Look at the official list of place names for Pilar de la Horadada, published by the Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua with the town hall in 2019, and a pattern jumps out: Lo Ferrer, Lo Romero, Lo Monte, Lo Párraga, Los Gracia, Los Sáez, Los Hortelanos, Los Villenas, Los Pipas.
What “Lo” and “Los” mean here
In the old farming country of the Vega Baja and the Campo de Cartagena, a house or an estate was called after the family who owned it. Los Gracia is simply “the Gracias’ place”; Lo Ferrer, “the Ferrer place”. Many of those names stuck to the land long after the family had gone, and some became whole hamlets or barrios.
Until the late 1960s this was dry farmland with houses scattered across it; then irrigation and greenhouses arrived, and from the 1980s the urbanizations. So today the same municipality has old family names in the fields, Spanish barrio names in the town, and estate names on the coast.
The three postcodes
The municipality has three postcodes: 03190, 03191 and 03192. In everyday use they are spread across the town, the coast and the inland estates, which is why “Pilar de la Horadada” on its own is not an address. It could be the town centre, a beach apartment at La Torre or a villa at Pinar de Campoverde, kilometres apart.
Describing a house in the countryside
If you are in one of the houses among the fields, a street number may not exist, or may not show up on a map. What gets a stranger to the door:
- The name of the house or the place, as the family or the sign has it: Lo Ferrer, Los Gracia.
- The camino it is on, and which road you turn off. Many caminos carry a name too: Camino de los Garcías, Camino de lo Montanaro.
- A landmark: a greenhouse, a water tank, a chapel, the colour of the gate.
- A pin. Share your location on WhatsApp. In the countryside at night it is worth more than all of the above put together.
Up the hill
Pinar de Campoverde has street names, but its streets climb on both sides of the Río Seco and the older part has very narrow footpaths, so a pin helps there too. Many of its villas went up in the mid-1980s; if yours still has its original lock, this guide is for you.
On the coast, the trickiest address of all is in El Mojón, where the regional boundary runs through the streets. How to give an address in El Mojón. Every part of the municipality, with the names used for each, is on the coverage page.