Benidorm, The War of the Bikini

“It was not only in Farol that brusque changes were taking place…they were happening at a breakneck pace all over Spain. Roads, radio, the telephone and now the arrival of tourists… were putting an end to the Spain of old.  And for those who wanted to see it as it had been, there was not a moment to be lost.”      Norman Lewis – ‘Voices of the Old Sea’

If Pedro Zaragoza Orts is remembered for the Beni-York skyscraper he is even more famous for the so called ‘War of the Bikini’.  In the later years of the 1950s the icon of holiday liberty was rapidly becoming the saucy two piece swimsuit but in staunchly religious Spain, still held in the firm two-handed grip of church and state, this scanty garment was seen as a threat to the very foundation of Catholic society.

According to the official version the swimsuit, that was a little more than a provocative brassiere front with a tiny g-string back, was invented by a French engineer called Louis Réard and the fashion designer Jacques Heim.  It was allegedly named after Bikini Atoll, the site of nuclear weapon tests on the reasoning that the burst of excitement it would cause on the beach or at the lido would be like a nuclear explosion.  Plenty of fallout and very hot!

And it certainly had this effect in Spain and although occasionally allowable on the sandy beaches, it had to be covered up in all other areas; on the promenades and in the plazas and in the shops and the bars and cafés for fear of causing any offence.  In one famous incident, a British tourist, sitting in a bar opposite a beach wearing only a bikini, was told by a Guardia Civil officer that she wasn’t allowed to wear it there.  After an argument she hit him, and her strike for social justice cost her a hefty fine of forty thousand pesetas.

Zaragoza needed tourists and tourists wanted the bikini and with more pasty-skinned northern European tourists arriving each year in search of an all over suntan the Mayor knew that the banning of the two piece swimsuit simply couldn’t be sustained or allowed to threaten his ambitious plans for development.

Zaragoza took a gamble and signed a municipal order which permitted the wearing of the bikini in public areas and in this single act he effectively jump started the Spanish tourist industry.  Zaragoza said: “People had to feel free to be able to wear what they wanted, within reason, if it helped them to enjoy themselves as they would come back and tell their friends about the place.”  In deeply religious Catholic Spain not everyone was so understanding or welcoming of the bikini however and in retaliation the Archbishop of Valencia began the excommunication process against him.

This may not seem such an especially big issue now but to get a better perspective it is important to contextualise it in terms of the time.  Spain was in the grip of an ultra-conservative dictatorship and the beaches at Benidorm were still managed in theory according to a decree of 1907 that had segregated the them into specific zones for men and women and where people could only bathe if, in the words of the decree, they were ‘decently dressed’.

Excommunication was a very serious matter in 1959 and his political supporters began to abandon him so one day, the story goes, he got up early and drove for nine hours on a little Vespa scooter to Madrid to lobby Franco himself.  The Generalissimo was suitably impressed with his determination and gave him his support, Zaragoza returned to Benidorm and the Church backed down and the approval of the bikini became a defining moment in the history of modern Spain ultimately changing the course of Spanish tourism and causing a social revolution in an austere country groaning under the yoke of the National Catholic regime.  Zaragoza went on to become Franco’s Director of Tourism and a Parliamentary Deputy.

Not many people would have described Franco as a liberalising social reformer  but not long after this lots of women on holiday in Benidorm dispensed with the bikini bra altogether and brazenly sunbathed topless and Benidorm postcards had pictures of semi-dressed ladies on them to prove it.

One thing I am certain of is that this wouldn’t have made a great deal of difference to my Nan because I am not sure that she ever possessed a swimming costume, never mind a two-piece!  She was a bit old-fashioned and the human body in the naked form was only permitted behind closed doors with the curtains closed and preferably after dark.  If she ever went in the sea I imagine it would have been in one of those Victorian one piece bathing costumes of the previous century.  Grandad too wasn’t one for showing bits of his body normally kept under his bus conductor’s dark blue uniform and didn’t even concede to a pair of shorts, preferring instead to wear his colonial style slacks even during the day.  When he came home his impressive suntan stopped at the line of his open neck shirt and his rolled up sleeves.

For people who had never been abroad before Benidorm must have been an exciting place in the early 1960s.  Palm fringed boulevards, Sangria by the jug full and, unrestrained by optics, generous measures of whiskey and gin, rum and vodka.  Eating outside at a pavement café and ordering drinks and not paying for them until leaving and scattering unfamiliar coins on the table as a tip for the waiter.  There was permanent sunshine, a delightful warm sea and unfamiliar food, although actually I seem to doubt that they would be introduced to traditional Spanish food on these holidays because to be fair anything remotely ethnic may have come as shock because like most English people they weren’t really ready for tortilla and gazpacho, tapas or paella.  They certainly didn’t return home to experiment with any new Iberian gastronomic ideas and I suspect they probably kept as close as they could to food they were familiar with.

Benidorm is a fascinating place, often unfairly maligned or sneered at but my grandparents liked it and I have been there myself in 1977 for a fortnight’s holiday and then again on a day trip in 2008 just out of curiosity.  It has grown into a mature and unique high rise resort with blue flag beaches and an ambition to achieve UNESCO World Heritage Status and I hope it achieves it.

Spain 2011, The Plaza Mayor and Flamenco

We were staying at the Hotel Retiro del Maestre, a renovated old Spanish nobleman’s house on a street leading to the main square and we found it easily and left the car in the underground car park.  It was a friendly family run hotel with spacious and comfortable public rooms, a large outside terrace basking in the pleasant sun and was a nice room for us with a view over the garden.

