It’s the Spanish holiday resort known for being down-to-earth, bags of fun and providing plenty of sun, sea and sangria. We take a look back at the wild history of Benidorm

Rumours are swirling that iconic ITV show Benidorm is set to return eight years after it was brutally axed from our TV screens. Reports the programme’s execs are in early talks with its stars back up Sherrie Hewson, who played hotel manager Joyce Temple-Savage, saying on a recent podcast interview: “Benidorm is coming back”.

“Benidorm was adored by millions when it was suddenly cancelled,” an TV insider has said. “Producers have started to reach out to the show’s stars and are hopeful a decision can be made later this year”. Written by Derren Litten, the British sitcom followed holidaymakers at the Solana all-inclusive resort in the holiday destination. Offscreen, it’s been 70 years since the first UK travellers touched down for an all singing, all dancing package holiday in the Spanish sunshine.

READ MORE: Where Benidorm cast are now from wild surgery to supermarket job and tragic death

And so the love affair – that still sees Benidorm on the Costa Blanca named as Tripadvisor’s most popular holiday destination in the world for Brits – began. And while recent protesters across the Spanish islands have called for tourists to go home – blaming them for the rising cost of housing and goods, for water shortages and even climate change – Benidorm still welcomes tourists with open arms.

Holidaymakers travelling to the Spanish islands like Majorca, Menorca and Ibiza, were faced with anti-tourism protests last summer. On the mainland in Barcelona, protestors were seen squirting tourists using water pistols in the popular Las Ramblas region, chanting “tourists go home.”

The city’s mayor, Jaume Collboni, renewed his “firm commitment” to eliminating Airbnb style short-term rentals in the city within five years. His words would have had another famous Spanish mayor, Pedro Zaragoza, turning in his grave. Appointed Mayor of Benidorm in 1950, his appointment saw the resort transformed from a fishing village into the tourist mecca we know today.

And while the first Brits taking a package holiday to Spain in 1954 went to the Costa Brava, it was soon Benidorm, in the province of Alicante, that had them visiting in droves. To achieve his dream, Pedro won over Spain’s fascist dictator General Franco and went up against the strict morals of the Catholic Church – nearly getting excommunicated in the process.

In one of the last interviews before his death, aged 85, in 2008, he said: “I remember we unveiled a plaque saying, ‘You live from your dreams’, and it’s still there today.” A former railway porter, when he was first elected, Benidorm – which now has 461 hotels, according to Tripadvisor – was a sleepy fishing town, still bringing in supplies by mule. Pedro’s first move towards remodelling it as a resort, entailed persuading the town’s influential people to pipe in a water supply from 10 miles away.

He said: “People didn’t think it would happen. But then the first drops came out of one of the fountains and people began to believe in me.” With his thick white moustache, receding hairline and dark coloured spectacles, Pedro looked something of an unlikely influencer.

But his plans to transform Benidorm into a “Sun and Beach” destination for those living in cooler European climes was visionary. His next move, in 1953, was to issue a public order that women could wear bikinis on the beach, making Benidorm the first Spanish town to break that tourism taboo.

Scandal erupted, with the outraged Catholic Church and others calling for the mayor to be excommunicated. “When I issued a decree to allow the bikini to be worn within the town limits of Benidorm, this caused a big scandal across the whole of Spain,” he said.

“Two ministers called for me to be sacked and the Bishop of Valencia began the process of excommunicating me, which in those days was a very serious business and would have meant I would lose any rights over my daughter and would have been barred from any jobs in public office.”

Fed up with the flak he was getting, Pedro – who stayed in office until 1967 – woke one morning before dawn and set off on his trusty green Vespa scooter for a 500 km round trip to Madrid, to see the ruthless Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, and explain his bikini predicament. “I reached Madrid mid-morning and went to the palace to see Franco,” he said. “He received me and I explained what was going on. I said: ‘General, this is like trying to stop the Ebro river. It is a waste of time to fight what is going on in the world’.

“And then I stressed to him that along with the bikini decree, I had issued an order banning any dirty comments, zero tolerance. Showing your belly button, fine. An elegant comment like ‘what a beautiful figure’ fine, but no dirty comments. Franco understood my argument and said ‘Go home, relax and if you get any more problems let me know’.”

Pedro also encouraged the building of high-rise properties, feeling it helped more people to see the beaches and feel the sea air. According to Keith Betton, from that point on, Benidorm’s marketing to Brits – then novices as far as foreign travel was concerned – was “genius”.

“I think early tourists were nervous that what they were going to experience was going to make them feel more ‘outside’ than ‘inside’ the holiday,” he says. “I know the first time my parents went to Spain they worried about the food, the currency, the language and driving on the other side of the road.

“But Benidorm very quickly managed to persuade people that ‘yeah, lots of people here speak English, and we will happily serve bacon and eggs, and it’ll be very, very good value for money and very cheap!'” In post-war Britain, the government placed restrictions on the amount of money holidaymakers could take out of the country – a rule that was scrapped in the late 1970s.

Now dubbed the “Spanish Las Vegas” because of its non-stop entertainment and “Spain’s Manhattan” because of its soaring skyscrapers, it is a sun, sea and sangria lover’s paradise. According to Keith Betton, who for 20 years was spokesperson for the Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA), it will take a lot more than a rash of protests to end the romance between Benidorm and Brits.

Even reports of a killer virus known as Crimean Congo haemorrhagic fever running rampant in Spain didn’t deter Brits last summer, says Keith. He adds: “I don’t believe that this recent rash of stories about Brits not being very welcome in Spain and all the medical scare stories are going to have any impact on holidaymakers going to Spain and places like Benidorm.” With more than 18 million Brits going to Spain last year, he is probably right.

Today, with its 5 kilometres of coastline, endless sandy beaches, 60 plus skyscrapers – around 30 of which are over 100 metres high – one of the best climates in the Mediterranean, and opportunities for non-stop fun, Benidorm looks likely to remain the favourite destination for British tourists for many years to come.

Keith – who appeared more than 1,000 times on TV talking about travel news and changes during his two decades at ABTA – adds: “Whether it is backed up by fact or imagination, the truth is that Spain will always be the number one package holiday destination where people go for their week or two weeks in the sun, because it’s close to home, it’s got good sunshine, people there generally speak English and it’s usually very tourist friendly.

“The only real challenge I can see down the line could be if the summers in the UK get warmer as predicted, and places in the Med become too hot, as predicted. Then people might just decide ‘I don’t need to go to Spain now to get a nice suntan, I can just go to the beach at home’.”