Just before the summer solstice, Alicante dresses up to the nines to conjure up the time when King James II incorporated the land of Alicante to the Crown of Aragon, and endowed the province with an annual market fair that marked the beginning of the city's commercial activity.
To commemorate this deed, in early June the capital of the province of Alicante turns its historical city centre into an authentic medieval market. The city's streets, avenues and squares are festooned with flags and pennants from days gone by, and are given up to the myriad demonstrations, representations, product tasting, concerts and shows that go to make up the Alicante Medieval celebration.
To give you an idea of the size of the market, the event includes spaces that are given over to ancestral trades and activities, in which visitors can spend a marvellous day learning to make babuchas (a type of slipper), or they can sign up for tournaments, taste Arab delicacies or watch a medieval combat that forms part of the recreation of a Christian encampment, in which there is also room for an exhibition of manuscripts and medieval siege machinery.
The colourful walk from the Square of San Cristóbal to the Town Hall is enlivened with street performances that include ancient music, dance, magic and parades, among many other activities.
Medieval Alicante also offers a great deal of activities for children, which adds to the attraction of this encounter as far as both kids and adults are concerned: labyrinths, puzzles, musical structures, medieval puppets and circus - something for everyone! This is a trip through time in which you are the most important protagonist.
A unique experience that combines culture and history with leisure and entertainment. All the streets and squares of the oldest part of Alicante are transformed into a huge stage although the largest shows are put on in the Town Hall Square, so that every visitor can have a great time!
Having a beer, enjoying a tapa or buying a small gift beside the sea, is the idea behind the gastronomical and produce fair that Moraira organizes each year at the beginning of May.
By the time May comes around, the springtime in Jávea is bursting with colour and joie-de-vivre, in part due to the Festival of the Sea, a major cultural, tourist, commercial and sporting event in which the region's businesses present their latest creations for the new season.
A week of festivities, gala parades, conquests and reconquests bring the streets of Moraira to fever pitch, coinciding as they do with the start of the tourist season and the celebration of one of this Alicante town's most deeply rooted festivals: the Moors and Christians Festival.