It was late afternoon by this time and with the sun beginning to dip we didn’t linger long but made our way quickly to the Plaza Mayor to find a bar.  On the way we passed by the equestrian statue of the Conquistador Diego de Almagro and then entered the rectangular Plaza.

At a hundred metres long and forty metres wide and flanked on both sides by arcades of Tuscan columns supporting overhead galleries all painted a uniform shade of green and fully glazed in a central European style this place is truly unique in Spain.  These galleries were originally open and used as grandstands for public events, religious festivals and even bullfights that were held here until 1785, when they were finally banned by King Carlos III.

We choose a table on the sunny side of the Plaza, ordered beer and wine and just sat and watched the activity while we nibbled the inevitable olives.  The bar owner shooed away some small boys playing football, telling them to play elsewhere and families began to arrive and the bar quickly filled up with chattering customers.  Walking around the square was a proud grandmother pushing a young baby in an immaculate pram which matched her pristine outfit and she completed at least a dozen circuits, stopping frequently to chat and to show off the small child to anyone who showed the slightest interest.

The Plaza Mayor is the most important part of a Spanish town or city and I really cannot think of an equivalent in the United Kingdom where we have public squares but use them in an entirely different way.  This is the place where people meet, relax and enjoy themselves; it is generally flanked with shops and restaurants and usually has the town hall and the main church somewhere close by.  When we arrive somewhere new it is usually the first place we make for because sitting with a glass of wine and a complimentary tapas it is the best place to be to get a feeling for the town and its people.

In the search for real Spain  in the past three years we have visited and enjoyed dozens of Plaza Mayors; Madrid, the largest, Salamanca, the second largest, Toledo, next to its towering cathedral and the tiled Plaza de España in Seville.  We liked them all and we began now to compile a list with a view to choosing our top five favourites.  We considered Ávila, Mérida and Valladolid, Cáceres and Santiago de Compostella in Galicia but after a lively debate weighing up the pros and cons and putting forward the case for each one in turn we finally agreed on the top five but could not reach consensus on the actual order.

So this is our list: Segovia in Castilla y Leon because of the Cathedral and the architecture and the little streets running away from it like spokes from a wheel,Trujillo, where we had been only today, because of its unspoilt medieval charm, the unpretentious and functional Ciudad Rodrigo, Chinchón with its open balconies and bullfights and although we had only just arrived we liked this place so much that we both agreed to include Almagro in the list.

    

After a second leisurely drink we paid up and left the square and strolled back to our hotel where we asked for some dining recommendations and the receptionist convinced us to go to her favourite just a couple of streets away so after we had rested and changed we took her advice and found the restaurant in a side street off the main square.

It was nice if not conventional and it had a modern menu with some new twists on traditional meals and I have to say that I wasn’t prepared for rare pork.  The sight of a pork chop oozing blood really wasn’t to my taste at all and because I have always thought that anything to do with a pig should be cooked right through it almost spoilt the evening for me as I worried about food poisoning and salmonella and trying to remember the exact location of the immodium tablets in the suitcase!

Although it wasn’t especially late when we finished the meal, we were tired after a long day that had started three hundred kilometres away in Mérida, taken us to Trujillo and then a three hour drive to Almagro and we were ready for bed.  We walked back through the Plaza Mayor that was lively in a subdued sort of way (if that makes sense) and then to the street to the hotel.

About half way along we heard Spanish guitars and the clack, clack of castanets and we wondered where it was coming from and then through the pavement level window of a cellar we could see a dancing class in full swing.  Some local people suggested that we should go inside and watch so we did just that and before the lesson ended we enjoyed fifteen minutes of genuine Spanish music played by a sort of flamenco skiffle group and a group of young people dancing in true Castillian style.

It was a great way to end the evening!

Spain 2011, The Dehesa of Extremadura and the Olive Groves of Castilla-La Mancha

The journey began well enough and we left Trujillo and started to drive south towards the N430, the main road from Mérida to Ciudad Real but after a few kilometres the satnav found us a shortcut.

There was nothing wrong with this at first but at the town of Campo Lugar, which seemed to be somewhere in the middle of nowhere the tarmac road abruptly stopped and became a pot holed pitted shale track that went on for about ten kilometres.  I was for turning back but Kim persuaded me to carry on and I conceded and drove with care as the road continued to deteriorate the further we went.  I had resolved not to fall out with the satnav lady this week but this part of the journey severely tested my promise to keep calm.  Eventually we came to a junction and a proper road and soon we were motoring towards our destination.

Through the east of Extremadura we passed through the oak tree plantations of the dehesa where the land is carefully cultivated and managed.  ‘Dehesa’ is the name given to the seemingly endless areas of farmland consisting of groves of low density, mature oak trees because of the poor quality of the soil. Around half of the land of Extremadura is taken up by these dehesas and the spaces between the trees are used to cultivate cereals and as pasture for grazing livestock.

The tree species is predominantly evergreen Holm, with Cork Oak grown on richer, more humid soils and at the base of the mountains.  Several grades of tree coverage occur with the most open and more easily cultivated holding up to fifteen oaks per hectare, intermediate covering has up to thirty oak trees per hectare and the densest plantings thirty to fifty trees per hectare.

This part of the journey was reminder of just how big Spain is as we motored for mile after mile without meeting any other traffic or without passing through towns or villages.  The road just kept grinding endlessly on in an easterly direction in a way that reminded me of the tortuous journey through Andalusia in a clapped out Ford Escort in 1986.  The road had no lay-bys, picnic areas or service stations and I was glad that I had topped up the tank earlier in the day as we had left Mérida.

