The cradle of mass tourism under Franco, Benidorm in Spain proudly assumes

"There are no car factories or soap factories here. What we have here is a factory of hotels, restaurants, and leisure establishments," summarizes Ángela Barceló, 72, owner of the Hotel Les Dunes, opened in 1957 by her grandmother at a time when Spanish women could not have a bank account without their husband's permission.

"Today's Benidorm is thanks to women," asserts Ángela Barceló: when tourists began to arrive in the 1950s, men "worked in the merchant navy or set traps" for tuna fishing, and so it was women who opened hotels and restaurants.

The Les Dunes hotel originally had three floors and now has 25, illustrating the transformation of the seaside resort on the Mediterranean coast in just a few decades.

Previously home to 3.000 residents living in small houses, Benidorm can now accommodate up to 400.000 people at the height of the summer season, notably in around a hundred skyscrapers with several dozen floors.

Decisive support from Franco

This revolution has a father: Pedro Zaragoza Orts, mayor from 1950 to 1966 and a staunch Francoist. This pragmatist with many connections saw in foreign tourists a prosperous and foreign-currency-rich future, less demanding than working the land and safer than working the sea.

"When the first tourists started arriving, especially women wearing bikinis, it caused trouble. The Bishop of Alicante had many disagreements with the mayor," historian Francisco Amillo, 76, who has lived in Benidorm for decades, told AFP.

Threatened with excommunication, Pedro Zaragoza receives decisive support: the dictator Francisco Franco sends his wife and daughter to spend a summer vacation with him, which they will do for years afterward.

"Foreign currency income began to grow exponentially from the moment this freedom was granted on the beaches," says Francisco Amillo. Foreign currency was a boon to an isolated Franco regime, whose desire for self-sufficient development had failed irrevocably.

Through notable advertising initiatives, such as inviting a family from an indigenous Finnish people on holiday or the creation of the Benidorm Song Festival, where Julio Iglesias would be revealed, Pedro Zaragoza supported the development of the city.

In the very strict Spanish society of the time, the city even became one of the refuges of the homosexual community, which opened its first bars there in the 1960s.

Pedro Zaragoza's gamble of selling sun, beaches, and happiness worked so well that it spread to many Spanish regions, and in 2024, around 94 million tourists visited the country, the second-largest tourist destination in the world after France.

Of these, 2,8 million stayed in Benidorm, on just seven km of beaches.

"What a horrible city!"

Benidorm's ability to concentrate so many people in such a small space, thanks to the city's vertical growth, has long earned it criticism, but in recent years it has instead been hailed as a model of sustainable development.

Vertical growth "is a very effective model," Vicente Mayor, 53, deputy chief engineer at the city hall, told AFP, pointing out in particular the much greater losses in the water distribution networks of cities with dispersed housing.

This high urban concentration also makes it possible to collect waste in a few hours, and the car is rendered almost useless.

But for Stuart Reed, a Briton who has already been "five or six times," the main thing is elsewhere: "There's something for everyone. It's great. There are bars, the madness of the main avenue, and there are charming tapas bars in the old town," he rejoices, while enjoying a stroll along the seafront promenade with his wife in September.

"When I tell my friends I'm going to Benidorm, they say, 'What a horrible city!'" admits Maribel Soler, a 68-year-old French woman. "Actually, it's because they don't know it."

According to her, those who criticize Benidorm do so mainly because they don't like the city's characteristically tall buildings—an idea they would never have when talking about New York: "I've been to New York and I love New York too," she smiles.