Gastronomy, a “mainstay with its own identity” of the tourist offer of Benidorm and Alicante

Since last night, La Casilla municipal art space has been hosting ‘Menjars de la terra. González Pomata’s Gastronomic Legacy’ exhibition. The exhibition is based on the journalist’s documentary archive, which disappeared in 1996. It comprises more than 13,000 graphic documents summarising 30 years of ethnographic, cultural, and culinary research of the Alicante regions published in the Alicante newspaper Información.

Dozens of residents met last night in the room on Vía Emilio Ortuño to enjoy the brief but intense multimedia tour proposed by the exhibition, the result of the collaboration of Historical and Cultural Heritage with the Carmencita Chair of Gastronomic Flavour Studies at the University of Alicante (UA) and the Fundación Mediterráneo, the custodian of the legacy.

The event was attended by the mayor, Toni Pérez, and the councillor for the area, Ana Pellicer, along with other members of the local government team. Pellicer addressed the audience to highlight the role of gastronomy as an “attraction” of Benidorm and the Alicante regions, which in just a few years has gone from “being a complement” to the tourist offer to becoming “a mainstay with its own identity”.

Representing the university, Josep Bernabeu-Mestre, a doctor of medicine, professor of History of Science, and the Carmencita Chair, gave a historical tour of the editions of Menjars de la Terra, “published together with the newspaper,” especially the six monographs on display at La Casilla.

Bernabeu-Mestre highlighted Alicante's gastronomy as a “dynamiser” of the area, which has recently made an effort to “recover local agri-food systems” and emphasised that “there are few territories that have as much quality and variety in their gastronomic offer” as ours.

Finally, Matías Pérez Such, on behalf of the Fundación Mediterráneo, praised the figure of Antonio González Pomata. “A character with capital letters” who worked to “recover” our cuisine so that “restaurants were aware that man does not live by rice alone” because Alicante cuisine is also “from the sea and from the interior” between which there are “big and important” differences.

The exhibition ‘Menjars de la terra. Gastronomic Legacy by González Pomata’ has been curated by the journalist and writer Ángeles Ruiz and the historian and director of the La Llum Centre, Mari Carmen Velasco. In addition to Bernabeu-Mestre, the exhibition also included the collaboration of professors María Tormo and Inés Antón and the designers José Luis Navarro and Sergi Hernández.

The exhibition shows the 13 gastronomic weeks held in different towns in the Alicante region between 1987 and 1994, sponsored by Información newspaper including  66 catering establishments and more than 15,000 diners.

Benidorm played a prominent role in these events, hosting Menjars de la Terra twice, in 1990 and 1992, and participating through the students of its professional hospitality school.