Eventually we passed out of Extremadura and into Castilla-La Mancha and the landscape abruptly changed and what had been a long straight road before now began to twist and turn as we climbed and dropped through undulating hills, river valleys, past huge reservoirs and through vast olive groves.  The oak trees had gone now and there were olive trees as far as the eye could see.

This shouldn’t have been surprising because Spain is the world’s leading producer of olives and is by a long way the country with the highest number of olive trees (more than three hundred million), is nowadays the world’s leading olive and olive oil producer and exporter and  the world’s leading producer of table olives, which explains why cafés and bars are always so generous with a plate of olives to accompany every drink.

Of the two million hectares of olive groves in Spain, 92% are dedicated to olive oil production. The average annual production varies due to the cyclical nature of the harvest, but typically runs between 600,000 and 1,000,000 metric tons, less than a quarter of which is exported.

Olives are gathered from late November to the end of March, depending on the area and the year’s weather.  Harvesting is a painstaking task and is done by hand, or with a stick to shake the fruit onto tarpaulins arranged around the tree (it is sometimes done with a mechanical tree shaker, though this can damage a tree).  Looking at all of those trees that process must provide plenty of work at harvest time!

By late afternoon the journey was becoming tedious and tiring as we counted down the kilometres to Ciudad Real and Almagro just beyond as we passed through fields of grain decorated with drifts of blood-red black-eyed poppies and more and more villages as we approached the city.  We didn’t stop in Ciudad Real, which was a bit rude, because we were keen to get to our destination and once past the minor traffic hold up in the city we relaxed and enjoyed the last few motoring minutes as we approached our destination.

Spain, El Escorial

El Escorial was bigger than I imagined it would be and when we arrived we had to drive around for a while looking for a car park until we eventually found one quite close to the Monastery.  It was early afternoon and everyone was quite hungry so instead of going immediately to the Palace we looked for somewhere to eat instead.  We found a little café bar with a terrace overlooking the Royal residence and sat outside and ordered beer and snacks and sat for a while and enjoyed the pleasant sunshine.

The Palace at El Escorial was built by King Philip II, who, reacting to the Protestant Reformation sweeping through Europe during the sixteenth century, devoted much of his lengthy forty-two reign and much of his seemingly inexhaustible supply of New World gold to stemming the Protestant tide.  He ran his Spanish seaborne Empire, which stretched from the Netherlands and southern Italy to North Africa, Latin America and the Philippines from his headquarters at El Escorial which was designed as a monument to celebrate Spain’s role as a centre of the Catholic Christian world.

Since then, El Escorial has been the burial site for most of the Bourbon and Hapsburg Spanish kings of the last five centuries and the Royal Pantheon contains the tombs of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V (who ruled Spain as King Charles I), Philip II, Philip III, Philip IV, Charles II, Louis I, Charles III, Charles IV, Ferdinand VII, Isabella II, Alfonso XII, and Alfonso XIII.  In 1984, UNESCO declared The Royal Site of San Lorenzo of El Escorial a World Heritage Site.

Each new trip to Spain includes visits to World Heritage Sites so when I counted them up I was interested to discover that out of the forty-three sites on the UNESCO list (second only to Italy with forty-seven) I have now been to twenty and that is nearly half of them.

In 2005 I went to Barcelona in Catalonia and saw the works of Antoni Gaudi, Palau de la Música Catalana and the Hospital de Sant Pau. Then in 2008 I saw the Historic Centre of Cordoba, the Caves of Altamira in Cantabria, the Old Town and Cathedral of Santiago de Compostella  and the Alcázar and Archivo de Indias in Seville.  In 2009 in the motoring holiday around Castilian cities it was the Old Town of Segovia and its Roman Aqueduct, the Walled Town of Cuenca, the Historic City of  Toledo and the Old Town of Ávila.  A year later in 2011 I added Cáceres, Mérida and Aranjuez and also Trujillo which for the time being is only on the tentative list.

Even before I knew anything about World Heritage Sites it turns out that I have visited two more in the days of my beach type holidays, although when I went to these places neither of them were yet on the list.  In 1988 I holidayed on the island of Ibiza which was accepted onto the list in 1999 in recognition of its biodiversity and culture and in the following year I went to Tenerife and took a cable car ride to the top of Mount Tiede, a national park that was accepted to the list in 2007.  I have also visited Benidorm but for some reason that hasn’t yet made the list.

Even though they weren’t World Heritage Sites at the time I visited them I am still going to count them but the final two might be a bit dubious but anyway here goes.  In 1984 while driving back through Spain from Portugal I drove with friends through the city of Burgos which was accepted in that year because of its Cathedral, and in Galicia in 2008 while visiting Santiago de Compostela I managed to drive over parts of the Pilgrim Route, which exists on the list separately from the old city itself.

After our late lunch we made our way to the complex of El Escorial which has been described as ‘the oppressive monument of the first totalitarian state in Europe’ and ‘the mausoleum of Spanish power’ and although the expansive courtyard was bathed in afternoon sunshine the grey building did indeed appear cold, vast and imposing and it was easy to see how this dull monolithic exterior came to represent Castilian military virility and the expression of religious might and it certainly wasn’t as handsome as the other Royal Palaces that we have visited at San Ildefonso, Madrid and Arunjuez.

