The Benidorm Bulletin — Issue 83 | 25 October – 1 November 2026

From the Editor

Most of this issue was written by you, whether you meant it or not. Linda sent the boat burning, photographed from the roof of the H10 Porto Poniente. Kim sent a whole folder of fiesta pictures and then asked a question about faces that I suspect a lot of you have wondered about. Peter sent the church at the end of the Penyes’ flower offering. And a reader who self-caters asked where an older visitor can keep fit without bodybuilders for company. All of that is in here.

Then there was last week’s vote on the clocks, which drew exactly one answer. I am taking that as a design fault rather than a verdict, so this week there is a vote you can cast with one tap, no reply needed. It is in Hot Topic.

It is also Halloween week, Terra Mítica’s last weekend of the year, and the start of the run-up to Benidorm’s own fiesta. Plenty to do, and more than usual to tell me about afterwards.

The Clocks Vote Is In. It Is Unanimous.

Last week I argued that if Spain stops changing the clocks, it should keep summer time, and asked you to pick: lighter evenings or lighter mornings. One of you replied. Charlotte, who comes out from January to March, wrote:

So it is one vote to nil, a hundred per cent for summer time, and a turnout that would embarrass a parish council. Thank you, Charlotte. You have put it better than I did.

And the photographs keep coming. Linda watched last year’s boat burning from the rooftop pool of the H10 Porto Poniente, and her two pictures, taken from above, show the size of the crowd as well as the fire. Kim’s procession pictures and Peter’s San Jaume are filed alongside them for the Patronals page, which until this month had almost nothing of the town’s own week on it. If you have any of your own, any year, the address is the one you are reading this from. Just reply.

Halloween Weekend: Terra Mítica Stays Open Fourteen Hours, Then Shuts for the Winter

Saturday is the park’s longest day of the year, and Sunday its last until the spring. Here is how to spend the weekend, scared or otherwise.

On Saturday 31 October Terra Mítica opens at eleven in the morning and does not close until one the next morning. The park calls it its most frightening night. The rides run all day as normal, and from seven in the evening six live horror passages open, with a DJ and, in the park’s own word, surprises. On Sunday 1 November the Halloween season ends, and so, as far as the published dates go, does the park’s year. If you have been meaning to go, this is the weekend.

Down the road, Terra Natura has taken Halloween somewhere more interesting. Its programme runs until Sunday the 1st under the line El verdadero miedo: perderlos para siempre, “the real fear: losing them for ever”, and the monsters are the threats to endangered animals rather than men in masks. There are shows on Saturday and Sunday. It is the gentler choice for anyone with grandchildren in tow, and I rather admire a zoo that has worked out the scariest thing it can show you is an empty enclosure.

For the grown-ups, La Terrasse, on the 19th and 20th floors of the Hotel Port Benidorm, is holding a Halloween night on Saturday from half past seven: a cocktail-style dinner, a DJ and a live show, at €50 a head booked in advance, according to Life in Benidorm. That is the same rooftop that took the alcohol-free prize in last month’s cocktail competition. And on Sunday the Cable Ski at the Rincón end of Levante is offering, in its own words, one last scary lap: fancy dress on the water from midday to five, with a €10 barbecue.

On the strip, nobody files a Saturday line-up in advance, so I cannot tell you who is on. I can tell you it will be busy and that half of it will be dressed as something. Sunday the 1st is All Saints, a national holiday, but it falls on a Sunday this year and I can find no sign of the Valencian calendar moving it to the Monday. Expect an ordinary Monday.

☀️ What’s On This Week

While the visitors dress up, the town starts getting ready for its own fiesta. The Patronals’ cultural fortnight opens today with a concert, and most of what follows this week is free music in the Old Town.

The What’s On page has the whole of the next few weeks, and it is kept up to date as things are announced rather than written once and left. Every fiesta to the end of the year is on the fiesta calendar.

And the markets. Foietes is Wednesday only, so the 28th. Rincón de Loix is Wednesday and Sunday, and the Rastro at El Cisne Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. The market days page has the buses.

