On June 23, 1834, the Ayuntamiento de Castellón decided to establish a sanitary cordon around the city, due to the appearance of cholera in Murcia and Orihuela. This confinement was formed by all the neighbors of the city, including the clergy and friars, and an observation lazaretto was installed in Magdalena. The sanitary cordon, which functioned as a containment barrier, involved the entire population in its surveillance.
The chronicler Juan Antonio Balbás documented this first wave of the disease in the 19th century in his book "El libro de la provincia de Castellón", published in 1892, preserving the memory of that period of sanitary crisis in the province of Castellón.
On September 1, 1834, the town of Vila-real suffered the impact of the epidemic in a formidable way, recording more than 1,500 "invasions" — the name by which infections were known at that time — in a period of only two days. The epidemic lasted a little more than a month in that town and caused approximately 450 fatalities.
The mayor of Vila-real, Vicente María Esteban, stood out for his behavior described as "heroic" during the crisis. However, this attitude did not protect him from a tragic fate: the following year, in 1835, he was shot by the Carlist leader Serrador, in the context of the Carlist Wars.
