Village
Elda is a city and municipality in the south of the Comunitat Valenciana, in the province of Alicante, the administrative capital of the Vinalopó Mitjà comarca, with a long tradition in the footwear industry and 55,222 inhabitants. Its urban centre sits on a fertile terrace on the banks of the Vinalopó River, surrounded by mountains, and has fully merged with that of Petrer, forming a conurbation of nearly 90,000 inhabitants. The place name, of uncertain origin, already appears in Roman times as ad Ello, probably referring to the settlement of El Monastil; after successive medieval transformations, the form Elda became fixed from the 15th century onward. Its coat of arms, a gules field, shows a two-towered castle with a fleur-de-lis, and it retains the title of Fidelísima.
Curiosity
The memory of the footwear industry, the historic engine of the economy of Elda and of the El Vinalopó Mitjà comarca, is preserved today in several urban monuments and in the city's Shoe Museum. In the Shoemaker's Square stands the monument to the Shoemaker, the work of sculptor Alejandro Pérez Verdú, unveiled in March 1998 in homage to workers in the sector; Roque Calpena Square holds a 1967 monolith dedicated to shoemakers and the monument to the Shoemaker's Family, also erected in 1998 with public contributions. The old Sagasta Square also once held a monument to the Eldense Footwear Industry.
Activity
Elda's main festival, on 8 and 9 September, honours the Virgen de la Salud and the Cristo del Buen Suceso. Its origin goes back to 1604, when tradition tells that two pilgrims arrived from Sardinia with two boxes addressed 'to Elda' containing the images venerated ever since.
Monument
The castillo de Elda is a fortification built between the 12th and 13th centuries, a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) with the category of monument. Its origin goes back to 1172, when the Almohad defeat at Huete and the Christian advance led the taifa kingdom of Murcia to fortify strongholds along the Vinalopó; the alcázar was raised beside the river, on a hill, and was held by the Almohads until 1243. After the Christian conquest it went through a turbulent period of changing owners, largely retaining its Islamic structure; around 1308 the temple of Santa María could be built inside it, the first Christian place of worship of medieval Elda. In 1513 the count of Cocentaina sold Elda to Juan de Coloma, whose family turned the fortress into a county palace. It retains walls and ten towers.
Monument
The oldest parish in Elda, founded in 1528 on the remains of a mosque by order of Juan Francisco Pérez Calvillo Coloma, second lord of Elda, and enlarged with chapels such as that of the Virgen de la Salud and that of the Cristo del Buen Suceso. The original building, with an altarpiece by Jerónimo Esteve Bonet and 16th-century paintings by Cristóbal Llorens, was sacked and burned in 1936, when its parish priest, Luis Abad, was also killed. Rebuilt from 1939 without regaining the artistic value of the earlier building, in the 1950s parish priest José María Amat promoted popular campaigns to provide it with marble, furnishings and lighting. It is the main church of Elda's historic centre, among the municipality's five churches and three hermitages.
Monument
The Museo del Calzado José María Amat Amer de Elda was established in 1992 and has occupied since 4 February 1999 a 2,000-square-metre building erected on the grounds of the former Feria Internacional del Calzado. It divides its collection among four permanent rooms, with machines and tools used in shoe-last making and singular pieces, among them the ceremonial shoes that belonged to Pope John XXIII. Since 1999 it has also awarded the Premio a la Mujer Mejor Calzada de España, a distinction created to promote quality women's footwear.
Nature
The embalse de Elda is a hydraulic work for containing and storing irrigation water, built in the bed of the río Vinalopó as it passes through Elda (Alicante) around 1698, one of the oldest in Spain. It arose from an agreement in 1684 between the town and the count of Elda to end long-running disputes over water, especially with neighbouring Sax. The original dam, between 11 and 13 metres high and without a spillway, had an initial capacity estimated at 700,000 cubic metres; only the abutments cut into the rock on either side remain of it. Reformed between 1842 and 1890 to remove silt and repair damage, it ended up with a capacity of 200,000 cubic metres. Now disused as a reservoir, the area is home to a community of tamarisks, the main object of its ecological protection.
Nature
On the Monastil hill, above the río Vinalopó north of Elda, are superimposed a Contestani settlement founded in the 5th century BC on earlier Bronze Age settlements, a Roman city identified with Elo, and a Visigothic fortification with a basilica. The Iberian settlement lived from cereal and vine farming, hunting and a notable ceramic and textile production, with a potter of his own style known as the Maestro de El Monastil, and maintained trade with Greeks, Phoenicians, Carthaginians and Romans. Already Romanized and linked to the Via Augusta, which connected it with Illici (Elche) and Lucentum (Alicante), it enjoyed its heyday in the 1st century AD thanks to ceramics and esparto grass. It was the valley's main centre until the population moved down to the plain in the Islamic period.
Historical milestone
Felipe III granted in 1604 the title of count of Elda to Antonio Coloma, whose family had already been lords of the valley since the fifteenth century. The Coloma remodelled the castle, governed Petrer as well and faced the economic ruin brought by the expulsion of their Morisco vassals.