Coming Up: a documentary, El últim llaüt de Benidorm, about the town’s last traditional fishing boat, at the town hall on Tuesday 3 November at six; then the Patronals from 6 to 11 November, with the finding of the Virgin re-enacted on Poniente on Saturday the 7th at five. The fancy dress day follows the Patronals, as it has for more than thirty years. All of it is on the festivals guide, and the times go on What’s On as the council publishes them.

🎭 Tonight’s Entertainment

For the Old Town’s rooms and residencies, the live-music page is the bigger piece of work this section is drawn from; nobody else has it written down in English. On the strip this week the listings have thrown up three contests, and I need judges.

Sunday: Adele against Adele. Aisha Nicole is Adele at Rockerfellas, and Chloe is Adele at The Royal Arrow, on the same evening. If you miss them, they go again on Monday: Aisha Nicole at Philippines 10, Chloe late at The Royal Arrow.

Monday: count the Elvises. Max Fisher’s Elvis plays Rockerfellas and then Sinatras, Steve B’s is at The Royal Arrow, and Simon Patrick’s is at the Rock & Roll House. Four Elvises, one Monday, and the building has not left any of them.

Tuesday: Ed Sheeran versus George Ezra, which is the act’s own name for itself, at the Morgan Tavern and again at Philippines 10. And if you want none of it, Carnaby Street do mod, ska and indie at Jail Rock on Sunday and Monday, where nobody is pretending to be anybody.

Start times are left out because the listings get them wrong often enough that I do not trust them. Check the board outside, or the venue’s Facebook page, on the day.

☀️ Weather Watch — Late October

Last week’s coat can go back in the wardrobe. When we checked AEMET on Thursday, the week ahead had afternoons of 23 to 25°C, nights no colder than 16 to 19°C, and very little chance of rain on most days. That is warmer than late October usually manages, and a good deal warmer than Manchester.

What to pack: summer clothes for the day and one layer for the evening, which now falls at about a quarter past six. The forecast is a forecast and the weekend is a week away, so look again on Friday before you pack the costume.

Remembrance in Benidorm: What We Know Now

Last week a reader asked where her husband, a veteran, could mark Remembrance in Benidorm, and I promised an answer before the 8th. Here is half of one.

First, a correction. Last week I wrote that no date had been announced for the Poppy Appeal parade. By the time that reached you, the parade had already happened, on Saturday 17 October. A reader had written to tell me the day before, and he was right. The Royal British Legion’s Benidorm branch set off shortly before eleven from Avenida de Castellón, marched along the Levante front behind the Torrevieja Pipes and Drums, and held the ceremony in the gardens outside the Aula del Mar, the first time it has been there. The mayor, Toni Pérez, was there with the British defence attaché and the vice-consul from Alicante, and so was a 94-year-old Royal Navy veteran. There were three minutes’ silence and both national anthems. That is as reported by Euro Weekly News on the 19th.

For Sunday 8 November, still nothing. The nearest Remembrance Sunday service I can find in any published list is at St George’s in Madrid, which is no use to anyone on the Levante front.

Next Sunday’s issue is the last one before the 8th. If you know of a service, a wreath, or two minutes’ silence anywhere in Benidorm on the 8th or the 11th, even a bar that stops for it, reply by Thursday. I will check it and print it.

❓ You Asked…

Q: Is there somewhere older visitors can exercise? Not a bodybuilders’ gym. We’re self-catering, so not a hotel one.

Yes, and the best of it is free. The council’s own guide for older visitors lists exercise classes on the beach, gimnasia de mantenimiento, which is gentle keep-fit rather than anything with a whistle, running from the start of October to the end of May:

The guide does not say whether you can simply turn up, so it is worth asking the instructor on the first morning. Indoors, the Palau d’Esports runs aquagym, adult swimming and keep-fit in the mornings, and the same guide says enrolment is open to everyone, residents or not. Those are courses rather than drop-ins, so ask at the desk what a short stay can join.

And there are more than twenty free outdoor exercise parks, parques biosaludables, the low-impact kind with pedals and twisting plates rather than weights. Parque de Elche has one, and there are others on the Paseo de Tamarindos, in the Plaza de España and on Calle Ciudad Real in the Rincón. If you have tried any of these, the class or the parks, reply and tell the next reader what it was like.

