Preventorium of Aguas de Busot: Sinister Levante
“Paella with grouper”, “tuna” or “squid with pepper”. We could be talking about the menu of any restaurant or dining room in Spain, perhaps Levante. However, this is the information that years ago was found in one of the many documents that lay scattered among the ruins of a old spa.
If you kept walking, you found another piece of paper where the name of a patient was written, his age, dates from the 60s and the number 325 , which corresponds to the number of seats that once housed the Preventorium of Aigües de Busot , in Alicante.
A splendid winter hotel built in the 19th century whose transition as a tuberculosis center and subsequent closure make it one of the emblematic buildings of the Alicante province. But also, in a black point of several mysteries that are still debated today by curious and experts.
THE SPAIN OF THE 20TH CENTURY FITS IN A BUILDING
There is something about old photos that can give us goosebumps. For example, snapshots like this one, in which women in lustrous dresses hold umbrellas next to the Capilla del Balnearín around 1910 , a scene opposite to the state in which we find today that lavish complex that once brought together the “crème de la crème” of our country.
The Preventorio de Aguas de Busot began as a great winter hotel for Spanish personalities
Already in Roman times, this place in Alicante located between the beaches of El Campello and the peak of Cabeçó d'Or was used as a thermal area . A small oasis also discovered by Muslim troops who would extend their famous hammams to the natural miracle of the Levante mountains.
In the 16th century, the area would be ceded to the alicante city , as shown by a document signed on November 30, 1596 as a concession of the thermal area . However, the first signs of Preventorium of Aguas de Busot as we know it today would take place in 1838.
That year, the disputes between the Public Administration and the family of the Lord Count of Casas Rojas (Marquis of Bosch) , owner of these lands, would be resolved under the decision of build a winter hotel that would welcome some of the most distinguished personalities of the time , between them the Kings of Spain themselves . That was how the lavish was born Hotel Miramar Winter Station, a landmark of the time: luxurious rooms made up a complex where visitors also found a chapel, a casino, a children's play area and even a new WC sanitation system brought from England.
Years of leisure and entertainment that would be weighed down with the arrival of the Civil War, a time that made the idea of recovering the hotel activity of the building irreversible. As an alternative, the State acquired the old hotel in 1936 and converted it into a hospital for children with tuberculosis . This activity lasted until the end of the 1960s, by which time the disease was practically eradicated. What would come later would be a series of bureaucratic discussions settled by the acquisition of the preventive at the hands of the company Prognosis to this day.
Empty and dilapidated (part of the old schools for children and workers' huts were destroyed in recent years), the Preventorio de Aguas de Busot today becomes the perfect reflection not only of its history , but also of a province; of a 20th century in which a place could go from heaven to hell in the same decade.
Preventorium of Aguas de Busot: Sinister Levante
YOU LOOK, BUT YOU DO NOT ENTER
After the closure of the Preventorium at the end of the 1960s, numerous parapsychology experts have dropped by the ruins claiming to have heard EVP and seen mysterious presences . Even Iker Jimenez himself has dedicated more than one program to this place where, at nightfall, many claim to hear whistles while the glow of translucent figures are reflected when climbing its ruined staircase . Through the open windows whose curtains look as if they are going to open at any moment.
At the same time, many people have not been slow to affirm that everything is really just gossip and that, at the time, the activity of the hospital was always affable within limits, as two caregivers of the center declared.
However, the mystery still shrouds this place. He sits in a chapel where, at dawn on a Sunday, the remains of sinister rituals remained . In the excavated tunnels in the hills whose end I never wanted to guess, or the rubble of old desks embracing dead palm trees, witnesses of the whims of history.
Currently, the Busot Water Preventorium It is fenced and its entry is not allowed. Perhaps the best way to maintain a heritage whose fate has been subject to various projects: from the construction of apartments and hotels to a museum, even going through total destruction.
But perhaps there is a middle ground between delving into history and eradicating it. Preserve the heritage that, by itself, speaks of a place and a time. What we'll never know.