The MSC Orchestra carries more than 3,000 passengers on a Mediterranean cruise. One morning in July, recently docked in bright Alicante, which offers the comfortable attraction of Postiguet beach and the famous and age-old watchtower of the Santa Bárbara castle just a stone's throw from the maritime terminal, a group of travelers from different origins opted to embark on a bus transfer of more than an hour that would take them to a town of just 258 inhabitants located at more than 500 meters above sea level in the Marina Baixa region. Because?
Very easy. Guadalest -officially, El Castell de Guadalest- appears on the list of the most beautiful towns in Spain. And despite the high expectations that this type of classification generates, the data collected by travel websites and the experience of the chronicler, who has visited it on multiple occasions in the last thirty years accompanying visitors from different countries, some of them very travelers, show that Guadalest never disappoints.
Guadalest has a characteristic that makes it similar to Monemvasia, the beautiful city of the Peloponnese: it is necessary to go through a door, cross a cobbled passageway, to discover on the other side a different, unexpected world, closed to cars, stopped in time. The Greek city is also crowned by a ruined fortress, but it rises from the seashore; The battlements of this Alicante castle of Muslim origin that was destroyed by an earthquake in 1644, and which was partially blown up during the Spanish Succession War in 1708, challenge us from almost 600 meters above sea level.
It is advisable to arrive early, especially in summer, before the tourist buses begin to arrive, there is a bus that leaves Benidorm at 9:45 every day. Guadalest is half an hour by car from the city of skyscrapers, one hour from Alicante and two from Valencia.
The essentials can be seen in just that time: the remains of the Castell de San José, the only tower that remained standing from the Muslim fortress of La Alcozaiba, a modest church -La Asunción- from the 18th century that had to be restored after the civil war, a unique bell tower raised on rock and the Casa Orduña, today a municipal museum that shows furniture, ceramics and paintings from different periods and allows one to get an idea of how its occupants lived, the Orduña family, of Basque origin and whose members were mayors and governed the place by delegation of the marquis who owned it.
Under the Town Hall there is what is supposed to have been a prison back in the 12th century, a place where it is easy to stimulate the imagination of infants, if they are one of those children who get bored easily as soon as they look up from the inevitable screen: behold, a cold dungeon!
One of the curiosities of Guadalest is the abundance of museums, most of them without much interest, created to take advantage of the abundance of visitors and the success of the oldest and most unique of them all, a micro-miniature museum where one can contemplate, with the essential help magnifying glasses, a bullring built on the head of a pin, a dressed flea riding a bicycle or Picasso's Guernica painted on a seed.
But the best thing about Guadalest, what never disappoints, are the views, over the valley and towards the Aitana, Serrella and Xorta mountains, and dominating a reservoir of emerald waters that was built between 1953 and 1971. Walkers have several routes more or less ambitious, and if hunger strikes one advises going to the Xorta restaurant, which offers an extraordinary panoramic view. Likewise, the weather is not the most appropriate for tucking a blat olleta or lamb between your chest and back, two of the house specialties, but walking whets your appetite and the menu offers other alternatives.
There is an interesting combination that you can do on your own or hire as an organized excursion, which includes a refreshing visit to the Fuentes del Algar, a place located just fifteen kilometers away, of great beauty and crystalline waters that descend from the mountain as icy as to clear the most troubled mind and relieve the burning of the most demanding feet.
