The Benidorm Bulletin — Issue 74 | 23 – 30 August 2026

From the Editor

The heat has let go. After a week that touched the forties inland and left the flat warm at three in the morning, the forecast for the next seven days sits stubbornly around twenty-eight, with a couple of thundery afternoons in it. Everyone here will tell you it is a blip and that September has teeth. Everyone here is also sleeping better.

The town is winding towards the end of the season now. The last of the free summer concerts is on Saturday, the salsa lot take over the Bali from Thursday, and on Sunday morning three hundred people swim in from the island, which is the surest sign in the calendar that August is nearly done. Meanwhile two million people a week are watching somebody get murdered on our seafront, which is below.

And I have finally finished the thing I have been quietly building for a fortnight. It is free, it is for anyone with a holiday booked, and it is the first item below.

The Bar Is Made Up. Everything Round It Isn’t.

Two million people watched the opening night of Channel 5’s Benidorm Is Murder, and every location in it is somewhere you can walk to in an afternoon.

If you have been out of the country, or simply out of the house, you may have missed the fact that Benidorm is currently on television every Thursday night. Benidorm Is Murder started on Channel 5 on 30 July. John Hannah plays Dennis Crown, a burnt-out British detective who has packed the job in to run a bar on the front, and who is dragged straight back into it when tourists start turning up dead. Rosa, the barmaid, is played by Carolina Bécquer and is a true-crime obsessive, which is the engine of the thing. Ariadna Cabrol is the Spanish detective who has to put up with them both. Denise Welch, Tamzin Outhwaite and Alistair McGowan turn up along the way.

The numbers have been a story in themselves. The opener pulled a little over two million on the night, which for Channel 5 at nine o’clock is a very good evening indeed. Episode two then slid under a million, and the trade press wrote it up as a tumble. But on Thursday Broadcast reported the seven-day consolidated figures, which count everyone who watched it later in the week, and on those it stands as Channel 5’s second-best drama series debut of 2026. People are watching it. They are just watching it on Sunday afternoon with a cup of tea, which is exactly the right way to watch it.

Here is the part that matters to us. It was shot here, on location, in late 2025, and the locations are not disguised. Dennis’s bar, The Tavern, is the Torre Yago building on Avenida Filipinas, down at the Levante end. The murder in the first episode happens at the Hotel Primavera Park, the one with the curved balconies near the Parc de l’Aigüera. Episode two uses Benidorm Palace and the Hotel Don Pancho. Beyond that the series works its way round the Balcón del Mediterráneo, Levante beach, the cove at Mal Pas, the cross up on the Serra Gelada and the Intempo tower, which after all these years has finally found a job it is good at.

One honest warning before somebody wastes a morning. Episode three is not Benidorm. Parts of it were filmed in Gran Canaria, at Playa del Inglés, and there is a church in it that you will not find here however long you look. Television is like that.

My own view, for what it is worth. Benidorm has been on British screens for twenty years, and almost all of it has been the joke. This is the first time in a long while that a production has come here, spent money here, and used the place as a place: the light, the towers, the sea, the old town, all of it played straight. A retired copper in a bar is hardly high art. But it is being watched by two million people who are seeing this town look rather beautiful for an hour a week, and after two decades of the sunburn gag I will take it.

What this means for you:

• Episode five is on Channel 5 at 9pm this Thursday, 27 August. The last of the six is the Thursday after
• Everything you have missed is on catch-up, and the first four are best watched in one go on a wet afternoon
• The Balcón, Mal Pas cove and the cross on the Serra Gelada are all free, all walkable and all in the programme
• Do not go looking for the church from episode three. It is in the Canaries

I have mapped the whole lot on the website: all nine locations on the real coastline, what each one plays in the series, what it actually is, and the order to walk them in. It is free to read and there is nothing to sign up to.

☀️ What’s On This Week

The front half of the week is quiet, which after the fortnight we have just had is no bad thing. Then it all arrives at once from Thursday, and Sunday is the busiest day this town has had all summer: a swim, and a Grand Tour.

Also on: the water parks and the two Natura parks are running their full late-summer hours while the schools here are still off, and the strip’s own calendar barely notices what day it is. Sunday to Wednesday is the week to do the things that need a queue.

Coming Up: September, and with it the part of the year a lot of you actually prefer. The sea stays warm well into October, the sunbeds stop going at nine in the morning, and the prices come off the boil. If you have never come out of season, that is the month to try it.

🍺 Where to Wet Your Whistle

Three picks, and this week they run from breakfast to the seventeenth floor.

The breakfast: Caspers, on Calle Martinez Oriola in the Old Town, a few steps off the main pedestrian drag. Brian and Mark have been running it since 2004, which in a town where bars turn over every other season is close to geological. It does a full English, a vegetarian one with Quorn sausages, and — the reason it is worth writing down — a proper gluten-free version, along with gluten-free bread for the sandwiches and gluten-free cakes. If you or someone you travel with has spent years being handed a plate with the toast removed and told to get on with it, this is the address you have been after. Open Tuesday to Saturday from ten until eleven at night with food until nine, Sunday ten until three, closed Mondays. Fish and chips, a ploughman’s and a chilli con carne if you turn up later in the day. Caspers is also on your Bulletin Card, at ten per cent off the food.

