A lifetime of service

BENITACHELL council on Monday organised a heartfelt tribute to local doctor Régulo Lorente for his more than 40 years serving the town.

Dozens of people took part in the event at the Centro Social to mark his retirement and thank the doctor for his lifetime of hard work.

For more than four decades Dr Lorente has been the GP of all the local residents in Benitachell and is a very respected and beloved figure.

He arrived in the town at the beginning of the 1980s from his native Avila (Castilla y Leon), originally not planning to spend his entire life there and even less expecting to experience a global epidemic on the front line.

“I have the honour of being the doctor who has been in the village for the longest uninterrupted period of time,” he told local magazine Al Corrent in a recent interview, adding in Valencian that “I wasn’t born here but I will die a mitja fava” in reference to the colloquial name given to the inhabitants of Benitachell.