Benidorm celebrates today the 698th anniversary of its birth as a town

Benidorm City Council has commemorated this noon the 698th anniversary of its foundation with an institutional plenary session that has recalled May 8, 1325, the day on which Admiral Bernat de Sarriá granted his settlers his Charter of Poblament.

The plenary session, chaired by the mayor, Toni Pérez, was attended by the municipal corporation. Among the attendees, the national deputy, Agustín Almodóbar; former mayor Rafael Ferrer Meliá, representatives of the State Security Corps and Forces, Local Police and Civil Protection; the presidents of the Comissió de les Festes Majors Patronals and the Associació de Penyes, Vicente Solaz, and Ramón Cano, as well as members of the Grup Carta de Poblament and the different festive, business and cultural entities.

The mayor recalled how that May 8, 1325, Benidorm "entered fully into history" with the original idea of attracting the population. "Benidorm has achieved it," said Toni Pérez, who highlighted that the city has been configured "for happiness and has come to this far following the path of prosperity and the future".

"We feel that we are heirs of that pioneering and foundational spirit and we celebrate that we are about to commemorate the seven centuries of that fact," he said before emphasizing that "Benidorm has generated a tourist emporium from the magnificence of its beaches, the uniqueness of the territory and the entrepreneurial capacity and tenacity of all those who have made Benidorm the place of their illusion, dreams, and life projects”.

The mayor had words "for those who have left us in the last pandemic", in whose memory "for a few weeks, a white candle at the foot of the so-called ravine, keeps their memory alive".

The city, the mayor continued, left behind "the hard days of the sea and the land", which have given way to others "no less intense of perseverance and work for tourism and services, consolidating the Benidorm brand as a national benchmark and international holiday, leisure, rest, free time and happiness”.

I have also recalled that "all the vicissitudes that have marked us as a people have created a level of resilience of which we can feel proud today because the city that always reinvents itself and resurfaces has done it again and continues to win in the collective imagination".

The mayor claimed in his speech that Benidorm is also "history and heritage, unique and incomparable experiences, an unequivocal feeling of life and hope for tomorrow." He also affirmed that illusion "is what has always moved this town", a city "that lives for the world, an indisputable leader that offers everything to everyone" and has cited authors such as Gaviria, Tusquets or Iribas, great defenders of the Benidorm model.

In the same way, he recovered Gabriel Miró's phrases about the city when he spoke of “a Benidorm submerged between perfect Mediterranean blues. New blues, like just cut; blues of purity where the mountains have remained at the precise distance so that they too were a spectacle of beauty, the lily of an islet flourished: a red rock like a heart in the center of its bay”.

Before concluding, he stressed that Benidorm is a "unique town of open, enterprising and brave people", at which point he alluded to the figure of the mayor Pedro Zaragoza "when we are about to say goodbye to the Pedro Zaragoza Orts Year", which has served to "meet the person and meet the forger of a dream that came true in Benidorm". In the 21st century, the mayor added, "Benidorm is committed to uniting past and future in the present". “We will only be the best city to come to if we are the best city to live in” he concluded.

The institutional plenary session ended with the solemn interpretation of the Benidorm Anthem.