The cheap one: La Sureña on Calle Tomás Ortuño, which is Spanish, loud, and about as far from a British bar as you can get whilst still being a five-minute walk from one. The house trick is the cubo: five small bottles of beer brought to the table in a bucket of ice, to be shared and worked through. Order raciones with it — the menu is Andalusian, so fried fish, ham, croquettes, a Russian salad — and there are two-for-one nights on a Thursday. Regulars report jugs of beer and of tinto de verano at around €1.50, though prices move and I have not stood at the bar with a notebook this month, so treat that as the shape of it rather than a promise. It gets rammed in August and the table service creaks when it does. Go early or go late.

The cocktail: Selvático, on the seventeenth floor of the Primavera Park Hotel on Calle Primavera — yes, that hotel, the one where the body turns up in episode one. In the daytime the rooftop and its infinity pool belong to the hotel’s guests, but at night it opens to everyone, and the view runs from the sea across the skyline to the Puig Campana. The cocktails are made properly rather than poured, which is rarer here than it should be, and there is a resident DJ. Expect to pay somewhere in the low teens in euros for one, which is Benidorm’s going rate for a rooftop and about a third of what the same drink costs above a British city.

🎭 Tonight’s Entertainment

I do not put the Palace in here often, on the grounds that everybody already knows about it and there is usually something more interesting to tell you about. This week there is a reason. The steps Dennis sits on in episode two are the steps of Benidorm Palace, so a fair few of you will have watched it on Thursday and thought about going.

So, the practical version, taken off their own site rather than a ticket reseller. The current production is Trivium. They run Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays only. Doors at eight, dinner served at half past, and the detail that catches people out: if you are not in your seat by quarter past nine you lose the meal. The show itself starts at ten, and a quarter past ten on Saturdays. It is €40 for the show and a drink, from €60 with the dinner, and there is a version with a backstage tour if you want to see how the frocks work. Avenida Doctor Severo Ochoa, up behind the Rincón, so it is a taxi rather than a stroll.

Elsewhere, the filed listings for the first half of the week are thin but decent. Monday is a Harry Styles show at the Tropical Bar. Tuesday is the pick of them: Neil Diamond at Philippines 10 and She’s Pink at Sinatra’s. Wednesday, This is The Greatest Show at Philippines 10.

After Wednesday the calendars simply stop, which every year means the opposite of what it looks like: the last weekend of August is the busiest the strip gets, and the venues are far too busy to type it up. If you want to know what is on this Friday, do not look it up. Ask whoever is pulling your first pint of the evening. They will know, and they will be right.

☀️ Weather Watch — Late August 2026

A genuine change, and a welcome one. Last week the province was under a heat warning with inland figures around 42°C; this week the models have Benidorm sitting between 27 and 29°C every single day, with overnight lows easing back into the middle twenties. There is a thundery risk on Monday and again on Wednesday, the sort that builds over the mountains in the afternoon, empties itself in half an hour and leaves the evening washed clean. Friday through Sunday looks clear, which is convenient for everything that is on.

What to pack: the same as always, plus one thing with sleeves. Twenty-eight degrees and cloud on a rooftop at eleven at night is not the same as thirty-four and still, and the first person to shiver on the terrace at Selvático is always the one who said they wouldn’t need a cardigan. If you are here for the storms, note that an August downpour on the coast can put an inch of water across a pavement in minutes; nobody has ever regretted having something on their feet other than flip-flops. The sea is still around 27°C and will not notice the weather at all.

❓ You Asked…

Q: Has the heat broken for good? I’m coming out in three weeks.

No, and I would not want it to on your behalf. What has happened is that the block of hot air sitting over the peninsula has shifted, so the coast drops back to something like its proper late-August average for a week. Mid-September here is typically high twenties by day and pleasantly warm in the evening, with a sea that has been storing heat since May and stays swimmable well into October. The one thing September does bring is the gota fría season, when a cold pocket aloft meets that warm sea and produces a great deal of rain in a very short time. It is usually a day, not a fortnight. Pack a light jacket, book somewhere with a covered terrace, and stop reading fourteen-day forecasts, which are astrology with a logo.

Q: Can I still get in the island swim on the 30th?

Possibly not, and I would check today rather than tomorrow. Entries opened at nine in the morning on 3 August through Chip Levante, they are capped at 300 and taken in strict order of application, and a race this well known in a town this full does not usually have places sitting about three weeks later. If you get one: over-18s only, a marker buoy is compulsory for every swimmer, numbers go out at the port between 7:00 and 7:30, the start is 8:15 from the island jetty and the cut-off is two hours for the 3.6 kilometres. If you do not get one, go and watch. The quayside at seven on the last Sunday in August is one of the better free mornings this town offers.

