Last modified: 2007-02-09 by ivan sache
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![[Flag of Guerande]](../images/f/fr-44-gr.gif)
Flag of Guérande - Image by Ivan Sache, 19 January 2002
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The town of Guérande (14,296 inhabitants) is located on the
Guérande peninsula, 80 km west of
Nantes and 6 km north of La Baule, the
most important sea resort in the area.
The name Guérande comes from Breton words gwen and
ran, "white" and "plot of land", respectively. It
seems that white does not refer to salt but to the sacred
characteristic of the place.
Guérande is famous for its salt marshes. The marshes are
flooded by sea waters twice a day through two narrow bottlenecks
known as Grand Trait and Petit Trait. The
marshes stretch over 2,000 ha, split into two main basins, and are
arranged according to a square pattern delimited by ditches. During
the harvest time (June-September), salty water is sent every 15 days
through a succession of settling basins locally called
cobiers, fares, and adernes. Due to evaporation
caused by sun, water progressively turns into a more and more
concentrated brine. Salt crystallisation finally occurs in 70 sq. m
basins called oeillets (lit. "small eyes").
Two kinds of salt are harvested: fleur de sel (salt
flower) is harvested from the surface of the basins (3-5 kg per basin
per day), whereas gros sel (cooking salt), also called
sel gris (grey salt) is harvested from the bottom of the basins
(40-70 kg per basin per day). The salt of Guérande (10,000 t
per year) has a very high quality due to an elevated concentration in
various oligo-elements. Salt producers(paludiers) try to
preserve the quality of the marshes, which were seriously endangered
after the Erika oilspill (December 1999), and reject mechanization.
Therefore, the price of salt of Guérande is rather high. The
best French cooks won't use any salt but the salt of Guérande.
The town of Guérande is still surrounded by walls built in
the XIV-XVth centuries. On 12 April 1365 was signed in
Guérande the treaty which ended the
Breton Succession War. In 1488,
duchess Ann of Brittany signed in
Guérande her first edicts. At that time, the Breton fleet
stationed in Guérande included 269 vessels.
In June 1830, the French writer Honoré de Balzac
(1799-1850) visited the area, which he later described in his novel
Béatrix (1839).
Sources:
Ivan Sache, 23 January 2002
Guérande used now the flag it used When Brittany was an independent Duchy, a white flag with a black cross and an ermine spot in each quarter.
Source: Les drapeaux bretons de 1188 à nos jours, by P. Rault [rau98].
Ivan Sache, 19 January 2002