The Benidorm Bulletin — Issue 84 | 1 – 8 November 2026

From the Editor

For a lot of you, this is the time of year when Benidorm becomes a memory again. The tan has gone, the case is back in the loft, and the next trip is a date on a calendar some months off. I know the feeling. We have just booked ours: the 26th of December to the 2nd of January, which is Christmas and New Year, and which right now feels a very long way away.

So this issue starts with a small request about how to keep the place close until then. It also keeps a promise: three weeks ago a reader asked where her husband, a veteran, could mark Remembrance in Benidorm. Thanks to two of you, I can finally tell her, and you.

And for anyone lucky enough to be out there this week, the town is about to throw its own party. The Patronals start on Friday, and the full programme is in the Lead Story.

Not Back Until Next Year? You Can Still Be There Every Day

The Bulletin comes once a week. The rest of the week happens on Facebook, and it is better with you in it.

Every day there is a photograph from the town on our Facebook page: the sea off Levante on a grey English Tuesday, a price board, a street you walked down in the summer. In the Group, readers who are out there right now answer questions from readers who are not. It is the nearest thing I know to being there without the airport.

Three things would help, and none takes more than a minute:

And if you have a date, put it in your countdown. Watching the number drop is half the pleasure of a holiday, and it is free.

You Voted. Fancy Dress Thursday Wins, 19 to 6

The week before, a vote by reply drew one answer. Last week’s one-tap vote drew twenty-five. I asked which night gets your only costume, Halloween or the fancy dress day after the Patronals, and 19 of you chose the fancy dress day, against 6 for Halloween. The British in Benidorm have spoken, and they would rather dress up with 30,000 others than with a theme park.

The Adele contest went less well. Nobody judged either Adele, or any of the four Elvises, which I choose to read as tact. And Cheryl, reading her very first issue, wrote simply that she is really liking it. Welcome, Cheryl. You are in good company.

There is another one-tap vote in Hot Topic this week. It is about New Year.

Remembrance in Benidorm: Where and When

Chris replied to last week’s issue to say that last year’s service, with the Cenotaph shown live, was held at the 3 Amigos Armed Forces Club on Avenida de Madrid. The club itself has since confirmed this year’s arrangements on our Facebook page.

When the club wrote, it was finalising the details, so check its Facebook page, 3 Amigos Armed Forces Club Benidorm, for the time on the 11th. To the reader who asked: I hope the day goes as it should, and thank you to your husband. And thank you, Chris, and the club, for answering when I could not.

The Patronals: Six Days When Benidorm Throws a Party for Itself

The full programme is out. If you are there, the weekend is the part not to miss, and almost all of it is free.

Most of Benidorm’s year is put on for visitors. The Patronals, from Friday 6 to Wednesday 11 November, are the week the town puts on for itself, in honour of the Virgen del Sufragio, the image found intact in the ashes of a burnt boat in 1740, and of Sant Jaume. You are entirely welcome. Just do not expect anyone to explain it in English.

Friday 6th is the warm-up. The fiesta lights on Calle Martínez Alejos are switched on at six, and the fair by the bullring opens at seven, with cheaper rides on the opening day.

Saturday 7th is the day. At noon the church bells start the fiesta and the sky over the Old Town fills with a daytime firework barrage. At five o’clock on Poniente beach, the finding of the Virgin is re-enacted: the scene Linda photographed from a hotel roof last year, a boat on the sand and a crowd all round it. At half past six a pilgrimage walks up from the Poniente end to the church of Sant Jaume i Santa Anna with the flower offering, followed by the opening speech and fireworks. Then, at eleven, the free concerts begin: Manu Núñez at l’Hort de Colón and the Gran Orquesta La Flama in the Plaça dels Reis d’Espanya, with the fire-runners of the correfocs out after them. Stand well back from the correfocs. That is the point of them.

Sunday 8th starts at eight with a bang, the despertà, and free hot chocolate at nine. The first mascletà is at two on Avenida de Foietes, and the solemn procession of the Virgin is at half past seven in the evening. After it, Superlaser at ten and Funambulista at half past eleven, both in the Plaça dels Reis.

☀️ What’s On This Week

The fiesta’s cultural fortnight carries on until the Patronals arrive on Friday. The What’s On page has the month, 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 4th. 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: the Patronals carry on to Wednesday the 11th, with a mascletà every day at two on Avenida de Foietes, a night mascletà on Tuesday, the Parade of Humour on Tuesday at seven, and the float parade from Parque de Elche on Wednesday at six, ending in the final fireworks. Then the fancy dress day, which you have just voted the better night. All of it is on the festivals guide.

