A greener Spanish city break: electric boats, birds and rice fields in Valencia

Traffic-free central squares, a huge urban park and a protected nature reserve reachable by bike all add up to make Valencia this year’s European Green Capital

The temperature gauge flashes 34C when I arrive in Valencia. It’s mid-June in Spain’s third-largest city, and the streets are humming with people and cars. I feel my body tense as I wait in a crowd to cross an enormous road, ambulance sirens ringing around me and neon shop signs flashing.

I’m not a city person. I spent my early 20s studying in central London, and ever since, the thought of a city break makes me shudder. I prefer the open spaces of the mountains, or the cool breeze and empty beaches of a quiet coastal town. But when I heard that Valencia, the capital of the region I grew up in, was named European Green Capital 2024, I was intrigued. Could a densely populated city – synonymous in my mind with concrete, fumes and noise – ever be green? I took the bus from my home town, 80 miles south of Valencia, to find out.