreshments, including fresh seasonal fruit, sweet and savory local cocas, and cups of steaming hot chocolate that warm chilly fingers in minutes.

Playa del Postiguet and the waters of El Cocó

The race unfolds in the Mediterranean basin. At the eastern tip where swimmers enter the sea, a 178-meter L-shaped stone breakwater protects the El Cocó basin, replacing an older dike from the 1990s to buffer the cove against open-sea chop. It has not always looked like this modern urban beach. For centuries, this shore was a rugged bank of shingle and cobbles where the fishermen of the adjacent Raval Roig neighborhood hauled up their wooden boats after night shifts on the water. Only in the late nineteenth century was the shoreline reshaped with soft sand to accommodate newly fashionable maritime bathing customs, creating the broad strand enjoyed by open water swimmers today.

Mount Benacantil and the defenses of Santa Bárbara

Looming nearby stands Mount Benacantil, an elevation of 166 meters rising straight from the Mediterranean edge. Viewed from the sand of Postiguet, the craggy silhouette of the mountain mimics the profile of a human head, known locally as the Moor's face. High above, guarding the summit, sits the ancient stronghold of Santa Bárbara Castle, whose oldest surviving fortifications date back between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. Deep archaeological digs across the surrounding slopes have uncovered artifacts spanning the Bronze Age, Iberian settlements, and Roman outposts. French warships bombarded the castle from the bay in 1691, and during the 1709 siege of the city, military engineers carved a chamber 29 meters into the rock face beneath the citadel, packing it with 55 tons of gunpowder.

The colossal detonation on March 3 collapsed a vast section of the cliff, devastating roughly 400 houses in the Raval Roig settlement below. In modern times, the historic void left by the 1709 mine explosion was repurposed in 1963 to house the elevator shafts that whisk visitors into the fortress. In 1873, the waters shook once more when the frigate Numancia unleashed its naval guns against the town.

The pine slopes and coastal flora of Benacantil

While the sheer south and west faces dropping toward Playa del Postiguet remain dry and rocky because of their steep incline, the wider slopes of Benacantil tell a story of careful environmental renewal. In 1930, an ambitious reforestation project planted 21,000 pine trees across the mountain, intermingled with stands of poplars and eucalyptus. Today, that mature green canopy offers an unexpected natural roofline right over the urban shoreline. Among the crags and limestone outcrops, endemic Mediterranean plants thrive in the dry sea air, including fragrant rock tea and pennyroyal. In earlier centuries, patches of saltwort were harvested commercially across these hillsides. The thick belt of woodland above the beach also sustains abundant wildlife, providing nesting branches for songbirds like robins, blackbirds, and European serins whose calls carry down toward the surf on quiet winter mornings.

Paseo del Postiguet and the historic seafront

Directly framing the race arena runs the Paseo del Postiguet, stretching from the Puerta del Mar along the sand to the old La Marina railway station. The esplanade is distinguished by its vivid turquoise-blue cobblestones laid out in repeating hexagonal patterns, bordered by elegant garden plots and lines of date palms that match the trees scattered across the sand. A footbridge arcs directly from the sand toward the hillside terraces of Raval Roig, while the El Cocó spit transforms each summer into the firing ground for the midnight fireworks that conclude the famous Hogueras de San Juan festival. Running parallel to the docks lies Canalejas Park, designed in 1886 upon the grounds of the city's former shipyards.

Landmark maritime architecture constructed in the early twentieth century is preserved nearby. Here stands the Maritime Customs house, built between 1908 and 1912 by the Levante dock, and the 1908 Maritime Health building, which for decades inspected vessels, goods, and incoming passengers to safeguard the port. Together with the historic Fish Market, these pavilions form an evocative maritime quarter that anchors Alicante's seafaring life.