This stretch of Alicante's shore is called the Costa Blanca, the White Coast, for the glare of sun on limestone and pale sand. Villajoyosa sits near its heart, some 32 kilometres up the coast from the city of Alicante, and serves as the historic and administrative capital of the Marina Baixa comarca — the anchor town for a cluster of smaller settlements inland. More than three kilometres of beach unspool along the front, the Platja Centre lying almost within the old town itself. Through the streets runs the modest river that townsfolk simply call the river of La Vila, threading down to a sea that has shaped every chapter of the place, from its fishing fleet to the cargoes that once made it prosperous.

That prosperity arrived, improbably, as chocolate. Villajoyosa's working port made it easy to land cocoa shipped across the Atlantic from the Americas, and by the nineteenth century the town had become one of Spain's chocolate capitals. The Valor brand — a name recognised in kitchens across the country — was founded here in 1881 and still runs its factory in town, complete with a museum of vintage grinding machinery and tasting rooms. Walk certain streets on the right morning and the air genuinely carries the warm, bittersweet smell of roasting cocoa. It is an unlikely trade for a Mediterranean fishing town, and yet it fits: a place that always looked seaward for its living simply swapped sardines for something sweeter.

Every year at the end of July the town stages one of Spain's most celebrated fiestas, the Moros i Cristians — Moors and Christians — declared a Festival of International Tourist Interest. The pageant commemorates a real danger: raids by Berber corsairs who once came ashore on this coast, and the townspeople who drove them back. Costumed companies parade in silks and armour, and a mock landing is staged on the very beach where the drama once played out. It is theatre rather than triumphalism. Both 'sides' are performed with equal relish by neighbours who trade roles across the generations, a whole community re-enacting the fears of its ancestors as spectacle, music and celebration.

Above the painted houses rises the Gothic Church of the Assumption, its severe stone interior softened by a Baroque altarpiece — a reminder that this coast lived for centuries with one eye on the horizon for pirate sails. Nearby, the restored Royal Palm Casino, once the Casino Costa Blanca, has reopened after a thorough renovation and again draws visitors to the front. For a town of its size, la Vila has sent a surprising number of athletes into the world, among them Marta Baldó, who took Olympic gold in rhythmic gymnastics at Atlanta in 1996. The full official name is a mouthful in two languages, but locals shorten all of it to a single affectionate word: la Vila.