🔥 Hot Topic

The Town Is Full and the Shops Are Empty

Here is a puzzle the traders have been chewing over all summer. Benidorm’s hotels have been running around ninety per cent full since June. The pavements are as busy as they have ever been. And the independent shops say their takings have fallen by somewhere between five and twelve per cent on last year, according to AICO, the association that speaks for them.

The explanation is not a mystery, it is just uncomfortable. When holidaymakers are asked where the money goes, roughly a third say the hotel, just under a quarter say food and drink, about a sixth say activities, and shopping comes in at eight per cent. Eight. The family that fills a hotel in August is spending its money on the water park, the paella and the evening out, and it is buying almost nothing to carry home.

Meanwhile, something rather interesting is happening two streets away. The tattoo studios are reportedly running past midnight in high season, because a piece that costs seventy pounds or more in Britain comes in at around fifty euros here, and bigger work at roughly half. The souvenir that Brits are taking home from Benidorm in 2026 is not a fridge magnet, a sombrero or a novelty T-shirt. It is a palm tree on a shoulder blade with the year underneath. One customer, apparently, asked for the outline of the Valencian Community with the coat of arms inside it, which is a level of commitment the tourist board could not buy.

So my sympathy for the shops is real but not unlimited. Nobody has stopped spending. They have stopped buying things that sit in a drawer, and started buying things that happen to them. A rack of the same printed towels that was on that rack in 2011 is not competing with the internet, it is competing with an afternoon at Terra Mítica and a decent dinner, and it is losing on merit. The businesses on this street doing well are the ones selling an hour of your holiday rather than an object: the rental places, the excursion desks, the bars with something on, the studios. That is not a downturn. That is a change in what a holiday is for, and it happened years ago.

💡 Tip of the Week

What to Do If You’re Taken Ill Here

Not the cheeriest tip I have ever written, but it is the one I get asked about most, and nobody ever looks it up until they need it. Here it is in the order you would actually want it.

For anything genuinely serious, ring 112. It is free from any phone, it works across Europe, and the operators speak English. For the ordinary holiday complaints — an infected ear, a chest that has gone wrong, a cut that needs looking at — the pharmacy is the first stop and is far more use than a British chemist. Spanish pharmacists are trained to assess and advise, they will tell you plainly when you need a doctor, and there is a duty pharmacy open through the night in every town. After that, the centro de salud is the state health centre and takes same-day urgent appointments in working hours.

Take your GHIC with you, physically, in your wallet. It gets you state healthcare on the same terms as a Spanish resident, and it is free to apply for — if a website is charging you for one, it is not the official site. Check the expiry date before you fly, because they run five years and a lot of people are carrying an old blue EHIC that quietly ran out.

And the part people get wrong: the GHIC is not travel insurance and does not pretend to be. It will not fly you home in a medical seat, it will not cover a private clinic, and it will not do a thing about a cancelled flight or a missing case. Being flown back to Britain with a nurse is the bill that ruins people, and it is the one thing the card explicitly does not touch. Buy the insurance. It costs less than one night in this town.

🤔 Did You Know?

Benidorm is about to plant four hundred trees. The council announced it on Friday: more than €100,000, contracts going for approval in the next few days, and the planting itself in the last quarter of the year, spread across streets, squares, gardens and the ground around the schools. The stated purpose is to break up the heat island, the effect by which a town of concrete and tarmac holds onto the day’s heat and hands it back at three in the morning. Anyone who has lain awake in a flat off Calle Gerona in August has met the heat island personally.

The species are the interesting part: white mulberry, tipuana and chinaberry, all picked for one quality, which is the width of the shade they throw. And the reason there are gaps to fill is less cheerful. The council says the new trees are going where old ones have been lost to disease, or to vandalism. A town that has spent seventy years building upwards is now spending a hundred thousand euros to put shade back at street level, and losing some of it to people who kick trees over on the way home.

Community Noticeboard

⭐ Put your countdown on your phone tonight — it takes about ninety seconds, it is free, and it will still be counting for you at Christmas.

⭐ Tell me what the countdown gets wrong — it is brand new, and the packing list is the bit I most want picking apart. Reply and tell me what is missing from it.

⭐ Two or three names, that’s all — if you know somebody who runs a business here, forward them this email or reply with their name. Thank you to everyone who did last week.

⭐ Nominate a bar — reader tip-offs have produced the two best picks this section has run all year. If you have found one, send it over and I will credit you by name.

⭐ Join the chat — our Facebook group is the friendliest corner of Benidorm online. Come and say hello.

A countdown that lives on your phone, a murder mystery filmed on our own seafront, four hundred trees going in where the shade used to be, and a Sunday that starts with three hundred people swimming home from the island and ends with the Vuelta going up Aitana. Next week: September, quietly and with some relief.

Thanks for reading. Pass it on to anyone with Benidorm on their mind — and if they have a date booked, send them the countdown. It is the best thing I have made all year.

Until next time — keep the sun on your face and the sangria cold. ☀️

— The Benidorm Bulletin Team