It is located in the district of Benialí. There are only a few memories left of the old rural district and its bourgeois mansion called Bona Vista since it was subjected to several transformations over time. The one performed in the 20s of the last century gave rise to the Casa Prytz. It is located on Carrer (street) Ramón de Campoamor, no. 25, and is currently owned by the public administration, Alacant’s Diputació. Initially, it was conceived as a palace with a ground floor and three more floors. Part of the top floor was open and had terraces with pergolas.
Nowadays, it is a four-floor building with irregular shape as a consequence of the works that took place in the first quarter of the 20th century, which added ornamental details typical of that decade. In 2011, it was rehabilitated to house the new offices of the Alacant Institute of the Pedro Herrero Family, which involved the emptying and complete reconstruction of the interior of the building.
The Finca Bona Vista is referred to in the Historical Geographic-Statistical Dictionary of Spain and its Overseas Possessions by Pascual Madoz, who described the estate owned by the merchant Vicente Palacios in 1845: “On the road side between Santa Faç and Sant Joan you will find a beautiful state of Vicente Palacios of Alacant, named Bona Vista, which contains good rooms with all kind of comforts, a small garden on the south with access from the main floor and the gallery of the house by a large and spacious staircase, in which there are three gazebos, one with a table, one with a swing and another with a fish pond and several coops for peacocks, Guinea hens, turtledoves and other birds; a square patio at the entrance of the estate with benches and arcades of cypresses that make a very good effect, and a cropland of fruit trees with its ferris wheel and pond, in which there are also goldfishes and it serves for the geese and ducks. The situation of this estate is extremely advantageous, because it dominates from the north to the mountains and from the south to the sea”.
Thanks to Rafael Viravens Pastor, we know that in 1876 the Bona Vista estate was owned by the Third Count of Pinohermoso, Juan Roca de Togores y Carrasco (1801-1883). On 9 October 1838, in Valencia, the Count married, Ines Sanz de Vallés y Monserrat, Marchioness of Mascarell de Sant Joan, lady of the Queen and of the Order of Maria Luisa, and widow of Joaquin León y Frías.
The family of the Count was of the high nobility, his great-grandparents being the Princess Isabel Maria Pío of Saboy and her husband Antonio Valcárcel y Pérez Pastor. As an anecdote, his aunt Mª Antonia Roca de Togores y Valcárcel inherited Finca La Princesa, also located in Sant Joan in the district of Fabraquer.
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In 1871, Juan Roca de Togores y Carrasco had given the estate known as Vil·la Ito to his godson Juan Viudes, time at which it could have been segregated from the Bona Vista estate, in order to materialize such a gift.
On the death of the Third Count of Pinohermoso, the Swedish businessman Hugo Prytz Carter (1840-1904) bought the estate. He had settled in Alacant in 1870, where he developed an intense economic activity, especially in the business of the almond of the Alacant’s Horta (Cropland) and later founded an electric company. The first electric company of Alacant was the so-called Prytz & Campos Collective Society, created in 1891. The founding partners were Hugo Prytz Carter and Guillermo Campos Carrera, who contributed in equal parts to an initial capital of 100,000 pesetas. This expenditure shows the socio-economic level of these agents.
Hugo Pritz married an ‘Alicantina’, María Luis Antoine Larrea. From that moment the house began to be called Casa Prytz, where they invited personalities from the world of politics, culture or science as Emilio Castelar, president of the First Republic in 1873, Isaac Peral, inventor of the submarine or the writer Benito Pérez Galdós.
Regarding the twentieth century, the house was rebuilt between 1920 and 1930. The entrance to the estate is through a modernist facade, projected, perhaps, by the Dutch architect Granzaurin. Despite the modifications undergone, original ornamental elements such as the simulation of the ashlar masonry are maintained in the outer walls. There are also different eclectic motifs of academic roots in cornices, railings and moulded walls, the exterior staircase leading to the main floor, and the entrance door, which forms an exedra with modernist volumes and ornaments made of iron and stone.
In February 1932 its owner was Manuel Prytz Antoine, who inherited it from his brother Carlos. A few months later Manuel donated the estate to the Alacant Town Hall, in order to serve as accommodation for the heads of state visits, a purpose that never happened.
Subsequently, the property passed to the Alacant’s Diputació Provincial through an exchange. From 1941 on, it became a Psychiatric Farm for women. Later, the Provincial Psychiatric Hospital was built and, as a result, the estate lost its use and was abandoned. In that period it housed a feed storehouse, a pigeon loft and a chicken coop. This building is currently registered as a Monument of Local Interest.