It was too late to visit the interior so we made do with a walk around the outside and a peek into the precisely manicured gardens at the rear.  It wasn’t too busy today but on the way out a Spanish man began a conversation with us in perfect English but with a distinctly Teutonic accent.  He told us he was a solicitor and originally from Bilbao so I suppose that makes him a Basque rather than a Spaniard but he told us he lived in El Escorial now and he gave us some sightseeing suggestions for our short stay.

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More posts about Royal Palaces:

Spain 2009 – Arunjuez

Palace Real Alcázar, Seville

San Ildefonso o La Granja

Palace of Versailles

Peterhof Palace, Saint-Petersburg

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Spain, The Search Continues

‘Spain is Spain…and in being Spanish consists its originality, its raciness, its novelty, its idiosyncracy’.                                                                                                 Richard Ford

Since early 2009, as part of our own Grand Tour of Europe, we have been drawn time and again  to the Iberian Peninsula in search of the real Spain and in November we returned once more, flying to Madrid and planning a short three night stay in the city of Ávila about one hundred kilometres north west of the capital city.

Spain was not, generally, part of the traditional European Grand Tour and until the twentieth century only caught the attention of the braver or more rugged of travellers and writers.  For many it was too primitive, too mountainous and just too dangerous, prone to violent upheavals, inhospitable weather and without acceptable restaurants or decent amenities. ‘To travel in Spain you need three francs a day and a gun’ said one Frenchman who accompanied Alexander Dumas on a mid nineteenth century trip to the peninsular.  For the sons and daughters of the English Aristocracy Spain did not have the sophisticated allure of France, the Renaissance treasures of Italy or even the ancient charm of Greece and very few people ever considered crossing the Pyrenees into a land perceived to be full of fanatical Jesuit priests and lurid tales of bandits and cut-throats.

What a pity because, as I have now discovered over the past two years, they were passing up on the opportunities of marvelling at Baroque Seville, the Hanging Houses of Cuenca, the walled fortresses of Ávila and Ciudad Rodrigo, the historic cities of Toledo and Salamanca, the numerous Royal Palaces that surround Madrid and the rich heritage of Roman and Moorish Spain with the largest remaining Roman aqueduct at Segovia and what was once the second largest Mosque in the World at Cordoba.

  

Right up until the 1950s Spain was considered to be a place for the courageous because it was different and mysterious with a hostile geography, haughty aristocratic grandees and destitute peasants, Romany gypsies and blood thirsty customs.  In his account of living in Andalusia in the 1930, Gerald Brenan talks often about highway robbers (South of Granada).  Travellers and visitors were often inclined not to regard it as part of Europe at all and it was often considered, on account of its Moorish heritage, dark skinned people and unfamiliar customs, as part of Africa or of the east.  The Spanish themselves understood this perception of their peninsular and in the 1960s “Spain is different“ used to be the slogan of Spain’s international tourism campaign.

Sadly, even today, for many, Spain means only a fortnight’s karaoke holiday spread out on the golden sands of the Costas with a bottle of sun cream and a jug of sangria without any real attempt to understand the geography, the history or the culture of the country.  But for those with imagination and an appetite for an experience of real Spain then the airports of Valladolid, Seville, Santander and Madrid are the places to begin a quest to find the Spain of the shrines, the Spain of the Knights-errant, the Spain of the Mosques, castles and mighty cathedrals as well as the Spain of the real castanet clicking flamenco dancers, Spanish guitars and matadors and bull fights as opposed to the ersatz versions of the holiday resorts.

The Easyjet plane flew over the Spanish coast at Santander and we could see the snow capped Picos de Europa Mountains soaring majestically through the low cloud which then immediately closed in and smothered northern Spain and Castilla y Leon completely.  The land was completely obscured from view breaking only over the peaks of the Sierra Guadarrama and briefly revealing mountain towns and villages, rivers and shimmering blue reservoirs.  A few minutes later around mid morning we landed in a misty Madrid where the temperature was struggling to reach double figures and after the formalities of border control went straight to the Sixt car rental desk.

   

Since my complaint about Sixt and winter tyre charges in Germany earlier in the year I have been in regular correspondence with the Company Customer Services Manager for the UK and this led to the issue of a Sixt platinum account which gives me certain privileges such as discounted prices, speedy pick up service and on this occasion an upgrade from a Volkswagen to a BMW and we were delighted when we took possession of a shiny white 1 series, left the airport and pointed it in the direction of the mountains and the sunshine.

Andalusia, The Castillo de Almodóvar

It was a glorious morning and although it was slightly chilly there wasn’t a cloud to be seen in the perfect blue sky and we interpreted this as a really promising sign and dressed appropriately in summer linens and short-sleeved shirts.

Together with a lot of local people we had a traditional breakfast at the Goya and this made a nice change from the usual hotel buffet arrangement that we usually have.  It was a simple affair with a choice of toasted bread drizzled with olive oil and a thin tomato puree and topped off with thin slices of cured ham or alternatively, for those who didn’t care for the ham, toast and marmalade made from finest Seville oranges.

After breakfast we prepared for a drive to the city of Córdoba about a hundred and twenty kilometres to the east along the River Guadalquivir.  Córdoba is a moderately sized place today but once it was the largest Roman city in Spain and later became the thriving capital of the Caliphate of Córdoba that once governed almost all of the Iberian Peninsula.  It has been estimated that in the tenth century it was the largest city in Western Europe and, perhaps, in the world with up to half a million inhabitants.

