Historically, it was an area of fishermen and farmers. A Phoenician colony, called Herna by Roman geographerAvienius in his book Ora Maritima was the first settlement near the mouth of Segura river,[2] In Valencian, guardar means safekeeping and mar means sea, and this is another possible basis for its current name.
Guardamar is the southernmost Valencian-speaking town and in 1991 41.8% of the town's residents could speak it.[3] Guardamar is also the only municipality of the Vega Baja del Segura comarca (known locally as Baix Segura) where Valencian is traditionally and widely spoken.
The INE (Spanish Census) of 2006 showed that the city had 14,261 residents. By January 2011 this figure had reached 16,863 of which 10,051 were Spanish. The total dropped by 2015 to 15,589. The most prominent nationalities in 2015 were:
Carmen Verdú is the mayor of the city. In the latest municipal elections of May 2011, Carmen Verdú of the People's Party (Partido Popular) won the elections with an absolute majority, larger than the one the former mayor (María Elena Albentosa) had, while the opposition (Socialist Party) lost some of their popular support. She is the second woman ever to occupy this position.
At the 2015 local elections, the political composition on the local council was:
^Bierling, Marilyn R. and Gitin, Seymour (2002). The Phoenicians in Spain: an archaeological review of the eighth-sixth centuries B.C.E.: a collection of articles translated from Spanish. Eisenbrauns, p. 124. ISBN1-57506-056-6
.svg){kind=small}
