Grenadella cove is attached to Javea but hidden away behind the buzz of the main Arenal beach. A spot well worth visiting for its natural beauty, tranquil atmosphere and historic castle ruins.
Montgó's prehistoric cave dwellers and hunters dating from at least 30,000 years ago, and its paintings in Migdia cave are well-enough known. Its slopes have certainly yielded evidence of the ancient past to many local residents whether collecting Stone-Age handaxes and flints, Roman pottery or Muslim ceramics. If you are among those who gather the wild herbs still struggling to survive amid ever-increasing construction, just think of the Moorish Caliph Abd ur Rahman the Third who, 1000 years ago, at the beginning of the 10th century, made a special journey from Cordoba to collect over a hundred medicinal herbs from the slopes of our Montgó.
The slopes of Montgó, the tops of surrounding hills and the valley itself, all tell of the earliest known Neolithic settlements in the Western Mediterrean, where men developed agriculture and domesticated animals from around 3000 BC and into the Valencian Bronze Age between 1900 and 500 BC. In our Museum you can see Iberian beads, sherds of decorated pottery, stone axes and pestle and mortars found all around us, including from a fox's burrow dig into the hill crowned by the Santa Lucia Ermita, and which revealed a Bronze Age and Roman Village.
Visigoths were here too. In the 6th century AD. Christian Visigoth monks whoses ancestors had accompanied the troops sent to battle in North Africa, came across to Javeda and founded the monastery of San Martin, now disappeared but which probably gave its name to the Cabo San Martin. Here Hermangildo, son of the Visigoth king Leogevild of Toledo, sought refuge in the Monastery after angering his father by marrying a Christian girl. When his father's troops arrived to arrest him all but one ancient monk fled to Portichol - but Hermengild and the old monk were killed. You'll find a number of Javiense with Visigoth names even today.
A dilapidated village house in the angle of Santa Marta, leading off the Church Square, was pulled down and in the brief period given the archaeologists to examine the site, they made an astonishing discovery- The foundations of the 17th - 18th century house had been built right on top of a 3000 year old Bronze Age farming site, thus preserving the remains of two cabins and several silos. And in San Bartholome. the next street, facing the church, another house has been demolished to reveal relicsof a 14th. century dwelling with a cistern, well and various ceramics and coins.
Come to that, do you remember when the police station, then part of the Ayuntamiento was moved to its purpose-built location opposite the car park, in 1994? The intention was to open a tourist office in the old premises, part of the Ayuntamiento, and renovations included relaying the floor. But what did they find? Fourteenth century graves- some with several skeletons added later, all of the first Christians to repopulate Jávea after the long Muslim occupation- The cemetery was in use for another two hundred years and archaeologists found the remains of what appeared to have been a high, fortified tower and the later, smaller, 17th century chapel of the Desamparados. Making use of some of this material the original Ayuntamiento was built over them in 1774. Fortunately several of the rock-cut graves - without their skeleton inmates which have been removed to the nearby Museum - have been preserved and can be seen under the glass floor as you enter what is one of the Ayuntamiento's offices.
A datable lead weight used by Roman fishing boats, put back Roman occupation of Jávea to the 2nd century BC, making ours the oldest known Roman site on the coast with a commercial port for fish and minerals. And of course you know about the important Roman fish factory under the Parador, and the nearby cemetery, probably the largest in the province, part of which lies under the recently built "Alkazaba holiday apartments.
The late Solar Blasco, that fine artist who painted the triptich now divided over the Ermita de Popol's altar, and who was also our Alcalde, greatly concerned about Jávea's past, showed me many Roman and Iberian sites already lost or being covered by apartments along the coast. He pointed out the remnants of a Roman theatre, now disappeared, on the slopes of Montgó overlooking the main Valencia road, and a temple site by the Arenal's Canal de la Fontana, among many other relics of Jávea's ancient past.
There is little left of the Moors but some inscribed gravestones and ceramics, although they were here from about 714AD until the last were expelled from Jávea and Denia in 1609. Most were farmers, cultivating and terracing the land but undoubtedly there are remains hidden beneath many buildings and wooded areas.
Well, walk where you will in the valley, town or hills, you can be sure of one thing, you are walking on history.
