The History of the Dehesa de Campoamor

At the beginning of the 19th century, by means of the Decree of October 11, 1835, Mendizábal applied the Confiscation that has gone down in history by name. All the lands and buildings that the Church owned passed to the State and among them the estate of the Dehesa de San Ginés, popularly known as Matamoros in Campoamor, since in addition to the convent, it was a very effective tower against Berber invasions. This estate was owned by the Church since 1350, the year the brotherhood and hermitage of the Saint was created there.

In 1822, during the constitutional biennium, the State intervened the estate and sold it in two thirds to D. Guilllermo Maclure, father-in-law of D. Ramón de Campoamor. But upon Absolutism’s return to power, property was restituted to the Mercedarian Fathers. In 1835, due to the confiscation, he returned to Mr. Maclure.

The origins of the urbanization are linked to the poet Ramón de Campoamor (whose summer mansion is less than two kilometers from the urbanization, in the heart of a pine forest that reaches the beach itself), who, being Governor of the Province of Alicante in around 1854 after contracting marriage with Guillermina O´Gorman, Gillermina’s father gave him the Dehesa de Matamoros that would be called Dehesa de Campoamor upon the death of the poet.

The writer was closely linked to this place all his life, to which he returned temporarily in 1868 during the republican uprising in Madrid to take refuge with his family and later in 1890 after the death of his wife to retire there permanently.

In 1941, it was acquired by Don Antonio Tárraga and Don Manuel Segura, who began their agricultural transformation, making wells, promoting crops rationally, and starting the citrus plantation.

60s and 70s

The first constructions were created in the late 60s, being mainly intended for the most favored classes of that time. At this time, the group of buildings “Ronda” was built, the emblematic building “10 Picos”, the garden area in front of the port, where a monument was placed in honor of Don Antonio Tárraga, main promoter and owner of the property at the time from the beginning of the creation of the urbanization until his death, and the first Prairie, between the “Thames” building and “10 peaks”, a large play area for children. It is worth noting the original implantation then, of an elevator in the “Miraver” building, which saves the difference in elevation between the beach and the rest of the urbanization, that is, the height of the “blond ravine”, and which was destined to be used to descend towards the beach and ascend from it without much effort, use that is still given with great success.

The decades of the 60s and 70s brought with them the greatest urban expansion of the Dehesa de Campoamor. At this time most of the high-rise buildings that the urbanization has were projected and that are clustered above, after the “Playa de Barranco Rubio”, which were baptized with the names of rivers in Spain and Europe, of the same so that in the urban layout it was decided to name the streets with the names of great Spanish poets, perhaps to follow the chain inaugurated by the poet who owned the original estate.

With the new demands for services and compliance with the legislative initiatives corresponding to the new political situation that has arisen, and with the approval of health standards and others, the beaches are increasingly equipped with the most appropriate equipment to receive the visit each time. more numerous of bathers.

The Las Villas duplex complex was also built and the available surfaces were partitioned to house in future a group of chalets A (in the Las Villas area), B and C (behind Playa de la Glea and next to the from the pine forest that overlooks the “ravine of the wolf”, on one side and the other of the old general highway) and D (above the Playa de Barranco Rubio) and the Gemini terraced area.

Also on these dates, the Sports Port was inaugurated, built on the small beach between the barrack, adjacent to the then residence of the only existing police officer, and the current location of the NáClub Náutico˝. This location was decided after discarding a proposal that had been considered better for it by the stop where the large beach ends and what has been called “Altos de Campoamor” and its adjacent beach begins. The Yacht Club was for many years the center of the social life of the vacationers.

All these projects were designed around the “Playa de la Glea” better known as the “big beach” and the “ravine blonde” or “beach of 10 peaks”, so called familiarly precisely because it is located under this building. Today it is also known as the “small beach”.

80s and 90s.

In the 80s and 90s the Dehesa endowed itself with the necessary services of shops, sports facilities, bars and restaurants that the influx of tourists demanded.

At this time, the construction of the residential complexes of Los Altos de Campoamor, Victoria Playa and Agua Marina is completed, which practically complete the available land area.

“The meadow was owned by a married couple who were friends with my parents, without children. Antonio Tarraga Escribano and Encarnación Segura Viudas. Two thousand five hundred hectares of Aleppo pine, mastic, carob and almond trees, with their own coast, in that poor and self-sufficient Spain.

On Saturdays my father accompanied the owner of the paddock to deposit in a bank in Cartagena all the collection of the week that Don Antonio obtained as a correspondent for the banks in San Pedro del Pinatar. At that time the banks did not have branches in a large part of the towns and they empowered the chief or the wealthy of the area to collect the bills of exchange accepted by the locals. This left a good commission and required honesty and neatness in handling the funds.

A few aviators from the General Academy of San Javier joined the endless poker games, in addition to Ernesto, who was the administrator of the estate and the Maura, Juan and Menchu ​​couple. He was manager of the Unión Salinera Española

Neither Doña Encarnita, the lady of the house, nor Marisa, her companion, mixed with them except at meals and at masses.

The feminine environment was completed by the guards. The daughter of those who cared for the Casa Grande was called Pilar Treviño and she was very nice and pretty. Candelaria took care of the little house on the beach. He had two or three blond and barefoot children.

Pepe, the one with the tartana, sang flamenco very well.