We didn’t take the direct motorway route because we thought the alternative may be more scenic and anyway we were worried about paying unnecessary road tolls.  This proved to be unnecessary on both counts because it wasn’t especially picturesque and there weren’t any tolls either.  First we drove to the town of Lora Del Rio along a road that took us through an agricultural landscape with fields all freshly ploughed and waiting for next years grain crops.  Although the highest mountains on the Spanish mainland are in Andalusia most of the Province, which stretches from the deserts of Almeria in the east to the Portuguese border in the west is a flat plain in the valley of the Guadalquivir, which at six hundred and fifty-seven kilometers is the fifth longest river in Spain and is one of the country’s most important because it irrigates a fertile valley, and creates a rich agricultural area.

Lora del Rio was an unexceptional working town and there was nothing to stop for so we continued along the road through the similar towns of Palma del Rio and Posadas.  On our left, to the north, was the Sierra Morena mountain range that separates Andalusia from the central plain of Castilla-La Mancha and there were some worrying accumulations of cloud that looked a little to close for comfort.  Eventually we came to Almodóvar del Rio where a large castle was perched strategically on the top of a hill and this looked well worth stopping for.

The Castillo de Almodóvar is a grandiose Caliphal fortress erected on a high mound along the Guadalquivir.  Square towers flank its towering walls and the entire castle is surrounded by a large moat.  During the years of occupation it was a Moorish stronghold and after the reconquest it became the medieval home for members of the Spanish nobility.  It gradually fell into disrepair and much of it was plundered for convenient building material by the people of the town but the Count of Torralba rebuilt it a hundred years ago restoring the external appearance of the original Arab fortification.

At its elevated position there was a spectacular view of the plains to the south and the mountains to the north and although the sun was shining it was getting cold and the clouds were getting closer.  We visited the castle in the company of a children’s school outing who were enjoying an interactive history lesson which must have been highly entertaining judging by all of the laughter and giggles.  It was a good castle and well worth the €5 entrance fee and we climbed the towers and walked the ramparts and when we had seen all there was to see we left and continued the drive to Córdoba.

Segovia, an unexpected second day

We left the Alcázar gardens and followed the old city wall along its northern side where there were good views over the river valley below and a barren plain stretching away in infinity towards mountains in the north.  The city walls were not so impressive as those in Ávila however and eventually we left the old city through the Puerta de San Cebrián and followed a small road past the Santa Cruz monastery and the City’s bullring to the nearby village of San Lorenzo.  Here there was a splendid church in a main square lined on every side with medieval houses and little shops.  I imagine that this pretty little place becomes quite congested in the summer but today it was unhurried and charming and the local people paid no attention to us as they went about their business.

Leaving the village we returned to Segovia through a modern residential development and entered the City at the Plaza de la Artilleria, the bus station underneath the Aqueduct and from where we roamed leisurely through the streets past Romanesque churches and Renaissance palace residencies and older medieval buildings and eventually back to the Plaza Mayor where it was by now time for a beer and a tapas.

According to legend, the tapas tradition began when the King of Castille Alfonso the Wise visited a tavern in the town of Ventorillo del Chato in the province of Cádiz, and ordered a glass of sherry.  There was a gusty wind, so the innkeeper served him his glass of sherry covered by a slice of ham to prevent the sherry from getting dirty.  The King liked it, and when he asked for a second glass, he requested another tapa or ‘cover’ just like the first.  This evolved into the practice of using slices of bread or meat as a practical measure meant to prevent fruit flies from hovering over the drink. The meat used to cover the sherry was normally ham or chorizo, which are both very salty and activate thirst and because of this, bartenders and restaurant owners began creating a variety of snacks to serve with sherry, thus increasing their alcohol sales.

We sat in the gloriously sunny Plaza and watched the residents of Segovia as they met and socialised in the square, sitting on the chairs under what would soon be shady trees and just chatting away and enjoying each others company.  A group of old ladies walked several times around the central bandstand and groups of children on school visits began to arrive and congregate noisily as they waited expectantly for their walking tour of the city to begin.

We ordered a second drink that arrived with a second plate of tapas and we watched the children leave the square towards the fortress and having established which way they were going we finished our drink and walked in an alternative direction.  Kim was fascinated by the old door in the narrow side street running off the Plaza so we returned there for more arty photographs and then simply wasted the afternoon away as we walked through some familiar streets and then some different ones and then some familiar ones again as we continuously interrogated the map for places to visit and things to do that we hadn’t done already.

When we were through we returned again to the bar in the sunny part of the Plaza and reflected on the day.  It had been disappointing not to make the journey to Madrid because that was on the top of this week’s to do list but on reflection we had had a second good day in Segovia and the guidebook did seem to suggest that Madrid in a day was being a little bit optimistic so we agreed with the plan to return later in the year and we began to make outline plans for the trip because the search for real Spain will obviously have to include the capital city.

After we had rested and packed in anticipation of an early departure in the morning we waited until it went dark and then went to take some evening pictures of the Cathedral and then a day that had started with a disaster ended with one as well when the bargain €10 camera memory card that Kim had  bought twenty-four hours earlier suddenly refused to work and simply displayed a card error message that meant that a whole days pictures of tiled walls and medieval door furniture had disappeared into a photographic black hole.  This seemed to affect the full memory card as well and the camera refused to work at all that made us fear for the rest of the photographs from the previous six days.

