The house of the “Nuevo Rico” (New Rich) was the temporary residence of Alonso Lorente Yúfera, a man from Alcantarilla who, from the 1930s onwards, made a great fortune as a building contractor, firstly in Madrid and later in Murcia and Alcantarilla. The house, built in the 1940s, was located on the corner of Calle Nona and Calle Pasos. The semicircular bay windows that were adapted to the two streets, opening its visibility to the Calle Mayor, were outstanding.
The master builder in charge of its construction was the sewerage worker José Sánchez Martínez, “Maestro Olivares” who, for years worked on the constructions promoted by the “Nuevo Rico”, as well as on the building on the corner with Calle Mayor, with a ground floor used as a shop, where the “Ocaso” was located, designed by the architect Joaquín Dicenta Vilaplana.
In calle Nona, the house of the “Nuevo Rico” adjoined another house of his own. Next, the “Mamaíto” bakery and one of the most representative modernist buildings in Alcantarilla: the house of Basilio Antonio Cobarro Tornero, attributed to the architect Pedro Cerdán. The industrialist came from a family from Abarán who settled in the town at the end of the 19th century to work in the fruit export and canning industry. Over time, Basilio Antonio Cobarro became one of the most important industrialists in the Region in the 20th century.
Calle de los Pasos, where the Casa del Nuevo Rico would later be built, was the place where the tramway made a stop on the Murcia-Alcantarilla line until 1929.
The “Nuevo Rico” house was demolished in 2004, leaving part of the site in municipal ownership.
