Alicante is immersed in the first week of the high tourist season. A coming and going of rolling suitcases, the great masses that appear from the railway station at all times and the abundance of clueless drivers in the roundabouts denote the presence of thousands of foreign visitors.
Many of them are repeat offenders. They know the schedules of the Tram, they could guide a visit to the Castle of Santa Bárbara, recommend where to eat arroz a banda and they know that the procession on Holy Wednesday in Santa Cruz is the most special of Holy Week. But Alicante still keeps secrets that are beyond the control of many aborigines. Here are a few.
Do not ask; by that name, it is difficult for someone to know how to indicate it. That’s what the artificial intelligence of your browser is for. It is a promenade by the sea, elevated above the rocky coast, paved after the construction of a controversial urbanization of townhouses that enjoy an extraordinary view in what was at the end of the last century one of the last virgin coves in the capital. : Cala Cantalar. In exchange, he now has one of the comfortable benches on which to relax in front of one of the best panoramic views of Alicante while criticizing the local urban model. At dusk, groups of young people tend to socialize on the rocks.
It is a private club, they will not raise the parking barrier when your vehicle passes by, but the Tram will leave you at the door (Lucentum halt) and the terrace of its bar -open to the public, commoners included- is one of the most pleasant in the municipality. The rice dishes at his restaurant, which belongs to the Juan XXIII group, have nothing to envy of some very renowned ones, and in the distance one can entertain oneself by following the practice of the emulators of Badosa and Alcaraz. If you are allergic to provincial bourgeoisie and olive trees, which are abundant in the area, abstain.
Yes, Santa Pola is very touristy, but it has so many comfortable beaches in the municipality that most of them don’t bother to explore our proposal. Leaving from Alicante, you have to pass the splendid beach of El Carabassà and take the coast road to the left. Before reaching the tip of the cape, we find a series of small coves that are not the envy of the Ibizan ones, they offer a privileged view of the nearby island of Tabarca and some even have a beach bar. One of them, the caleta dels gossets, allows the recreation of the mongrels.
Some people photograph Kentish plovers, flamingos and bustards in the nearby wetlands (El Hondo, El Clot de Galvany), but there are those who prefer to immortalize the flight of an Airbus 350 or a Boeing 737. If the first is called birdwatching, the second is known as spotting and its practitioners are spotters. What’s my fault?
The location of the Alicante-Elx-Miguel Hernández airport makes it very appropriate for this aircraft photographic hunt, since the road that takes us to El Altet borders the head of one of its runways and there are several nearby observation points that offer different perspectives. . And from the nearby Saladar beach it is easy to catch a landing between the blocks of the urbanization of Urbanova. A hint: on Tuesdays and Saturdays there are more flights.
Donated 15 years ago by the Armenian colony and paid for by a businessman from the Caucasian nation who spent a whopping 40,000 euros on it, it is a traditional stone carving or ‘Jachkar’ found in El Palmeral park. Do not trust that they tell you, few know that it exists. The thousand Armenians who, more or less, resided in Alicante in 2008 offered the piece to the city as a sign of gratitude for the “good reception that Armenians have always received from Alicante and the people of Alicante”. In any case, a visit to this park that is only separated from the sea by the road is worth it. There is a cafeteria on whose terrace you can relax and enjoy lamenting the terrible conservation of the place, as it is pending the execution of a reform project that the lampposts, the boats and the abandoned pier are crying out for.
Yes, you who spend the summer in La Albufereta or have been a client of the AlbahÃa hotel know the place, but do not look for it in the official guides. We arrive in 40 minutes on foot from the Plaza del Ayuntamiento, a pleasant walk; or the La Albufereta Tram stop leaves us nearby. Look for Calle del Sol Naciente, the aforementioned hotel or La Familia restaurant, a classic in the area, next to a tiny cove where it is pleasant to bathe while you think about how it is possible that the construction of such beehives was authorized on the seafront .
The last -so far- great real estate project in Alicante: around 1,500 single-family homes. Urbanized, naturally, by the builder and owner of the Hércules, Enrique Ortiz, whose company is one of the developers seeking clients for its countless bungalows and townhouses. Perhaps you are one of them (customers or promoters). Next to the Vistahermosa shopping center, it borders Denia avenue and VÃa Parque. 727,000 square meters have been urbanized 10 minutes by car from the center of Alicante, an extension “equivalent to about 102 football fields”, according to what we read in a promotional brochure. The roads that allow us to take a walk to see if there is any reason to want to live there are now open; not many come to mind.
There are three lagoons of a certain size and other smaller ones formed when mining activity ceased in the area. The excavations filled with water because they had been carried out below the water table. Over the years, they became a refuge for the fauna of the place; birds, amphibians and other animals, such as those who use them as a dump and have turned them into a degraded place. This is how walkers and hikers who venture to explore this space that the authorities tend to ignore tend to denounce it. Here corpses have appeared, submerged cars… and an urban plan that included the opening of an IKEA and the construction of 15,000 homes was about to be carried out, a plan that was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2015 to the chagrin of the main developer , the usual in these cases.
It may seem strange to suggest a walk through a university campus, but the University of Alicante (founded in 1979) was designed with excellent architectural taste and offers large garden spaces that invite you to walk and relax; perhaps too much, given the activity for which it was conceived. It even has a botanical garden, a museum (MUA), an interesting hotel offer and an obviously youthful, but formal atmosphere, that we are not in the neighborhood.
Carolinas is one of the most populous and traditional neighborhoods in Alicante, but it remains far from the tourist circuit, despite its proximity to the MARQ (a very popular museum these days as it houses the great exhibition of The Warriors of Xi’an). The festive neighborhood where you can find them, does not lack attractions for the occasional visitor: a lively municipal market, the prestigious Racó del Pla restaurant… and a unique basketball court -the Carolinas field, surrounded by tenement houses- belonging to the club pioneer of this sport in the city and that FIBA ​​immortalized on its 80th Anniversary, celebrated in 2013, as a singular example in the practice of basketball.
