It was once a small Spanish fishing town. Now it attracts millions of tourists every year

In 1964, 23-year-old Ramon Martinez Martinez left his job as a struggling painter in Madrid, Spain, and journeyed south to Benidorm in search of new opportunities. In the first half of the 20th century, Benidorm was a small seaside town best known for its tuna fish and orange groves, but by the time Martinez arrived, a budding tourism scene was about to take off, providing him and his family with a ticket to a better life. Martinez bet on a boom, but even he could not have predicted what the formerly quiet fishing town would become. Today, Benidorm is known as the “New York of the Mediterranean,” a tourist metropolis distinctive for its high density of skyscrapers. Gone are the fruit farmers and the fishermen, replaced by millions of visitors from across Spain and Europe. In 2023, 2.7 million tourists visited Benidorm — 36 times the size of its permanent population. As notorious as it is popular, Benidorm is seen as both an incredible economic success and a symbol of the uncontrolled juggernaut that is Spain’s tourism industry. It’s also the subject of a new book, “Benidorm,” by British photographer Rob Ball. Speaking to CNN over Zoom, Ball explained that he travelled to the Spanish coast “with an open mind,” aiming to depict its “totally unique” landscape and architecture. Having photographed coastal landscapes for 15 years, Ball sees his latest work as “a prequel” to those images — a way of understanding the decline of local tourism as international travel became more affordable to the general public in the 1960s. ‘Blackpool with sun’ Close to a third of visitors to Benidorm are from the United Kingdom. So ubiquitous is the British tourist in Benidorm that the town has become known for its abundance of British pubs, availability of full English breakfasts, and broadcasting of British sports on outdoor screens. Every March, thousands of Brits flock to Benidorm to watch the Cheltenham Festival — a popular horse racing event that takes place in England — on TV. Consequently, Benidorm divides opinion in the UK, as it does in Spain. For some, it is the perfect holiday destination — hot weather, familiar faces and bars open until the early hours. For others, the town provides the most inauthentic travel experience possible, Benidorm a byword for debauchery and sleaze. Ball chose to focus on the positive aspects of this controversial town — its natural beauty and groups of happy tourists relaxing on the sand. Benidorm is known by many in the UK as “Blackpool with sun,” referring to a British seaside town popular with domestic tourists, although regarded by some as past its heyday. Depending on who uses it, the moniker can be either complimentary or disparaging. “I’ve always felt that it’s very easy to demonize the working class for going on holiday and getting (drunk),” said Ball, “but I think actually when you work hard for 50 weeks of the year and you want to go and get (drunk) for two weeks in the summer, then you should be able to.” But all this was still to come when Martinez moved from the Spanish capital of Madrid to the humble coastal town of Benidorm. “Everyone came, as my mother and father did, looking for new opportunities,” said Jaime Martinez Gallinar, Martinez’s son and CEO of the Hoteles Benidorm Group of three four-star hotels, recounting his parents’ story from an office high in the Benidorm sky. “It was pretty much the story of the pioneers of the American West,” he added. Martinez first found employment painting the hotels that had begun popping up along Benidorm’s coastline. The owners of the new buildings often didn’t have the cash to pay him, so would offer him shares in their businesses, or a couple of apartments in their buildings. As Martinez’s portfolio grew, so did the ambition of the city’s new mayor, Pedro Zaragoza. Zaragoza, who was a personal friend of Martinez, is a legendary figure in the history of Benidorm. The city as it stands today is built according to Zaragoza’s vision — all high-rises, wide boulevards and pristine swimming pools, as out of place on the Spanish coast in the ‘60s as orange groves and fishing nets would have been in downtown Manhattan. “He was a lover of the area, the natural environment and the tourist industry,” said Gallinar, recalling his father’s relationship with the former mayor. “He is like a god for every hotelier here.” Zaragoza, appointed to his position in 1950, saw the untapped economic potential of Benidorm when others did not. He toured Europe promoting his town’s desirable sun and sea, and made the radical decision in 1959 to legalize the wearing of bikinis on his beaches. Faced with excommunication by the Catholic Church, Zaragoza rode his Vespa nine hours to Madrid for an audience with Spanish general Francisco Franco. He returned to Benidorm with the dictator’s full support. Zaragoza’s persistence, and Martinez’s gamble to uproot his family, were massively rewarded in the years that followed. After a major expansion of “package” vacations in the 1960s — all-inclusive trips abroad that made foreign travel, largely within Europe, available to more people — international tourists began to flock to Benidorm in the hundreds of thousands. Other than a blip during the pandemic, which prompted global travel restrictions, tourist numbers have continued to grow, creating new opportunities in Benidorm, its skyscrapers pushing further and further towards the clouds. Building upwards The early days of Benidorm’s architectural development were characterised by, as Ball described, a “total free-for-all approach.” Sandwiched between the mountains and the sea, the only way to house the growing number of tourists was to build upwards. The 21st century brought the two tallest buildings in Spain outside of Madrid: the Gran Hotel Bali, built in 2002, and the Residencial Intempo, completed in 2021 — both located in Benidorm. One might expect this continuous development — or the notorious rambunctiousness of its tourist center — to be met with resistance from locals. Yet, while protests against mass-tourism (and the growing issue of rising rents and house prices that come with it) have taken place in recent months across Spain, they’ve not been in Benidorm. “We love tourists,” Gallinar explained. “During Covid, it was like a ghost town, it was so sad. We discovered how much we depend on the people who come here. It’s not like Barcelona; here, everyone is welcome.” Gallinar is proud of the Benidorm pubs that open until 3 a.m. and seeing the melting pot of Spaniards, Brits, and others from around the world, happily drinking and enjoying the atmosphere of a town unlike any other. “People think Benidorm is for old people, for British people, for hooligans,” he said. “There is a stereotype that Benidorm is a cheap place. (But) there is a Benidorm that nobody talks about.” However, Gallinar is aware that tourism in Benidorm is threatening to become too big for the landscape, acknowledging that “the challenge now is how to grow with the natural environment. The land is almost used up. Benidorm is almost full all year round. If we keep growing, maybe we will find that we begin to destroy the environment.” It’s a concern that will eventually need to be addressed, given that demand for the Benidorm experience shows no sign of waning. If the pristine sea, radiant sunshine and pubs full of British revelers in Ball’s photographs are anything to go by, Benidorm is set to remain a holiday destination that people either love, or love to hate. “Benidorm,” published by Hoxton Mini Press, is available in the UK now and the US on May 22.