🎭 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. This week, though, the best night out on Saturday and Sunday is free and in the street: the Patronals concerts in the Lead Story.

On the strip, Sunday has a Liam Gallagher tribute who appears to be playing the Western Saloon early, the Morgan Tavern mid-evening and the Western Saloon again late, which is a busier Sunday than most of us manage. On Monday, Out of Control are at the Morgan Tavern, and Reggae Man and Carnaby Street keep Jail Rock free of tributes for anyone who wants a night off from impersonations.

Start times for the strip 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 — Early November

The wet weekend has done its worst. When we checked AEMET on Friday, Sunday was dry, and the days after it settled into the low twenties, with nights falling to 14 or 15°C by the middle of the week. Proper November, in other words: shirt-sleeves at lunch, a jacket after dark.

What to pack: a jacket for the procession on Sunday evening, which is late and outdoors, and comfortable shoes for standing. The forecast beyond Wednesday was less settled, so look again before the weekend.

❓ You Asked…

Q: We’re renting in the Old Town over Christmas. Where can we book Christmas Day lunch, ideally a roast?

This is one I cannot answer from our own pages, and I would rather say so than guess. Plenty of places will be open; what I cannot tell you yet is which of them are taking bookings for a proper Christmas dinner this year, or what they are charging.

So, over to you. If you have had Christmas lunch in Benidorm, especially in or near the Old Town, reply and tell me where, whether it was a roast, and whether you would book it again. I will check what comes in against the places’ own 2026 menus and print the best of it before December. We will be arriving on Boxing Day ourselves, so I have a personal interest in the leftovers.

🔥 Hot Topic

New Year Is Better in Benidorm. Fight Me.

New Year’s Eve at home is the most overrated night of the British year. It is cold, the taxis cost a fortune and cannot be found anyway, and the whole thing hangs on whether you can stay awake through Jools Holland.

In Spain you are handed twelve grapes, one for each chime of midnight, and you try to eat them all before the bells stop. You will fail, and so will everyone round you, and it is the best start to a year I know. You can do it in a coat rather than a parka, a short walk from your bed.

The case for home is a real one: the family, your own bed, and the people you would rather see the year in with than any stranger with a mouthful of grapes. So vote. One tap, and I will print the result next week.

💡 Tip of the Week

The Mascletà Has Moved, and It Is Loud

A mascletà is not a firework display. It is a few minutes of rhythmic explosions in daylight, felt in the chest as much as heard, and Valencians judge it the way the rest of us judge a band. This year the Patronals’ mascletàs are on Avenida de Foietes, moved from their usual spot because of the work on the underground car park on Avenida Jaime I. They go off at two o’clock every day from Sunday the 8th to Wednesday the 11th, with a night one on Tuesday at eleven.

Three things. Arrive twenty minutes early, because the good spots go. Keep your mouth slightly open, which is the old Valencian advice for the pressure on your ears. And if you have small children or a dog, watch from much further back than you think you need to.

🤔 Did You Know?

Benidorm’s fiesta has its own Remembrance, and it falls in the middle of the party. On the Tuesday of the Patronals, the 10th this year, between a morning of fairground rides and an evening of fancy-dress floats, there is a requiem mass at half past ten for the town’s dead.

Afterwards a laurel wreath is laid at the monument to those lost at sea, and the fiesta’s people go on to visit the town’s cemeteries. For a place that lived from fishing and the tuna nets for most of its history, the sea’s dead were never an abstraction.

So the day before Armistice Day, two traditions will be remembering in the same town, a few streets apart, in two languages. Then, at two o’clock, the mascletà goes off, and everyone gets on with being alive.

Community Noticeboard

⭐ When are you next back? Tell the Group. I have said the 26th of December.

⭐ New Year: Benidorm or home? One tap, in Hot Topic.

⭐ Had Christmas lunch in Benidorm? Reply and tell me where.

⭐ At the Patronals? Post your photographs in the Group, and reply with them for the website. No close-ups of children, please.

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

This week: how to stay in Benidorm from your sofa, a vote won by fancy dress, Remembrance answered, and the town’s own fiesta from the first bell. Next week: the rest of the Patronals, your New Year vote, and, I hope, somewhere to book Christmas lunch.

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