Alicante Launches Series of 16 Talks Marking 125th Anniversary of the Port Works Board

The Alicante Port Authority launched the lecture series organized to mark the 125th anniversary of the establishment of the Port Works Board. Historian Guillermina Subirá Jordana, author of one of the reference works on the historical evolution of the port, was in charge of opening the program, which comprises 16 lectures and will run until next March 3, tracing the history of the port and its economic, social and cultural ties with the city.

The chairman of the Port Authority, Luis Rodríguez, stressed that the commemoration seeks to highlight the historical, economic and social importance of the port and its connection to the development of the province, and he affirmed that the current institution is the direct heir of the Port Works Board, which for 91 years drove the modernization of port infrastructure. He also noted that the anniversary is an opportunity to pay tribute to the generations of workers who helped build the port. The chairman further clarified that the date commemorates the establishment of the Port Works Board in 1901, not the founding of the port itself, whose history, he said, spans more than 2,000 years.

During the historian's presentation, the chairman praised her research, carried out in the 1980s, as one of the first rigorous and systematic studies on the evolution of the Port of Alicante. He particularly highlighted her book Evolución histórica del Puerto de Alicante, published in 1987, which he described as the reference work for understanding the port history of Alicante. The study was based on her undergraduate thesis, supervised by professor Antonio Gil Olcina and submitted in 1985 at the University of Alicante, where she obtained the highest grade.

In her lecture, Subirá reviewed the background of the Port Works Board, going back to 1801 to explain the various boards and initiatives that preceded its official establishment in 1901, and recalled how Sergio Campos, then chairman of the port institution, granted her access to the historical archive, where she had to help clean and organize the records before she could study them. Drawing on that research, the historian reconstructed much of the port's evolution and showed how its current layout is the result of more than two centuries of projects, works and decisions, some carried out and others that never materialized.

Following this initial historical overview, the series will continue until March 3 with lectures devoted to different aspects of the relationship between the port and the city, including art, literature, infrastructure, sport, and figures who left their mark on the port community.