The Gloriamar Restaurant in Piles hosts the presentation of the Coca de El Camino del Santo Graal, a creation by the master pastry chef Pepe Cotaina.
Piles (Valencia), 3 May 2025 – The beach of Piles was the setting this Saturday for an unprecedented gastronomic and cultural event: the official presentation of the Coca de El Camino del Santo Graal, an artisan delicacy conceived by the master pastry chef Pepe Cotaina, alma mater of Coquería Pepe Cotaina and an indisputable reference point for traditional Valencian pastries.
The event, which took place in the renowned Gloriamar Restaurant, brought together fifty people from all over Spain: people from Madrid, Seville, Extremadura, Castile and Asturias, as well as Valencia and Alicante, came to discover and taste this creation, which is destined to become a gastronomic emblem of the Camino del Santo Grial.
Pepe Cotaina: the art of tradition with an innovative outlook
With a career spanning more than forty years and a CV full of awards and recognitions, Pepe Cotaina is a true ambassador of Valencian coca. From his workshop in Gandía, he has elevated this humble product to gourmet status, combining ancestral techniques with a careful selection of local ingredients.
The Coca de El Camino del Santo Graal, made exclusively for this event, is a symphony of flavours that refers both to tradition and to the symbolism of the Holy Chalice: a recipe that unites the earthly with the spiritual, the everyday with the sacred. According to Cotaina, “this coca represents a journey, a meeting of cultures, as is the Way of the Holy Grail itself”.
A symbolic stop in Piles: the south of Valencia takes centre stage on the Way of the Holy Grail
The choice of Piles as the venue for the presentation was no coincidence. In recent years, the International Cultural Itinerary Association The Way of the Holy Grail has intensified its efforts to promote the southern section of the route, which links Valencia with Alicante through the itinerary followed by the priest and canon Alcedo, custodian of the Holy Chalice during the Napoleonic invasion.
This itinerary, still little known, represents a testimony of courage and hope. During the darkest years of the conflict, Canon Alcedo risked his life to preserve the relic, taking it from the Chapter of the Cathedral of Valencia to safe areas in the south of Valencia and Alicante, following the routes of the time, while the rest of the treasure of the Cathedral of Valencia went by sea with the priest Pedro Vicente Calbo. Through this feat, The Way of the Holy Grail acquires a new dimension: that of a path of exile and safeguarding.
The Way of the Holy Grail, Journey of Exile, Way of Safeguarding
During the Spanish War of Independence (1808-1814), the Valencian priest Pedro Vicente Calbo played a crucial role in the protection of the Holy Chalice, venerated in the Cathedral of Valencia. Faced with the threat of sacking by Napoleonic troops, Calbo organised and executed three transfers of the relic to safeguard it.
In 1809, the Chalice was evacuated by sea from Valencia to Alicante, where it remained for ten months. Later, in 1810, it was transferred to Ibiza, where it remained for a year and a half, and finally to Mallorca, where it remained until 1813, coinciding with the end of the French occupation of Valencia.
Calbo, director of the Valencia Seminary and a trusted confidant of Canon Alcedo, documented these transfers in detail in manuscripts preserved in the Valencia Cathedral Archives. His dedication and courage were fundamental in preserving this important relic during a period of great instability.
This story has been studied in the book “Salvamentos del Santo Cáliz en la Guerra de la Independencia. Valencia-Alicante 1809-1810”, written by César Evangelio and presented in 2019 in the Archdiocese of Valencia.
As the Association promoting the Way has pointed out: ‘The Coca of The Way of the Holy Grail is not only a gastronomic product; it is a way of transmitting this story of bravery, custody, faith and resistance, in a universal language based on wheat, oil and local products from the orchard of Valencia’.
The Coca of the Grail, also present in the Holy Grail Marathon in Alto Palancia
In parallel, and in clear harmony with the spirit of this itinerary, the Holy Grail Marathon is being held today in the Alto Palancia region, one of the most emblematic mountainous stretches of the route. In a gesture of twinning between the different points of the route, each of the winners of this sporting event will receive as a symbolic prize a Coca from The Way of the Holy Grail, thus consolidating this sweet as a cultural and sporting symbol of the route.
A cultural, spiritual and sensory experience
This event has not only served to launch a product with a strong symbolic charge, but also to continue consolidating The Way of the Holy Grail as a European Cultural Itinerary, contributing to territorial cohesion and sustainable tourism. Gastronomy, in this context, becomes a vehicle of memory, identity and belonging.
The International Association wished to give special thanks for the involvement of Pepe Cotaina, the Gloriamar Restaurant and all the attendees, stressing that initiatives such as this reinforce the mission of disseminating the history of the Holy Chalice, its guardians and the lands that protected it.
“To savour this coca is to travel with the senses along the path of knowledge, hope and the custody of a universal symbol”, concluded one of the excited attendees.