Anarchists on the Line

 We begin with a 2008-2023 moment before heading on. Much of the day we will be trotting alongside the railway line to Valencia. We used it several times and I have fond memories of its use so we will homage it with a picture of a train.



We don’t really go near anywhere today till the end.  We are running close to the V-23.  It has a hotel called the Hotel Ruta Romana. I was intrigued.  Was it full of enslaved people and the newly free still bunking down in their former enslavers room?  Apparently not.




It is a 3.9 star rated, 3-star hotel. It is £55 a night.  A day ago Natalia was very happy indeed.  ‘We stopped at this hotel for the night on a long, 8-hour trip, and we also specifically stopped to see the end of Spain and Portugal. When we tried to watch it on TV, it wasn't working. When we mentioned it to the receptionist named Eugenio (an excellent employee who even gave me a headache pill; he was very kind, attentive, and considerate), he tried to fix it, and when he couldn't, he changed our room, even to a better one. He was very well behaved and helped us with everything we asked, and he was very generous and friendly. The rooms were very clean, and the location was good, considering it's a transit hotel with a gas station right outside. Everything was very cool. Thank you, Eugenio, for your generosity, which is rarely found in this type of accommodation!’



We are heading in to Pucol.   We will do more of it tomorrow but we might as well do its History today.  After the Black Death  the population grew a lot  thanks to the export of fruit.  The Church of Santos Juanes and the Archbishop's Palace, were built in the  17th century by the Archbishop of Valencia, Juan de Ribera , who also built one of the first botanical gardens in Spain.  They had a punch up nearby during the Napoleonic Wars.


During the Second Spanish Republic, the 1933-6 repealing of previous progress resulted in social unrest. Anarchists caused the derailment of the Barcelona-Seville fast train, which plunged into the Puzol ravine between the Puzol and El Puig stations , resulting in a total of twenty dead and over one hundred injured. 



More town tomorrow.








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