The Plaza del Olmo is located in the old part of the town, at the crossroads of Calle San Sebastián and Calle Rosario, around the church of San Pedro. In the 18th century it was called “Placeta”; hence the nickname “placetas” given to the surrounding neighbours. According to tradition, it was they who planted the elm tree, following the custom of placing the tree near the mills to provide shade for the draught animals that turned this hydraulic device, and also for the farmers and neighbours of the square.
The square, being located on a natural communication route between the centre of the town and the market gardens, was an obligatory place for farmers to pass through on their way to their daily work in the market gardens. The Martínez Carrión family, originally from Jumilla, settled here in the first decades of the 20th century, establishing a tavern that would make the Plaza del Olmo even more popular, known as “la Manuela”, which he ran with his brother “Perico el Litro”. Several generations of “alcantarilleros” and visitors have passed through it since then until it closed definitively in the 1990s.
The square was urbanised in 1955, with the paving and installation of stone benches and lampposts, which provided a new space for rest and children’s games.
In the 1980s, the century-old elm tree was affected by woodworm, which gradually dried out the trunk. As a result, in the winter of 1987, a storm of wind and hail caused the branches to break off and the tree was removed from the place that had given it its identity for centuries. A year later, students and teachers from the Jacinto Benavente School, together with the City Council, planted a new elm tree to replace the old one.
Since 2013, the bust of Sebastián Lorente Ibáñez, known as “el Sabio Lorente”, born in Calle de San Sebastián in 1813, has stood in the Plaza del Olmo to mark his bicentenary. In 1965, the Town Hall paid tribute to him by commissioning a bust of the illustrious alcantarillero from the sculptor Nicolás Martínez Ramón, which would be installed in a square named after him. Sebastián Lorente was a theologian, philosopher, historian, and doctor, and carried out important work in teaching and literature in Peru.
With the wise Lorente in the Plaza del Olmo, very close to his birthplace, Alcantarilla remembers one of its most illustrious characters.