We began to worry that the camera was jinxed following the battery disaster in Portugal, which meant no photographs there and now this.  We still had mine of course but nothing is quite the same as having your own picture memories for posterity.  It was a good job it wasn’t mine because I would have been inconsolable and even though this put a dampener on the final evening Kim was able to overcome her disappointment and we had a second good meal at the same restaurant as the previous evening before we returned and finished the packing ready for tomorrow.

post script: Disaster averted as I was able to revover the contents of the full camera card using the PC when we arrived back home – Phew!

Benidorm – The Anticipation

“By the end…it was clear that Spain’s spiritual and cultural isolation was at an end, overwhelmed by the great alien invasion from the North of money and freedoms.  Spain became the most visited tourist country in the World, and slowly, as the foreigners poured in, its identity was submerged, its life-style altered more in a single decade than in the previous century.”                      Norman Lewis, ‘Voices of the Old Sea’.

On a golfing holiday with my brother and our sons we all agreed that being only a hundred kilometres away was an excellent opportunity to visit the notorious city of Benidorm and see it for ourselves.

Actually I have to confess to having been to Benidorm before because I spent a fortnight there in 1977 at the Don Juan Hotel, which has been upgraded and renamed now but was somewhere along the Avenida del Mediterráneo at the back of the Levante beach.  Two weeks in Benidorm was a very long time as I remember so I was happy that this time it was going to be restricted to a couple of hours or so.

We set off early after breakfast on what started out in the best morning weather of the whole week and we travelled the sixty kilometres to Alicante under massive blue skies.  This part of the journey took a little longer than was strictly necessary because we were determined to by-pass the motorway tolls and early on in the trip we got snagged up in market day traffic in the nearby town of Saint Miguel.

Once safely past the tolls we picked up speed and motored effortlessly along the A7 Autopista del  Mediterráneo travelling north-east through what has to be said is not the best part of Spain in respect of scenery.  The land is flat and unattractive with hectares of dusty and barren scrubby land running down to the coast and disappearing into massive salt lakes that obviously aren’t terribly conducive to supporting fertile arable fields.

Around about Alicante as the  motorway sweeps past the city the landscape changes dramatically however almost as soon as soon as it passes from the Province of Murcia to the Province of Valencia and the scrub gives way to large dark grey deep fissured mountains that rise dramatically from the flat plains.  Sadly we discovered that there is a price to pay for better scenery and there was no way of avoiding a toll that suddenly appeared from nowhere and cost us €5.15 for the second leg of the journey.  We were annoyed about that but on reflection it was much easier than using the congested old coast road.

As we passed Villajoyosa on the coast and the one thousand four hundred metre high Puig Campana Mountain to the west we suddenly got our first view of Benidorm and the unique skyline formed by its numerous tall hotels and apartment buildings, which is quite unlike anything else on the Costa Blanca, to such an extent that it is sometimes referred to as the ‘Manhattan of Spain’ or ‘Beniyork’ and I have to confess to being struck by the first sight of Benidorm which was quite a surprise.  I didn’t remember it like this and one moment we were driving through brown barren hills when suddenly there it was looking like Kuala Lumpur or Monaco on the Costa Blanca with columns of concrete and glass all shining bright, reflecting madly and looking very impressive in the bright sunshine.

According to the official census Benidorm has a permanent population of sixty-five thousand inhabitants but the population grows by almost ten times to half a million in the summer.  It therefore needs a lot of hotel rooms to cater for all the additional people because it is one of the most important holiday resorts in all of Spain.  One million three hundred thousand holidaymakers annually visit Benidorm from Britain alone.

The city enjoys a unique geographical position on the east coast of Spain because it faces due south and has two stunningly beautiful beaches on the Mediterranean Sea that stretch for about four kilometres either side of the old town, on the east the Levante, or sunrise, and to the west the Poniente, the sunset, and it enjoys glorious sunshine all day long.

In 1954, the Mayor, Pedro Zaragoza Orts saw the potential of the place and created the Plan General de Ordenación, or city building plan to you and me, that ensured that every building would have an area of leisure land, guaranteeing a future free of the excesses of cramped construction seen in other areas of Spain and it is the only city in the country that still adheres to this rigid rule.  This vision for the future sparked the building boom that followed and the flying start that Benidorm achieved in the package tour boom of the 1960’s and 70s.

Until the tourist industry began in the 1960s, Benidorm was a small fishing village that had remained unchanged for hundreds of years.  In the early 1960s my grandparents visited Benidorm several times in the first days of package holidays and came home with exotic stories and suitcases full of unusual souvenirs, flamenco dancing girls, matador dolls and velour covered bulls that decorated their living room and collected dust for the next twenty years or so.  One thing for sure is that they would have found Benidorm a totally different place to what it is today.

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Other posts about Benidorm:

Benidorm c1960

Benidorm, Plan General de Ordinacion

Benidorm, The War of the Bikini

Benidorm 1977 – First impressions and the Hotel Don Juan

Benidorm 1977- Beaches, the Old Town and Peacock Island

Benidorm 1977 – Food Poisoning and Guadalest

Benidorm – The Anticipation

Benidorm – The Surprise

World Heritage Sites

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Benidorm 1977 – First Impressions and the Hotel Don Juan

“By the end…it was clear that Spain’s spiritual and cultural isolation was at an end, overwhelmed by the great alien invasion from the North of money and freedoms.  Spain became the most visited tourist country in the World, and slowly, as the foreigners poured in, its identity was submerged, its life-style altered more in a single decade than in the previous century.”                      Norman Lewis – ‘Voices of the Old Sea‘.

