By 1960 there were 5.648 threshing pits working in the Salt Valley. By 1984 their number had fallen to 2.338 and by 2000 only 42 remained in operation. This rapid rate of degradation, in which almost 93.3% of the platforms disappeared in just 40 years, led to the Provincial Council of Álava to foster the recovery of the whole. To this end, it launched a Master Plan whose main objective was to diagnose the problems that were causing the ruin of the valley and to indicate how and the most appropriate way to rescue it from the oblivion to which it was subjected during the last forty years; to preserve, to maintain, to take care, to use, to teach and through its use, to ensure its survival for future generations.

We believe that the phrase that best reflects the philosophy of the works performed for the Master Plan is "Knowing to restore, restore to persist" . Keep in mind that the image offered by the Salt Valley today is the result of a complex evolutionary process, both political and economical, as well as social, which began when the first prehistoric man used the brine on the springs to make salt and finished when it went out of production and the salterns were left. In order to recover Añana is necessary to understand this process, that way we'll recover from oblivion all the empirical knowledge developed over millenia by the salt workers and avoid making mistakes during the future work. Consequently, the methodological procedure of the Master Plan has been based on three related pillars. The first is 'Document', the second 'Analyze' and the third 'Propose'.