Benidorm celebrates Archaeology Day with the opening of a room in Boca del Calvari Museum with the name of Luis Duart i Alabarta

Benidorm City Council has officially opened an Archaeology Room in the Boca del Calvari Municipal Museum to permanently exhibit its archaeological collection for the first time, a room that, from today, bears the name of the priest and historian Lluís Duart i Alabarta. The opening of this new exhibition space coincides with the celebration of the International Day of Archaeology.

Before that, at 11.30 am, the Council proceeded to name the passage that connects the squares of Castelar and La Senyoria, in El Castell, with the name of Lluís Duart i Alabarta. In this way, the City Council complies with two plenary agreements approved unanimously in 2010 and 2013 and, in turn, “pays off a historic debt that this town and this City Council had with the person who was parish priest in Benidorm for more than 30 years” as the mayor pointed out when announcing this event, which was attended by members of the local corporation and representatives of Benidorm civil society.

During the act of naming the passage, Toni Pérez recalled that “we have come today to keep the institutional word given” and added that “we are doing it as people who had Lluis Duart in our hearts for everything he did as parish priest and for our history”. A “simple act” said the mayor, in which there was present “a living testimony whose strength has brought us here”. The first mayor was referring to Amparo Biosca ‘Amparito’, who was present at the event and also evoked the figure of the priest and historian.

The event ended with the blessing of the plaque that gives the passage its name by the parish priest of San Jaime, Juan Antonio González, and a few words from ‘Amparito’ herself, who thanked “the Town Hall, its mayor, Don Juan Antonio and the parishioners of San Jaime”.

Later, at 13:00, the official inauguration of the Archaeology Room in Boca del Calvari took place, which also bears the name of Lluis Duart y Alabarta. The new room will house a permanent exhibition in which pieces from Benidorm Council’s museum collection will be displayed, spanning from the Neolithic to the 20th century, many of which have never been exhibited.

The mayor highlighted the “enormous work” of the Department of Historical and Cultural Heritage. After the request to the Generalitat to recognise the catalogue of municipal historical assets as a museum collection was approved in a plenary session last June, all the circumstances were in place to be able to open this Archaeology Room, “something long awaited and longed for” said the mayor, “since there are pieces in it that in some cases have been part of the municipal heritage since the 1960s and had never been able to be shown in their entirety”.

Among the pieces that can be seen in this space are many from Tossal de la Cala, and among them, some of those found by Don Lluís Duart himself, during the excavations he carried out at this site.

Toni Pérez has highlighted that the new physical space of the Museum “is already capable of housing the works it houses and others that will feed into this permanent exhibition to deepen the knowledge of that Benidorm that was and that will not return”. The mayor also stressed that this is “the first display of a large part of our heritage so that thousands of people can visit and enjoy it.” After describing the opening of the room as a “historic event,” the mayor said that it is “the embryo of something that is to come and that we will be telling you about very soon.”

Pérez wanted to “greet” “all the people who have worked to make this a reality, a job done for the history of a great town that also looks to the future.” And at this point, he referred again to ‘Amparito’ “whose will and perseverance have had a lot to do with these things being done.”

In his speech, the mayor also recalled Duart's important contribution to the municipality in archaeology, with his excavations and research on Tossal, and in that of local and ecclesiastical history.