The practice of this painter from Valencia reached a high level of modernism and painterly quality yet without ever relinquishing figuration, leaving behind the prevailing bias towards the aesthetic dictatorship of Sorollismo in Valencia, so-calledafter the painter Joaquín Sorolla.
 
In the early stages of his career Lahuerta moved towards Expressionism, although he also admired the Italian Quattrocento. In the 1950s he was drawn to the of Henri Matisse (1869-1954) and Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), as can be seen in the heightened colouring of his painting, with an intense palette that nonetheless never renounced his compositional simplicity.
 
Together with Francisco Lozano (1912-2000), Lahuerta was the most influential exponent of Valencia’s post-war landscape painting, reaching his creative peak in this subject matter in the 1960s. With a modulated brushstroke, not as explosive as Lozano’s, Lahuerta succeeds in capturing the simplicity of his surrounding environs with great sensuousness, based on a wise use of colour and a masterly treatment of light to convey a higher lyrical expressiveness.
 
This view of Altea has been related with another one made by Lozano, with an identical title and also in the BBVA Collection. However, unlike his colleague, Lahuerta puts this town near Alicante at the centre of the composition, at the foot of the mountain and shedding any surrounding element which might introduce any distraction. The two emblematic domes of blue and white tiles from the Nuestra Señora del Consuelo church, a landmark of Altea, rises over the idyllic surrounding pattern of Mediterranean houses, merging with the tonal gradation of blues, violets and reds of the rocky landscape.