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.

To avoid the city traffic, I make a beeline for Plaza del Ayuntamiento, a square in Valencia’s old town that has been pedestrianised since 2020. The motorway-sized road that passes the city’s town hall – once a busy bus route – has shed its tarmac, been landscaped and is now heaving with visitors, cyclists and dog walkers. Instead of honking horns and engine fumes, I hear water rushing from the plaza’s large central fountain and get a waft of freshly baked fartons, the city’s signature sweet treat, from a nearby cafe. It feels cooler here, with palms and chestnut trees offering much-needed shade.

“When I walked here for the first time last year, I kept looking over my shoulder to see if there was a car,” says Eva Fernandez, a Valencia local who works for the tourist board. “It used to be so chaotic here, full of taxis and buses. Now look at it.”

In recent years, 150,000 square metres of public space across three of Valencia’s central squares – Plaza del Ayuntamiento, Plaza de la Reina and Plaza del Mercat – have been pedestrianised, with major bus routes and traffic diverted. The aim, Eva tells me, is to reduce emissions in the centre and make the area more inviting to visitors and locals.

“This is the beating heart of the city,” says Eva. “In a big city like this, change has to start in the centre.”

In 2019, Valencia was the first city in the world to measure the carbon emissions and water usage of its tourism industry. According to that data, the city decreased its emissions by nearly 8% in 2022, although that is as yet uncertified. It is working to be carbon-neutral by 2030. But Valencia’s eco credentials go back much further. When the Turia River was redirected around the city after a flood in 1957, the government planned to turn the dry riverbed into a motorway. Valencian citizens protested – which wasn’t for the fainthearted in Franco’s Spain – and instead the former riverbed became Europe’s longest urban park, the Jardín del Turia, in 1986. It now helps remove much of the city’s CO2.

“There are three things Valencians protect with their lives: Las Fallas [the spectacular fires and pyrotechnics festival in celebration of Saint Joseph], paella and green spaces,” says Eva. “We’re an agricultural city – our relationship to land and water is sacred.”

The next morning I’m up early for a bike tour to Albufera natural park, a protected wetland 10 miles south of the centre. Following marked cycle paths – there are more than 120 miles of them in Valencia – my guide Igor and I follow the six-mile-long Jardín del Turia, pedalling under 16th-century bridges and passing many of Valencia’s most famous sites, including Palau de la Música and La Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias.

“There are two steps to visiting Valencia: check into your hotel and hire a bike,” says Igor, an Italian who moved here from Rome 21 years ago and set up one of the city’s first cycling operators, The Easy Way, in 2013. “The moment I cycled here for the first time, I knew this city was special. That’s what I want others to feel.”

By lunchtime we reach the village of El Saler, where a traditional wooden boat known as an albuferenc is waiting to take us into Albufera natural park, a freshwater lagoon that is home to hundreds of migratory birds and where Valencia’s signature ingredient, rice, is grown. This is no typical albuferenc, however – it’s the first electric passenger boat in the park.

“Albuferencs used to be powered exclusively by sail, but when tourism started here in the 1960s and 70s, they added engines,” says Jaume Dasí, our captain. His grandfather, originally a rice farmer, was one of the first to run motorised boat trips on the lagoon. But Jaume, who has a degree in environmental studies, envisioned a greener family business. “Electric boats allow us to have minimal impact on the lake – we pollute less, and don’t disturb the birds.”

We follow a narrow canal flanked by tall grass without making a sound, ducks bobbing in our wake and water gently lapping at the hull. I stand to peek over the grass and see green rice fields stretching in every direction. As we reach Albufera Lake, a grey mullet leaps out of the water, its scales catching the light like tinfoil, and dozens of glossy ibis – a graceful bird with bronze and violet plumage – fly in a V formation overhead against a backdrop of the Cullera and Gandía mountains. We don’t see another boat on the water the entire trip.

“Most people go on boat trips from El Palmar,” says Jaume, referring to the Albufera village further south. “But I prefer entering the park from El Saler – it’s much less crowded and visitors get to experience more of Albufera’s channels, where they see a lot more wildlife.”

I stay the night in Parador de El Saler, the only hotel inside the park, and the following morning meet David Warrington from Birding Valencia, who offers birdwatching tours across the Valencia region. He takes me to Racó de l’Olla Interpretation Centre, where a birdwatching hide overlooks a protected lagoon, home to large nesting colonies of sandwich tern and rare species such as the marbled teal duck and the red-knobbed coot.

“Albufera is on the migration path of millions of birds travelling between Europe and Africa,” says David, who is from Sheffield and moved to Valencia 19 years ago. “These wetlands serve as highway service stations where birds can rest, eat and breed. Because of their migration, birds are the perfect example of how local conservation efforts can have a global impact.”

I spend my last few hours in Valencia eating paella among the Albufera rice fields, where the famous Spanish dish is said to have originated centuries ago. At Restaurante La Albufera, I tuck into rice with rabbit, artichokes and butter beans grown in Valencia’s huertas, or market gardens – while enjoying views over the paddy fields. A little egret comes into land, while a row of ducklings bob along the moss-coloured river beyond my table. It’s peaceful, like being on the shoreline of an empty beach.

A city break is a hard sell for someone like me, who is naturally drawn to quieter, wilder spaces. But as dessert is served to the call of a purple heron, I think to myself that if every city were like Valencia, I could perhaps be convinced.