Q: My fiesta photos have the faces of the young women in the procession in them. Can I still send them?

Kim asked this, very sensibly, before sending. Please do send them, and here are the rules I work to, so nobody else has to wonder.

A crowd at a distance goes up as it is. An adult whose face is close and clearly recognisable gets a soft blur over the face before the picture goes anywhere, and the costume, the float and the moment survive it. A close-up of a child is not used at all. The location data your phone hides inside every photograph is stripped out first, and the credit is your first name only. So send the lot, and let me do the worrying.

🔥 Hot Topic

Save the Costume for the Twelfth

Every year somebody grumbles that Halloween is an American import that has no business in Spain. In Benidorm that misses the point. The British here were dressing up in public long before anyone carved a pumpkin on the Levante front.

The fancy dress day, the day after the Patronals end, has run for more than thirty years. Last November the council counted more than 30,000 people in costume in the Rincón de Loix, with around fifteen floats. This year the local press expects more than 30,000 again and about twenty floats. On this year’s dates it falls on Thursday 12 November. That is not a costume party; it is the biggest British gathering of the Benidorm year.

So here is my position. Halloween night on the strip is fine. But it is the rehearsal. If you are coming out in November and you only have one costume in the case, save it for the Thursday after the Patronals, when the whole of the Rincón is in on the joke and the town has laid on the floats.

The case for Halloween is real, though. It is a week earlier, it has Terra Mítica, and if your flight home is on the 8th, the fancy dress day might as well be on the moon. So vote. One tap, no reply needed, and I will print the result next Sunday.

💡 Tip of the Week

Two of the Three Beach Libraries Close on Saturday

Benidorm runs three biblioplayas, free beach libraries with the day’s newspapers and a shelf of books you can borrow on the sand. Two of them, on the Paseo de Colón at Poniente and at La Cala, close for the winter after Saturday 31 October.

The one on Levante, where Avenida de Madrid meets Avenida Europa, stays open all winter, Tuesday to Sunday from 11 to 4, apart from a month off from mid-January to mid-February. So from November, if you want a paper with your coffee on the sand, it is Levante. That is the council’s guide again, and it is a better read than most of the paperbacks.

🤔 Did You Know?

Benidorm has a choir that anyone can join, and it rehearses on the beach. Tucked away near the end of the same council guide, after the shows and the dance halls, is a single sentence: an amateur choir meets every day on the Paseo de Colón and on Levante beach, and the public sing along to popular songs with it. On Poniente, opposite the Hotel Villa del Mar, there is a dance group as well.

That is all it says. No times, no name, no conductor, and no indication of which popular songs, which in Benidorm could mean anything from Valencian folk tunes to Sweet Caroline.

I would very much like to fill that gap, and I suspect one of you has walked straight into it. If you have sung with them, or danced on Poniente, reply and tell me when they meet and what they sing. It may be the only choir in Europe where the audience outnumbers the choir and nobody minds.

Community Noticeboard

⭐ Cast your vote. Halloween or Fancy Dress Thursday, one tap, in Hot Topic.

⭐ Remembrance on the 8th or the 11th? Reply by Thursday; it goes in next week.

⭐ In costume this weekend? Send a photograph of yourself in it. The best goes in next week.

⭐ Patronals photographs, any year. The boat, the processions, the flowers, the fireworks. Reply with them attached.

⭐ Still counting down? Open your countdown and share it in the Group.

⭐ Missed an issue? Every back issue is on the site, free to read, no sign-in.

This week: a unanimous vote of one, Terra Mítica’s longest day and its last, two Adeles and four Elvises, free keep-fit on the sand, and a beach choir I cannot find. Next week: your vote counted, your verdicts on the tributes, the best costume you send, and what you have told me about Remembrance.

Reply any time. I sometimes quote readers by first name in the Bulletin; just say if you would rather I did not.

Thanks for reading. Pass it on to anyone with Benidorm on their mind.

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

— The Benidorm Bulletin Team