Sorolla always wanted to look at the sea. He did, in fact, for almost his entire life, and wanted to continue doing it after his death. That’s why … that in 1933 a monument was erected on the beach of the Cabanyal in Valencia. But 24 years later it began to rain so much upstream that hours later a brutal flood fined over the city changing forever the history of the Cap i Casal. The ‘Riuà’ also took the monument, which languished for years before being scattered by several enclaves. This is the history of the complex that the Consistory now wants to rebuild in its original location, if costs permits.
According to the documentation sent to the Government Delegation, shortly after his death it was decided to make a monument in tribute to the painter with the bust that Mariano Benlliure had given him and he had yielded to the city. The first project included pieces of the Royal Factory of Platerias Martínez de Madrid, which Sorolla was responsible for protecting when the daughters of the owner wanted to sell the 18th century building in the late 1860s. It also included, of course, a replica of the Benlliure bust because the original is stored in the city museum. Finally, the monument was inaugurated between Victoria Termas (where a disco is now) and the asylum of the children in 1933. It was composed of a colonnade and a high marble square on the sand.
But the flood arrived and took the columns and the outside. The bust was intact, as well as its pedestal. Due to the slowness of the restoration works in a city devastated by the flood, the remains were removed and the pieces were transferred to San Miguel de los Reyes. Part of the material is, now, in the old slaughterhouse of Borbotó, in the Viejo Cemetery of Paiporta (where he suffered the October 2024 ravine), in the railroad deposit of the Generalitat Valenciana in San Isidro and in section VII of the Turia garden, where they moved after what remained from the monument between 1975 and 1977.
Then, another monument had already been erected in the known then as Plaza de la Nuevada Español (now, of the Holy Week Marinera). There the replica of the Benlliure bust was transferred next to the facade of the American Hispanic Bank, transferred in 1974 from Barca Street with the intention of providing more majesty to the source that presided over the bust and that the complex resembled as much as possible to the original monument.
Between 2023 and 2024, the Department of Cultural Action carried out a tasting work in the pieces found in various parts of the city and its surroundings to confirm that they are part of the original monument. This was done by the reports, which revealed that the stone came from granite quarries in Madrid and Valencia. The remains were found by members of the City Council of Archeology and, in 2021, by circle for the defense and dissemination of cultural heritage, the Goerlich Foundation and its collaborator Tonio Giménez. Now, they will return near the sea and the painter can return to “his” beach.