In 1976 I travelled to Europe for the first time to Sorrento in Italy with my dad who obligingly stepped in at the last moment following a bit of romantic trouble when just before departure my girlfriend went off with the head reporter from the local newspaper (Rugby Advertiser).  Very soon after that we patched things up and in October the following year I went to Spain with my (now) fiancée, Linda.

We could have gone practically anywhere we liked, so long as it was within our restricted budget of course, but we choose to go to Benidorm on the Costa Blanca for two whole weeks and we selected the Don Juan hotel on the Avenida del Mediterráneo, just behind the Levante beach because Linda had been there some time before with her parents and had liked it.

Benidorm is one of the most popular tourist locations in Europe, today six million people go there each year on holiday but in 1977 it was even more popular and that year attracted the most holidaymakers ever and over twelve million people poured into the city.  That peak in numbers has never been matched since and it is unlikely that it ever will be.  In the early 1960s my grandparents visited Benidorm several times in the Freddy Laker days of package holidays and came home with exotic stories and suitcases full of unusual souvenirs, flamenco dancing girls, matador dolls and velour covered bulls that decorated their living room and collected dust for the next twenty years or so.

The name Costa Blanca was allegedly conceived as a promotional name by British European Airways when it first launched its air service between London and Valencia in 1957 at the start of the package holiday boom.  At that time the cost of the fare was £38.80p which may not sound a lot now but to put that into some sort of perspective in 1960 my dad took a job at a salary of £815 a year so that fare would have been about two and a half weeks wages!  The average UK weekly wage today is £450 so on that basis a flight to Spain at British European Airline prices would now be £1,100.  Thank goodness then for Ryanair because I flew to Seville last year for just £30 return which represents just about three hours work today in comparison with what of been about a hundred hours in 1960.

It was a very foggy morning the day we flew from Luton Airport in Bedfordshire (made famous by Lorraine Chase in the 1970s Campari television adverts)  on Monarch Airlines which was in the days before low cost airlines when flying still felt exclusive and glamorous.  The pilots were all ex RAF and called Toby or Edward and the air hostesses were tall and elegant, wore smart uniforms and looked like catwalk models.  The seats were comfortable with generous leg space and there was a free meal thrown in.  These were in the days before terrorist threats so children used to get to go and visit the captain and crew in the cockpit and for adults there was a drinks trolley at below UK prices (today a cup of tea on Ryanair costs £3) and a genuine duty free service for spirits, tobacco and perfume.

As an experience flying has mostly deteriorated in quality since 1976 except in one important area where there has been massive improvement.  In 1976 passengers that smoked were still allowed to light up a cigarette on board which meant that because of the way aeroplanes recirculate air in the cabin everyone else had to as well.  To be fair they did all have to sit at the back of the aircraft, a bit like Dante’s Inferno, and puff away together but after a couple of hours there was a horrible acrid odour of stale tobacco and the entire cabin smelt like an unemptied ash tray.  Actually it wasn’t just cigarettes but pipes and cigars as well and even the cigarette smokers complained about this.  Pipes and cigars were banned in 1979 but a ban on cigarettes had to wait for another ten years.  As there has been no smoking now on planes for twenty years I am always curious why arm rests still have ash trays in them because the only purpose they serve now is a place for ignorant people to stick their discarded chewing gum.

The flight lasted a little over two hours and then we landed at Alicante airport about sixty kilometres from Benidorm and as this was in a time before Spain’s modern motorway network the coach took the old coast road north through a string of small towns and villages.  Just past Villajoyosa on the coast and the one thousand four hundred metre high Puig Campana Mountain to the west  we snatched our first glimpses of Benidorm out of the right hand side windows of the coach and we could see a ribbon of golden sand at the fringe of the magnificent bay and behind it a strip of concrete skyscrapers towering into the blue sky above.

Once in Benidorm we went through the tedious process of dropping people off at their hotels and as the Don Juan was at the far end of the eastern Levante beach we had to wait quite a while to arrive there.  Thirty years or so later the Don Juan isn’t there anymore and I might be mistaken here but it might now be the refurbished Helios Hotel.  It certainly looks similar and it is just about the right location.  If I am correct it is only two hundred metres from the Hotel Los Pelicarnos on the Calle Girona, which is famous for being the setting of the TV comedy show, Benidorm.

The Don Juan was a typical 1970s Spanish seaside resort hotel with a cavernous reception and public area, a dining room that was little more than a school canteen and an entertainment room for evening activity.  The hotel was an eight storey concrete and chrome building and we had a room on the front about half way to the top with a good view out to sea.  In the 1970s rooms could only be described as functional because these were the days before mini-bars, TVs, internet wifi access and complimentary cosmetics in the bathroom but it was nice enough and it was going to be our home for two weeks.

Later that day we had our first evening meal at the Don Juan and it has to be said that this was by no stretch of the imagination a gourmet experience.  The menu was limited and consisted mostly of the sort of food that British holidaymakers, unfamiliar with Spanish cuisine, would have insisted upon in 1977, beef burgers or chicken, chips and overcooked vegetables with everything, and for sweet it was crème caramel or ice cream and it was the same choice for the whole of the fortnight.  One thing was certain – it was unlikely that we would be introduced to traditional Spanish food on this holiday.  To be fair however anything ethnic may have come as shock because like most English people I wasn’t ready for tortilla and gazpacho and although I am now rather partial to tapas and paella I had certainly never been introduced to these Iberian gastronomic delights in 1977.

