Benidorm

Benidorm

November 13, 2010
18:00

Well, we have endured a week and a half of good and bad weather, good and bad food, cheap beer in delightful British pubs that are so filled with cigarette smoke we cannot stand being inside and several visits to the state of the art gym in the new Levante Beach Hotel (sister property). When we are not gasping for air, either from the smoke or the work-out, we have been walking, walking, walking. Things have changed in Benidorm since our last visit almost eleven years ago. There are dozens of new high-rise hotels and condominiums stacked up the hillsides as well as spiffy new roads, pubs and shopping centres. Change is also apparent in the small tourist shops that line the busy streets because most of them are now run by Chinese, who are not that fluent in Spanish. Nothing wrong with that, just different. Also, almost all the goods in those and many other shops have been imported from China, a grand testament to Chinese marketing but a sad reality for Spanish industry, whose fine leather purses, jackets and shoes we used to covet everywhere in Spain. On the other hand, Spain now grows and markets mandarin and clemintine oranges along with their Valencias and other varieties.

More changes are evident. Bangers and mash. Shepherd’s pie. Chip butty’s. English breakfasts. Fish and chips...all things Union Jack are mighty and visible and competition for the British euro (pound) is fiercely apparent, but now there are new additions - like Chinese restaurants, Chinese buffets, Indian restaurants advertising chicken or beef curry with rice or chips or both, chips with curry and so on. A decade ago there was not a single taste of curry anywhere in Beni, now it is everywhere.

Benidorm now sports a world class shopping centre called Marina Mall, on the Northern outskirts that is easily accessible on new roads and with great bus connections. That’s another thing; the city busses are clean and modern and seem to run on time. A single ticket costs 1.25 euros. While we’re on the transportation subject, the old rattle-trap, narrow gauge train has been replaced by a modern new diesel tram which runs regularly from Alicante to Denia. A return ticket from Benidorm to Alicante costs 5.25 euros, not bad!

Some things have not changed at all since we first visited in 1997. Europeans in general flock to Benidorm and the Costa Blanca to live and to holiday. Many spend up to six months in Spain every year, like snowbirds in Arizona and California, but the majority fly in on one or two week packages from home airports. We have never been to Benidorm in summer or at Christmas, but in November, January and February, the seaside promenade is full day and night with strollers. Our personal promenade stroller calculation - about 40% are from the British Isles, 40% are Spanish and the rest are from Holland, Germany, France, Belgium, Canada, USA, Asia, North Africa…you name it. The majority are retired but there are also families, young couples, yuppies, wannabe’s and people with dogs. Now here’s the interesting part: the retired Spanish dress exactly the same as they did when we were here thirteen years ago. The majority of aging Spanish ladies are dark haired, short and solidly rectangular. They wear reasonably sensible shoes, nylons, straight skirts, blouses and sweaters. The majority of the men are also short but not as solid. They wear dress pants and nice shirts and almost always have a sweater tied neatly around their shoulders. For some reason their hair shows a lot more grey than their female companions. Aging Spanish women seem to wear a lot of black, but this year more than ever we notice lots of red too – shoes, jackets and purses. If you pass an elderly Spanish lady on the promenade and she doesn’t have a scarf tied around her neck, then someone just lifted it because scarves are definitely the defining factor. A huge percentage of retired Spanish are smokers, and they love to dine late and dance even later. They also enjoy a glass of brandy with their morning coffee, or their afternoon coffee, or with their night coffee. When they are talking together in little groups in restaurants or in coffee shops, we understand almost nothing they say.

Now…moving right along…please do not confuse the aging Spanish with their children, young and old, because they are not like their parents. As in most countries, young people wear timely clothes, sometimes timely to the extreme and to the ridiculous extreme. Young Spanish women do not have short, dark hair; they have hair in all shapes, lengths and colors. They wear tight jeans, short skirts, short shorts and very high heels – just like females everywhere. They also wear scarves around their necks, large earrings, and many are absolutely beautiful. And the young men? RrrrWow! Enough said about them, winners of the World Cup are winners, period.

So now we get to the next interesting part. The other strolling majority on the promenade are from the UK and some of them are retirees who look young and robust. But they are with friends and relatives who are not. It is clearly visible how injured and/or disabled many of the British are as they roll up and down the streets on rented scooters (the four wheel kind), or lumber slowly along with canes, or walkers, or are pushed along in wheelchairs. Benidorm has done a good job of adapting itself to the handicapped, and there seem to be hundreds of them. The British Isles come in all shapes and sizes and many of the retirees are in good physical condition, but the majority seem to be largely out of shape, particularly the ladies, even young ladies. British men are an interesting study; for a lot of them the style seems to be ‘no hair’ at all, so young and old have fairly close shaved heads. Of course there are always exceptions, but British males are taller, broader, and thicker through the upper body than Spanish males, and they have muscular legs, wear muscle shirts that show off miles of tattoos, they hug their girls when they walk, and they laugh out loud - oh, I could go on and on - they wear sports shorts that hang down below their knees and big, expensive running shoes, and they seem to enjoy themselves totally while on vacation. I know it’s hard to believe but we have seen with our own eyes, Brits that wait until 9:00 or even 9:02 am before they start drinking beer. We realize now there really is a connection between Winston Churchill and the Proper British Bull Dog. But you know what? While we cannot speak for their behaviour at home, in Benidorm, this large and sparsely dressed portion of the population seem to be having fun all the time. Delightful, rowdy, good to know you, fun! They laugh and drink and smoke and party and sing and shout and have a first-rate time. Every evening they trickle into the pubs, nightclubs and discos and before you know it, every chair is occupied with high expectations and smoke that coils around thicker than a Manchester accent. They love British comedians, who are as common in Benidorm as whitecaps on the Med. These comedians (if you can understand them) can be outrageously, stomach twisting funny, but they border on lewd and vulgar, and claim emphatically that the British own Benidorm so the Spanish should just f*** off.

On many November nights in the Costa Blanca, after the sun has gone down, a bit of a wind pushes the damp air around the bay in a chilly circle. When that happens, Richard and Donna immediately run for sweaters and long pants. The Spanish run for sweaters, long pants and scarves. But what about the British? Well they’re still strolling along or sitting outside at pubs, wearing shorts, flip flops, ladies in string tee’s, men in muscle shirts, tattoos, bare skin, heads, legs and shoulders exposed, chatting and laughing, most of them enjoying a wee smoke with their wee pint. My God they are tough! We Canadians have no idea whatsoever about survival, and have a lot to learn about staying ‘warm’ from the inside out. One more thing, when they are talking together in little groups in pubs or in coffee shops, because of their diverse regional accents, we really understand very little of what they say.

And finally, a weighty but thoughtful conclusion - our own opinion, of course, nothing official. It is harsh but true that Spain subjugated and colonized most of the land in the Americas from Mexico south to Peru. There are a few exceptions of course, the biggest being Brazil, which is Portuguese. But after living in Mexico for almost three years - Mexico, with its Spanish language, architecture, devout Roman Catholic religion, inherited corruption and disturbing poverty - it is inconceivable and almost impossible for us to understand that the small, solid Spanish women, with or without scarves, who are strolling the Benidorm promenade today, descended from their mothers, who came from their mother’s mothers, and so on...all the way down to the very mothers who gave birth to the conquerors of millions of indigenous peoples in Mexico and Central and South America. In 1519, half a world away!

Conclusion Part II. And what about the British?