A town founded twice, a river that decided where people could live, and a Habsburg eagle on a Mediterranean coat of arms. Altea’s history explains a surprising amount of what you see today.
Two explanations compete over where the name comes from, and both have their supporters.
The Greek one traces it to Althaia, roughly “I heal”. It fits the tradition that Greek seafarers named the river Algar for the supposed healing power of its water, and that a Greek trading post of that name stood at its mouth. It is the better story — and the one you will hear most often in Altea.
The Arabic one traces it to aṭṭalāya, which became talaia in Valencian and atalaya in Spanish: watchtower. The name would then have meant an elevated lookout point — of which this coast had many, against pirates from the sea.
Which is right is not settled. The Arabic derivation is linguistically the more straightforward; the Greek one is older in local tradition. This page presents both rather than choosing.
The Algar rises in the hills near Callosa d’en Sarrià, where its springs — the Fonts de l’Algar — remain a destination today, crosses the hinterland and reaches the sea in the bay of Altea.
It is not a river in the northern European sense. For most of the year it carries little or no water; after heavy autumn rain it can become a torrent within hours. That double nature shaped settlement: the fresh water made agriculture possible, the mouth offered a natural anchorage, and the floods kept people from building in the bed itself — they built on the rises beside it.
Every early settlement in this bay stands in relation to the Algar. So does the irrigation system, the Séquia Mare, which distributed its water across the terraces and made the coastal plain productive.
The area was settled long before it had a name that has come down to us. Iberian finds, Greek and Phoenician trade contacts and Roman remains have all been documented around the bay and along the lower Algar.
What is missing is a continuous thread. The finds show that people lived, farmed and traded here; they do not give a town with a history. That begins much later.
Under Muslim rule the area belonged to the lands worked from small farmsteads — alquerías — scattered across the irrigated ground. The name Altāya appears in this period, and the irrigation that later generations inherited was largely laid out then.
The watchtower reading of the name belongs to this era too: a coast under constant threat from the sea kept lookouts on its high points.
In 1244 the area came under the Crown of Aragon. What followed was not prosperity but three centuries of insecurity: raids from the sea, shifting ownership, and after the expulsion of the Moriscos in 1609 a countryside emptied of much of the population that had worked it.
Settlements formed and were abandoned. A tower stood at Bellaguarda; below it, people came and went. Nothing here was permanent enough to be called a town.
By the turn of the seventeenth century a small settlement had held on below the tower of Bellaguarda. In 1617, under the lordship of Francisco de Palafox, Marqués de Ariza, it received a second carta pobla: permission to settle, coupled with the laying out of a fortified town on the hill.
That is the birth of the Altea people photograph today. The 1617 plan survives in the street layout — a rectangular grid on the summit, enclosed by a wall with several gates, of which the Portal Vell is the best known. From there Carrer Major and Carrer Salamanca climb to the church. The town sits so compactly and so high not for beauty but for defence.
After 1617 the newcomers also settled the land around the Algar mouth. That is how the partides came into being — the rural districts whose names still appear in addresses today.
In 1705, during the War of the Spanish Succession, the Anglo-Dutch fleet supporting the Habsburg Archduke Charles landed in the bay of Altea, led by the Valencian general Joan Baptista Basset. Altea thus became one of the first places to declare for the Habsburg side.
In gratitude the Archduke granted the town the double-headed eagle as the crest of its arms. It is still there — a Habsburg emblem on the Mediterranean coast that nothing but this episode could explain. For Altea, however, the war ended on the losing side.
From the eighteenth into the early twentieth century Altea lived from agriculture: almonds, carob, wine and above all raisins, shipped north through the coastal harbours. The botanist Cavanilles described the district in the late eighteenth century as carefully irrigated cultivated land — the achievement of the Séquia Mare.
Fishing and boatbuilding came alongside. Phylloxera and the collapse of the raisin market hit the coast hard and set off waves of emigration. Into the 1950s Altea remained a place that lived from the sea and from narrow terraced fields.
From the 1950s and 60s painters and writers discovered the old town: cheap, quiet, extraordinarily photogenic. What began as a handful of studios became an artists’ colony with a reputation, and the reputation in turn drew visitors.
Tourism followed, and with it construction along the coast and up the slopes. Altea grew, but it grew differently from Benidorm a few kilometres south — no high-rise wall along the bay, and an old town that stayed largely intact. Whether that was foresight or good fortune is disputed locally. Art in Altea
This account is a summary for everyday use, not a work of scholarship. It draws on:
Both derivations are documented in the toponymic literature on the Valencian coast. Neither is settled, and this page says so rather than choosing. Corrections with a source are welcome.
Compiled August 2026. Where dates are uncertain they are given as approximate; where a claim rests on local tradition rather than record, it is described as such.
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