"The Posada de la Balseta is a large caravan house built on the seashore. The rooms are on the first floor and open onto a covered gallery that runs around the patio. We had a good idea when staying in this inn, because a most pleasant surprise". The writer is Baron Charles de Davillier, Equerry of Emperor Napoleon III, who in 1862 toured Spain in the company of the famous illustrator Gustave Doré.
It was this, apparently, who already had in mind his purpose of illustrating the great novel by Cervantes, who convinced Davillier to carry out the Hispanic journey. The Baron's chronicles were then published in installments, as was customary at the time, enriched by the engravings of the great draughtsman, in the magazine Le Tour du Monde, the forerunner of a genre that is still among the favorites of readers today.
But, what was the pleasant surprise that captivated the distinguished travelers in Alicante? What else but a party, in the case of the so-called city of pleasures: "...we were delightedly savoring the freshness of the sea breeze, when the strumming of a guitar and the dry noise of castanets reached our ears. It was a wedding that motivated that uproar".
Invited to join the party, "after a quarter of an hour we were already friends with all the guests", says Davillier, adding that "the orchestra was made up simply of a violin and a guitar". The Baron explains that the instrumentalists "were blind", which must have been, as he affirms, the usual custom of the time. And the French were so encouraged that they ended up taking the instruments - Doré the violin ("he is a first-class virtuoso on the violin, just as Paganini is on the pencil", writes Davillier); and the Baron himself the guitar).
So "for more than an hour", the travelers acted between dances, songs and laughter at the inn where "these good people had welcomed us with such simple and sincere cordiality, that we found ourselves for a few moments, more than four hundred leagues from our country, all the charm and carelessness of family life. And they finished off the party "sending for sweets to the confectionery, because the Spanish have extremely sweet tooth."
The lodging at the Posada de la Balseta, which reminds Davillier of typical Maghreb caravanserais, was convenient for the travelers because they planned to take the stagecoach from Elche there, as they did. They prefer that lodging to another that they had occupied the previous day, the Fonda del Vapor, "a hotel, so to speak, French-style, whose mediocre hospitality was already known to us."
Because in 1862, 163 years ago, Alicante was already receiving an incipient tourism. Five years before Davillier and Doré's visit, Queen Elizabeth II had attended the inauguration of the railway line that linked her with Madrid, which represented a huge leap towards modernity.
According to the description made in 1863 by the local chronicler Nicasio Camilo Jover, the Alicante of that time "already has more than 3,900 buildings and is a beautiful population made up of one hundred and sixty-one streets, seventeen squares and three large suburbs".
In addition, the city that Davillier recommends admiring "from the end of one of the two quays that make up the port", had at that time "six churches and two nunneries, three hermitages, a secondary school, fourteen schools, a natural history office, an astronomical observatory, a public library, a magnificent theater, two barracks, two hospitals, a foundling and maternity home, a cigar factory that employs more than 4,000 women, a bathhouse, a plaza of bulls, a ratchet, a gallistic circus, three beautiful rides, seven monumental fountains and nine neighborhood ones...".
Camilo Jover's description does not end there, as he goes on to describe the emerging tourist infrastructure of the municipality: "three first-class inns, numerous guest houses, a casino, six spacious and elegant cafes, two steam flour mills, a bazaar of truly sumptuous china, five printing presses, three photographic cabinets (...), fashion shops, innumerable workshops of various industries and trades, luxury furniture stores (...) and everything that constitutes an important city".
A city in full swing, to which the recently arrived "railroad that crosses it from West to East throughout its entire length; and the pier, which, going 625 meters into the sea, serves as a shelter for hundreds of ships, had undoubtedly contributed. that arrive daily at our port...". It is, however, in a dilapidated diligence that Davillier and Doré leave it in search of the already famous Elche palm grove, which they arrive after a bumpy journey... but that is already material for another installment.
