On 17th January 1932 it fell to the lawyer Jose Guardiola Ortiz, as President of the Provincial Monuments Commission since 1926, to assume the honour of receiving the then President of the Republic, Niceto Alcalá Zamora, and the President of the Provincial Council, Franklin Albricias, in the room occupied by the Museum on the ground floor of the Palacio de la Diputación. With this, the Provincial Museum of Alicante was officially inaugurated, the Diputación fulfilling the commitment it had made to provide the province with a centre that would conserve the archaeological collections from the excavations that the Provincial Monuments Commission had been managing.
In the mural that the MARQ dedicates to its history, there is a photograph of Guardiola together with other great men who, like Miguel Elizaicin España, Francisco Figueras-Pacheco and José Lafuente Vidal, put all their passion and effort into ensuring that Alicante had a museum institution, the heir of which is the current and internationally recognised Provincial Archaeological Museum of Alicante, MARQ.
The MARQ, on the eve of its tenth anniversary since HM. Queen Sofía formally inaugurated it in May 2002, joins the recognition that the Alicante City Council is promoting for the illustrious lawyer and writer, Don José Guardiola Ortiz, with the transfer of his mortal remains to the Garden of Silence, a space in the municipal cemetery that houses the remains of illustrious Alicante citizens.
Extract from the Diario Información de Alicante of 13 October 2011:
The space dedicated in the municipal cemetery to illustrious Alicante citizens will this year incorporate the remains of two outstanding cultural figures from the first part of the 20th century: José Guardiola and Rodolfo Salazar. Both will be buried alongside other figures from the history of the city who are already in this pavilion, such as the founder of the Bonfires, José María Py; the writer and archaeologist Francisco Figueras Pacheco; and the doctor Antonio Rico.
José Guardiola Ortiz (1874-1946) was a prominent Republican jurist, writer and politician. He chaired the Alicante savings bank, was a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, president of the Scientific and Literary Athenaeum of Alicante, and edited the newspaper "El republicano". Despite his ideas, as a jurist during the Civil War he defended Falangists such as Agatángelo Soler, who later became mayor of Alicante. He himself held a seat as a councillor on the Alicante Town Council and was civil governor of Valladolid between 1931 and 1933.
The journalist Rodolfo Salazar (1880-1937), on the other hand, had conservative ideas. He was editor-in-chief of the Alicante newspaper El Día until 1918, when, through his friendship with Torcuato Luca de Tena, who spent his summer holidays in Aigües, he moved to Madrid to work for ABC, where he was editor-in-chief for 20 years. Like Guardiola, he directed the Ateneo and the Círculo de Bellas Artes. As dean of the "foguerers matjors", he spread the Hogueras in Madrid. His earthen tomb was granted in perpetuity by the City Council.