On Sundays the parish priest of Pilar de la Horadada approached the estate to say mass in the Casa Grande chapel at 12 o’clock. Before, he confessed. ”

By Manuel Maria Torres Rojas, Secretary General of the AEB (Spanish Association of Private Banking)

“The pastures around the Torrevieja and La Mata lagoons were leased by the State to these ranchers, some of them remembered until recent times.
Among the last transhumant ranchers we will remember Martín Artigot Lorente, born in 1887, in Monterde de Albarracín (Teruel), who was the shepherd who changed the history of Pilar de la Horadada. He bet on the Pilarean lands and in 1927 he took seven large farms, such as “Lo Monte”, for 275,000 pesetas in 1929, settling down and working the rest of his life on them. In addition to agriculture, they had cattle, pigs, mules and vaccines.

It attracted other natives from Murcia, Albacete, Cuenca and Teruel, among which was Domingo Soler Pascual “el Rondas”, a native of Tella (Teruel), one of his majors, who married the Torrevieja Rosario Soler Orihuela “la Perdía »-Mother of the current Torrevieja councilor Domingo Soler and Rosario, vice president of the Casino-, witnessing the wedding Victoria Artigot, daughter of the farmer from Teruel

 Snapshot Martín Artigot with the cattle, shepherds and his granddaughter on the ´Lo Monte´ farm. / Photo of the Book

Another transhumant rancher, Pascual del Baño García, a native of Cuenca, along with his father-in-law Joaquín Ortuño Lorente – a person well located in the rural environment of San Miguel de Salinas – were the buyers, on June 10, 1920, of the Dehesa de Campoamor was sold by Ramón Rodríguez-Valverde y Campoamor, nephew of the well-known poet. They paid the amount of 450,000 pesetas, a considerable amount for the time, although surely justified, since the new owners obtained in their first year of enjoyment the amount of 160,000 pesetas, just for cutting pine trees. On December 7, 1922, Pascual del Baño García bought from Ortuño the half that he had acquired two years earlier. The also owner of the La Coronela estate, in San Miguel de Salinas, and married to the daughter of his previous co-owner, Manuela Ortuño Galant, inaugurated his possession of Campoamor with a pine tree felling, which left large areas of the estate devoid of vegetation arboreal, they began several trials of intensive and extensive agriculture.

Livestock activity, justified in the trade of cattle dealer, had continuity with his son Pascual del Baño Galant, married to the Torrevieja Conchita Mateo Freixa, through large-scale business in this sector, supporting himself by means of several cattle raising and some goat tips, also trying the breeding of fighting bulls, for which he sought the advice of the Valencian bullfighter Vicente Barrera, the owner’s close friend.

Throughout the Civil War, the republicans made frustrated attempts at collectivization in the Dehesa, continuing the felling of trees, the cutting of pine trees being very considerable. At the end of the war, Pascual del Baño Galant regained control of the estate, whose condition was such that the writer from Pila José Toro Pérez described it as “an immense wasteland.” All the circumstances led the owner to consider the need to sell the Dehesa de Campoamor to Antonio Tárraga Escribano, as was the case on January 2, 1941. ”

Information taken from Francisco Sala Aniorte / Official Chronicler Of The City Of Torrevieja 03.17.2018

La Dehesa de Campoamor is a different place. To begin with, due to its origin, which can already be seen in the place name: Dehesa de Campoamor, formerly known as Dehesa de Matamoros. Why the name change? To answer this question, one must take into account the figure of the realist poet and writer Ramón de Campoamor (1817-1901). Often compared to José Zorrilla, he was an author of great success and recognition in his time, author of plays, poems, philosophical essays, within a marked nineteenth-century style accused of being out of date by his contemporaries.

Literatures on the sidelines, Ramón de Campoamor was governor of the province of Alicante around 1854 and after his wedding to the Irish Guillermina O’Gorman he bought the Dehesa de Matamoros, to which he later put his name. On this point there are several versions, since it is said that it was his father-in-law who really gave him the land. In any case, he was a person closely linked to this land, where he spent seasons of political refuge, when the republican uprising of 1868, and from 1890, after the death of his wife, to retire until his death, eleven years later.

The tourist splendor of Dehesa de Campoamor was parallel to the development of this activity in the rest of Spain and from the 1950s onwards it began to incorporate its own buildings and infrastructure around La Glea beach. Thus, the group of buildings Ronda and the emblematic 10 Picos were built, the garden area of ​​the port and small engineering advances such as the elevator of the Miraver building, which saves the difference in elevation between the beach and the rest of the urbanization.

From the sixties and seventies the place grew at a good pace, with the construction of most of the buildings that make up the current urban landscape, which were given names of rivers and names of Europe, while the streets they were baptized with the names of poets, in a nod to the name of the town.

Currently, there is little space to develop, so the objective of the authorities and the attitude of its visitors would be to preserve and maintain this pleasant corner of the south of the Valencian Community in the best possible state.

Montepiedra de Campoamor Hotel, where I stayed for more than 20 years, which was owned by Antonio Tárraga, who was a runner and bill collector for the countryside by bicycle who married Dª Encarnación Segura Viudas, who was 1.20, and came from Catalonia, from the family of the Segura Viudas cavas, Conde de Caralt, …, and spent seasons in the Pilar de la Horadada where he had a Torre Segura estate. They and the brothers-in-law Antonio and Manuel Segura Viudas bought the Campoamor estate for 600,000 pesetas.

Currently the owner of the Hotel and Campoamor is the nephew grandson D. Manuel Segura Vallejo, who lives in Murcia and is married to Maria Antonia García Noguera and they have several companies: Villas de Campoamor, Urbanización Dehesa de Campoamor, Construcciones Dehesa de Campoamor

The President and Chief Executive Officer is currently Maria José Samper Henarejos, who has 3 sisters: Reyes, director of the Murciano Development Institute, Momtserrat who is a writer and Julia who is a teacher in San Javier.