The plenary session will approve on Monday the creation of the '700th Anniversary Committee of Benidorm Foundation'

The next plenary session of Benidorm City Council, to be held on Monday 27 January, will approve the creation of the ‘Comissió del 700 Aniversari de la fundació de Benidorm’, an event that will be commemorated on 8 May. The proposal of the mayor Toni Pérez will be ruled on in advance in the Internal Regulations Information Commission that will be held tomorrow Wednesday.

According to the proposal, the ‘Comissió del 700 Aniversari’ was created “to promote activities and events to celebrate this event and involve civil society in it”. Its main function will be to “propose and organise as many initiatives as are considered appropriate to spread this commemoration”.

The Commission will be made up of representatives of Benidorm civil society and the presidency will be held by Mayor Toni Pérez. The honorary president will be the doctor in Hispanic Philology and professor of Catalan Philology, Rafael Alemany Ferrer. The vice-presidency will be occupied by Ana Pellicer, the first deputy mayor of Benidorm, and the coordinators of the new body will be professors Bárbara Alemany Barceló and Pascual Almiñana Orozco. Likewise, the head of the Municipal Archive, María Victoria Blázquez Soldevila, and professor María José Lozano Pérez will serve as technical secretary.

The ‘Commission for the 700th Anniversary of the Foundation of Benidorm’ will also have seats for the people and entities awarded the ‘Ciutat de Benidorm Cultural Distinction. The people chosen as representatives of the directors of Primary and Secondary education in the city's public, subsidised and private educational centres will also be members, as well as the directors of the municipal Music and Dance conservatories, one person appointed by the Neighbourhood Council and another by the Grup Carta de Poblament de l’Associació de Penyes ‘Verge del Sofratge’.

Once the Commission has been created, its first meeting will take place within a maximum period of 15 calendar days from the approval of the plenary agreement.
The proposal that will be submitted to the plenary session that on May 8 of this year, it will be 700 years since Admiral Bernat de Sarrià granted the Town Charter to Benidorm, a document that established the limits of the municipality, as well as the rights and duties that corresponded to the new settlers in Punta Canfali.

The Town Charter is considered the birth certificate of Benidorm and is a document that has aroused the interest of scholars and erudite since the mid-twentieth century, such as Pere María Orts i Bosch. This document has been the subject of research that has resulted in works such as ‘Carta de Poblament de Benidorm’ by Rafael Alemany Ferrer, María Luisa Cabanes Catalá, Antonio Couto de Granja and José Hinojosa Montalvo.

Finally, the proposal also refers to the “different events and vicissitudes” that the city has experienced over the centuries, “including a repopulation in 1666 through the second Town Charter” until it became a leading tourist destination in the Mediterranean. This notable anniversary, “deserves the utmost attention and complicity by this City Council and the entire citizenry.”