It’s boo! is an expression that is no longer heard in the city of Alicante. The Valencian pilot had a threat of return to the Alicante capital when the leftists -PSOE, Guanyar Alacant and Compromís- returned to govern the city in 2015. But it lasted as little as the municipal agreement and today, the bipartisan PP and Ciudadanos does not show “no interest”, according to the sources consulted, in promoting the practice of indigenous sport.
In 2016, the Alicante City Council began a line of collaboration with the Valencian Pilota Federation to recover and promote this native sport in a city where it has practically disappeared for decades. Sebastià Giner, representative of the Valencian Pilota Chair of the UV, assures that it was managed more through the promotion of Valencian -which was the responsibility of the current Compromís spokesperson in the consistory, Natxo Bellido-, than by the Department of Sports -then in the hands of the PSOE.
On October 8 of that year, an exhibition was held in the palm modality on Calle Mayor, next to the town hall, in which five players per team from the Sella and Agost clubs faced each other, within the events scheduled by the City Council of Alicante on the occasion of the festivity of October 9; It had quite a few fans and onlookers who walked by and stayed to watch the game.
In the following months, as Giner recalls, a sports exhibition and a talk were also organized at the La Cerámica Bonfire prior to Alicante’s big festival, as well as a children’s workshop, another for adults and an exhibition. It ended up being extended to the Federation of Fogueres and a morning show was held in the San Blas neighborhood attended by “about 50 boys and girls”. There was also a meeting between towns and training sessions for teachers of adapted pilota, for people with functional diversity.
The wind was blowing in favor of the pilot, finally, in Alicante. But it did not last long, as little as the pact of the leftist government. Broken the agreement in November 2017, the native sport returned to oblivion. “When the government pact ended, everything was over,” Giner sighs.
“The intention was to continue. I contacted the Councilor for Sports [José Luis Berenguer], but they told me to talk to the head of service and we never got to hold any meetings because the pandemic arrived. I didn’t see interest, so we focused the efforts where we could get more performance. There has to be a minimum collaboration of the municipalities, which are the ones that have the power to open a pilota school”, explains who was also the coordinator of Pilota in the Generalitat Valenciana.
Natxo Bellido assures that the bipartite of the PP and Ciudadanos -which has the competences in Sports- ended that project, and shows the interest of his group so that the Valencian pilot, “who has a past in Alicante although many people do not know it”, also have a future. “We had a trinquet in the ’30s, and there was a pilota club until recently,” he adds. At present, although there is no organized competition, “in the institutes they play”.
For this reason, he believes that there is no reason why the City Council and other institutions should not promote it, as an indigenous sport that it is, and because it is an activity “perfect for our boys and girls to practice”.
The Department of Sports, directed by the mayor José Luis Berenguer, offers among the activities to be practiced by Alicante schoolchildren some as minority as fencing or archery, in addition to numerous team sports and others with strong roots in the city, such as artistic gymnastics and judo. They argue that “now the council programs what the sports clubs propose, so if piloting is not practiced it is because there is no demand.”
A similar explanation is offered by the Department of Sports of Elx, where the abundant supply of municipal sports schools does not include the possibility of playing pilota either. “If they ask us, we have no problem incorporating a discipline, as we have done this year with rugby,” say sources from the Elche department, where they do have news that “some teachers do include the practice of pilota among sports that are practiced in the institutes.
Sebastià Giner explains that there are two ways to work to promote pilota: whether it is the city council’s own initiative or it derives from pressure or demand from a club or fans. In the case of Alicante, he urges that “some pressure” be exerted by playing because “from the Department of Sports they have no interest”.
Precisely this summer an incipient club of amateurs and ex-professionals of the Valencian pilota was organized to recover this sport in Alicante. They have already stayed a few weeks to play madel in the Lo Morant park and in the Ciudad Deportiva. Some of them are also working with La Cívica – Escola Valenciana to organize a school meeting, outside the Town Hall.
In its day, in 2016, an agreement was reached in principle to convert the old pediment of the Ciudad Deportiva into a trinquet; there was even an architect’s project. The change of political sign in the government of Alicante made it stay in a drawer.
Almost a century has passed since the disappearance of the last trinquet in Alicante. From the second half of the 19th century until 1948 there was one at number 4 Calle Vicente Inglada, next to the Central Market; Today it is a private parking.
José Antonio Carbonell, professor of piloting at the University of Alicante (UA), sees it as essential to bet on facilities to attract fans and make this sport visible. He recalls that in the singular population entities of Verdegás and L’Alcoraia, belonging to the city of Alicante, there were small trinquets that were lost due to urban development.
“There is a lack of an active club to promote pilota and attractive, economical and accessible facilities to the population,” says Carbonell, for which, as a first measure, he proposes opening facilities that some educational centers have to the general public.
To reverse what the then president of the Alicante Club, Lluís Soler, explained to La Vanguardia in 2016: “Alicante has become a city without an identity. The original inhabitants of Alicante are Valencian, but with the migratory impact of the 1960s and the Franco regime, customs and language have been lost. The trinquet ended up being closed because outsiders were unaware of the pilota and it ceased to be profitable”. Reflection that, six years later, is still valid.
