"Beuty place"

Jhan Olaya nova

"A square bordered by Calle Italia, Calle Pintor Aparicio, Calle Pintor Lorenzo Casanova, and Calle Portugal, in a privileged location in the heart of Alicante's Eixample district.
The former bus station remains on this site, built between 1943 and 1947 by architect Félix de Azúa. Its reinforced concrete rib structure forms the interior lobby, where we can visit and view a beautiful mural by Gastón Castelló Bravo.
In the aforementioned square, we have access to a former air-raid shelter from the Spanish Civil War, which after the war was used as a mushroom greenhouse due to the climatic conditions inside.
This park also features a kiosk, a children's play area, benches, and trees.
Opposite the square, at the intersection of Calle Italia and Calle Portugal, we find two beautiful port sanitation sheds, next to the old Fire Station."

JAX

"Séneca Square is a public space located in the center of the city of Alicante (Spain), in the Ensanche Diputación neighborhood. It occupies the site of the old Central Bus Station, rehabilitated and transformed into a cultural and recreational space.

The origin of the square dates back to the end of the 19th century, when an urban square was planned for the site. In the 1930s, an air raid shelter was built in its basement during the Spanish Civil War, which remained hidden until its rediscovery in 2015. Later, between 1943 and 1949, the Central Bus Station and four blocks of social housing were built in the area. With the transfer of the station to the port in 2011, the space fell into disuse, allowing its transformation into a garden plaza and the rehabilitation of the main building as a cultural center.

The old bus station building, currently known as Espacio Séneca, is a cultural center managed by the Department of Culture of the Alicante City Council since January 2021. It has an area of ​​550 m² and high ceilings, making it suitable for hosting exhibitions, performing arts events and musical performances. Inside, the murals by Gastón Castelló are preserved, representing images of the city and the province of Alicante.

The transformation of the plaza was designed by the architecture studio Kauh Arquitectos, which proposed a hybrid space between a plaza and a park. The design includes gentle landscaped hills, recreational areas for generational interaction and a forum for outdoor events. Materials from the demolition of the previous buildings and the excavation for the underground parking were reused, allowing the creation of larger tree areas.

During the rehabilitation works of the square, an air raid shelter from the Spanish Civil War that had been built in 1938 and was believed to have been demolished was rediscovered. The shelter, with capacity for 1,200 people, is 51 meters long and has 38 cubicles on both sides of the central corridor. Its conservation was possible thanks to the fact that the construction company that built the station in 1947 chose to build on top of the shelter instead of demolishing it, which allowed its rediscovery decades later.

By the authors, Andrés Martínez Medina, and Justo Oliva Meyer.
The urban and architectural heritage, cultural in the end, is usually composed of multiple layers: while memory forgets those that have disappeared, history confirms them. This is the case of Plaza Séneca in Alicante, which has been in existence for just over a century. This place maintains the physical scope of the urban plaza planned at the end of the 19th century. However, its current configuration is the result of an overlap of interventions. These layers can be summarized in five phases. The first would be an idea drawn on the city plan modified by a preliminary project for a bus station (1888 and 1930). The second would be the construction in its basement of an air-raid shelter that would soon be closed (1938-1953). The third was the construction of the Central Bus Station and four social housing blocks (1943-1949). The fourth would be the abandonment of this old station and the demolition of the residential buildings (2011-2014) which allowed us to consider the original use of the square as a garden, recycle the old Station (Seneca Space) and incorporate the war vestiges giving rise to the fifth superimposed layer (2013-2017). However, the story does not end there and this monument is revealed as a book open to the future. This is the synthetic story of the consolidation of a unique heritage"

Antonio Sáez