Friday, March 24, 2023, 11:32 p.m.
The Rubalcava Palace will finally come out of a hard journey, an arduous odyssey that has left it marked, full of deep scars. With its bricked facades missing pieces, with its weathered and canvased wooden gazebo, with its rococo propped up rooms and its broken glass windows wide open to a garden devoid of those emblematic Canarian palm trees, the decrepit mansion will put an end to it. to years of neglect and abandonment.
This coming week, the City Council will finally start the path to get the Palace out of the hole on the Red List of Heritage that it entered in 2016 and return that touch of elegance and distinction that the heart of Rabaloche should never have lost. “This week we have awarded the direction of works to Architect Sergio Navarro SL for 65,785.98 euros and this coming Wednesday we will sign the rethinking act,” announces the deputy mayor and mayor of Heritage, José Aix.
And the fact is that, although the official starting gun has not been given to the works, the machines already have an expeditious way to take over the gardens that, this week too, were left clean and cleared of brush along all their edges, with the exception of a palm tree and a pine
Work like this will start now and continue throughout the year. It will be, then, the municipal Executive that results from the May elections who receives these aristocratic dependencies. But the approach of the current Consistory is very clear. “It was necessary to mobilize the rehabilitation of the buildings that were in poor condition to revitalize the historic center,” says Aix convinced, who receives this long-awaited step as the beginning of what, he hopes, will be a new awakening of the most monumental Orihuela.
«The City Council is going to receive many buildings in a very short time. Last week the works began on the Caja de Monserrate, we have concluded those of the Marqués de Arneva Palace and we have those of the old courts underway », he details. All properties for which it is planned to give them a municipal and administrative use, although, it is clear, there will be plenty of room. “Once the work is finished, we will see what the needs and demands of Oriolan society are and, based on this, we will provide the spaces that are needed,” says José Aix.
€3.8 million
A year and two months remain ahead, those that Actúa Infraestructuras has to, with those 3.8 million half-financed with European funds Feder, return this dream palace to its former splendor, to the one that attracted hundreds of Oriolan couples until 2006 to say ‘I do’ under its carved roofs. Also because it was chosen for many more years as the headquarters of the Association of Moors and Christians since in 1981 the City Council took ownership of this building built in the 20s of the last century on the old abbey house of the church of Santiago.
Since Rubalcava was postponed to absolute oblivion, the only intervention it has had was that of its dome and roof in 2009. The project now will be, on the other hand, comprehensive. The foundation and stairs will be consolidated to get it out of its current situation of instability, wrought iron and roofs will be replaced, ornamental elements will be restored, such as plasterwork and moldings of its noble halls, which will once again show off their original furniture.
In short, a project eagerly awaited, above all by cultural associations, fearful that Orihuela would see another of the most outstanding pillars of its rich heritage fall. Especially when Rubalcava has been until today one of those infallible points, next to the church of San Agustín, of unfulfilled electoral programs.
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