If the twelve million visitors to Benidorm came in equal numbers each week, which of course they didn’t, then there would have been nearly a quarter of a million visitors to entertain every night and after dinner we walked to the old town, which even in October was bursting at the seams with visitors wandering around the bars getting lashed and the shops buying things they didn’t really need.  In 1977 most of Spain was still shaking off the restrictions of the old Franco regime, in June there had been the first elections to the national Parliament since 1936, but Benidorm was way ahead of the rest of the country.

It was loud, brash and noisy and so was the hotel when we returned later on.  There was entertainment on the ground floor and even though we were at least four floors up the noise from the disco could be heard all the way up to our room.  The booming of the bass kept us awake and so did the loud German couple sitting on the balcony of the room next door who were having a conversation with someone in Hamburg without a telephone!  Sleeping has never really been a problem for me and I eventually managed to drop off but sometime in the early hours of the morning I woke up and found Linda on the balcony tired and sobbing and desperately in need of sleep.  I think that it was at this point that I wondered just how we were going to survive fourteen nights in Benidorm!

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Other posts about Benidorm:

Benidorm c1960

Benidorm, Plan General de Ordinacion

Benidorm, The War of the Bikini

Benidorm 1977 – First impressions and the Hotel Don Juan

Benidorm 1977- Beaches, the Old Town and Peacock Island

Benidorm 1977 – Food Poisoning and Guadalest

Benidorm – The Anticipation

Benidorm – The Surprise

World Heritage Sites

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Thanks to http://www.realbenidorm.net/ for the use of the postcard image

St James and Santiago de Compostela

Sir Walter Raleigh wrote:

Give me my scallop shell of quiet;
My staff of faith to walk upon;
My scrip of joy, immortal diet;
My bottle of salvation;
My gown of glory (hope’s true gage);
And then I’ll take my pilgrimage.

Santiago de Compostela is the capital of the autonomous region of Galicia and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  It is located in the most northwest region of Spain in the Province of A Coruña and it was the European City of Culture for the year 2000.  I didn’t know this but after Jerusalem and Rome it is the third most holy city in Chrisendom and the cathedral is the destination today, as it has been thoughout history, of the important 9^th  century medieval pilgrimage route, the Way of St. James.  Santiago is such an important pilgrimage destination because it is considered the burial site of the apostle, James the Great (Santiago means saint James) and legend holds that St. James’s remains were carried by boat from Jerusalem to northern Spain where they were buried on the site of what is now the city.

People continue to take the Pilgrim trail and there were many here today who could be identified by the pilgrim staff and the symbol of the scallop shell.   The shell is the traditional symbol of the pilgrimage because the grooves in the shell, which come together at a single point, represent the various routes that pilgrims travelled, all eventually arriving at a single destination.  It is also symbolic of the pilgrim because just as the waves of the ocean wash scallop shells up on the shores of Galicia, God’s hand also guides the pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela.

There was certainly no mistaking that this is a very holy city indeed and the route to the Cathedral was lined with churches, monasteries and seminaries and finally we emerged into the central square, the Praza de Obradoiro, where the Cathedral, which is depicted on Spanish eurocent coins, loomed high above in a most spectacular and impressive way.  Inside, the Cathedral is nearly a hundred metres long and over twenty metres high and is the largest Romanesque church in Spain as well as being one of the biggest in Europe.

We went inside and had an inquisitive look around but it was a approaching lunch time and so we declined to join the long queue of pilgrims and visitors who were waiting in line to visit the crypt and see the box that contains the bones and relics of St James and left by a side door that opened onto another remarkable courtyard that was surrounded by huge medieval buildings and magnificent statues.

We walked for a while through the ancient streets and through a quaint little green open space and then our thoughts turned to food so we returned to the city and went to the Restaurante de Buen Pulpo for a tapas lunch.  Disappointingly there were no sardines but we chose instead calamari, clams, Galician cod, tortilla and salad and some Estrella Galicia of course.   The food was reasonably priced and tasted divine and afterwards we left the little restaurant and continued to explore some more of the old city and after a couple of hours I felt confident enough to declare to myself that this one of the nicest places that I have ever visited.

Because of its Celtic roots Galicia doesn’t have sombreros or flamenco or even bull fighting and in a side street adjacent to the cathedral there was a man squeezing the life out of some bagpipes that sounded as though he was castrating an extremely uncooperative cat.  It was excruciatingly painful so we moved on and walked around the streets for a second time.  It is an interesting fact that Galicia has a culture, which is both unique and distinct from the rest of Spain, and the core of this difference is centred upon Galicia’s identity as a Celtic, rather than a Latin or Hispanic sub nation.  Galicia along with Andalusia, Catalonia and the Basque Country are acknowledged as independent historical nationalities under the Spanish Constitution and as a consequence enjoy special rights and privileges.

One of the really good things about Santiago de Compostella was that it felt like being in Spain and not like the little England of the south and east coast costas.  Galicia is a popular holiday choice with Spanish people living in the south and central cities of the country because they like to holiday in the north to escape the oppressive heat and enjoy Galicia’s famous seafood.  In August alone, eight million Spaniards travel north from cities like Madrid and Barcelona to the more temperate climate of Galicia with its green scenery and spectacular beaches.  The Galician climate though is changeable and the region is often referred to in Spain as the wet or rainy region.  Despite this, it is those in the south and central cities of Spain that flee to Galicia in July and August to enjoy the hot, but not oppressive, summer weather.  The local geography is also dramatically different from that of the central and southern regions with meadows, hills and mountains and is known affectionately in Iberia as green Spain.