Benidorm will request again the registration of Tossal in La Cala as BIC, pending since 1984

 Benidorm City Council will once again request the Ministry of Culture that the Tossal in La Cala archaeological site be recognized and registered as a Site of Cultural Interest (BIC), a process pending since 1984. The Councilor for Historical Heritage, Ana Pellicer, has indicated that "surprising as it may seem, today this site is not formally and legally registered as BIC, despite having an undeniable heritage value and being a benchmark for archaeologists and scholars from around the world."

As stated in the motion that the mayor is going to raise to the next plenary session and that has been ruled today by the Information Commission, in August 1984 "the file for the declaration of the Tossal in La Cala as an archaeological monument" was initiated. After the first joint archaeological campaign of the Department of Historical Heritage and the University of Alicante (UA), the City Council again requested the registration of the site as BIC and, consequently, that the file started three decades ago should be completed.

At the end of 2017, on the occasion of the call for Feder funds for the Protection or Recovery of Valencian Cultural Heritage, the City Council reported that there was no record that the administrative and legal situation of Tossal in La Cala had changed and that, therefore , its registration as BIC was still pending. Recently, according to Pellicer, the General Directorate of Artistic Heritage has communicated that “the file started in 1984 was never resolved and is expired. Hence, we have to start all the process again so that the Tossal de la Cala site is correctly registered in the General Inventory of Valencian Cultural Heritage, Section 1 of Protected Cultural Property of the Ministry of Culture, section Real Property of the Ministry of Education , and thus obtain the recognition it deserves ”.

Pellicer has stressed that "the archaeological site of Tossal in La Cala is, without a doubt, a heritage jewel not only for Benidorm, but also for the academic community that it has found in this Roman 'castellum' of the 1st century BC. a huge source of information from which to document the appearance, operation and development of the military forts of the republican era, and more specifically of the Sertorian wars ”.

As he has highlighted, “the successive archaeological campaigns carried out at the site, in close collaboration between the City Council and the UA, as well as the conservation and musealization projects carried out, have allowed important findings to emerge, which have only increased, exercise after exercise, the importance of this enclave ”, integrated into the network of defensive fortifications planned by General Sartorio v to control the southern coast of Cabo de la Nao in the framework of his armed confrontations with Pompey.

Pellicer recalled that among the findings that emerged from the site, the fortress wall stands out, which made it possible to rule out that the Tossal was an Iberian town, new rooms and the main causeway of the ‘castellum’; vestiges that "have been increasing campaign after campaign the value and entity of the site and, consequently, further reinforcing the entity of the site and its recognition as BIC".

The head of Historical Heritage added that “the commitment of this Town Council to preserve the site and put it in value has also grown in parallel; a commitment that is reflected in the ambitious musealization project undertaken ”.