The Benidorm Bulletin — Issue 72 | 9 – 16 August 2026

From the Editor

On Wednesday evening the sun over Benidorm will go out. Not entirely, and I’ll be honest with you about that further down, but 99.5 per cent of it, at twenty-five to nine, low over the hills behind the town. Spain has not had an evening like this in a hundred and twenty-one years.

So this issue leads with it, and with the two things that will decide whether you actually see anything: where you stand, and what you put over your eyes.

There’s also something I’ve been building for the best part of a year, and it is finally live. The Benidorm Bulletin Card is open to you from today. It’s free, it’s yours because you’re on this list, and the first businesses have put their offers on it. That’s just below.

Wednesday Night, Benidorm Loses 99.5 Per Cent of the Sun

The eclipse arrives at 20:34 with the sun barely four degrees above the horizon, which makes where you stand the whole game.

Here are the numbers for Benidorm, and they are worth writing down. The moon starts to bite into the sun at 19:39. Maximum comes at 20:34, with 99.5 per cent of the disc covered. About three minutes after that the sun drops behind the hills and it is over. Look west‑northwest.

That last detail is the one that matters. At maximum the sun will be less than four degrees above the horizon, roughly the width of two fingers held at arm’s length. Anything in the way blocks it: a hotel block, a hill, a bank of low cloud. Levante and Poniente both face the wrong way for this, so a spot on the sand with a beer will not do it on its own. You want open ground with a clear view inland and to the west, or height.

Which brings us to the council’s ruling, and it has caught a lot of people out. Benidorm’s two best high viewpoints, the Tossal de la Cala and the Cruz up on Serra Gelada, are closed to vehicles on the day for everyone except residents, with local and national police handling the traffic. If the fire risk pushes the region to pre‑emergency level three, even walking up could be stopped. Serra Gelada has been shut on and off all summer for exactly that reason. So do not plan an evening that depends on driving to the top of anything.

And the eye protection is not optional, not even at 99.5 per cent. Benidorm is outside the path of totality, so there is no moment at which the sun is safe to look at with the naked eye, whatever it feels like. You need glasses marked ISO 12312‑2, in good condition, and you keep them on the entire time. Sunglasses, smoked glass, a phone screen and an exposed strip of film are all useless and one or two of them are dangerous.

What you should actually expect: the light going strange and metallic, the temperature dropping, the birds going quiet, and the sea turning a colour you will not have seen it turn before. It is not the black sky and the corona. It is still worth standing still for.

What this means for you:

• Wednesday 12 August: first contact 19:39, maximum 20:34, sun gone behind the hills around 20:37
• Face west‑northwest and get somewhere with nothing in the way. Height beats a beach
• No cars up the Tossal or to the Cruz, residents aside, and pedestrian access may go too
• ISO 12312‑2 glasses on the whole time. Buy them now, not from a bloke on the promenade on Wednesday

☀️ What’s On This Week

Wednesday is up top. Around it, the fullest week of the Benidorm year carries on regardless.

Saturday 15 August is also a national holiday, the Feast of the Assumption. Bars, restaurants and the tourist end of town will be busier than usual rather than quieter. Some independent shops will simply not open. More on that below.

Coming Up: the summer’s last Concerts al Castell on Wednesday 19 August, when a Beatles tribute closes the series at the lookout from half nine, free. Then the second and final beach cinema night at the Mal Pas on Friday 21 August, showing Campeonéx, also free, also around half nine. The first screening filled the little beach completely, so go early with something to sit on.

🍺 Where to Wet Your Whistle

Three picks, and this week they follow the eclipse west across town.

The pint: Uncle Ron’s on Calle Londres, up in the Rincón, and this one comes from Wee Mo, who reads this newsletter and got in touch to tell us about it. A euro a pint. Estrella Levante, properly poured, and a euro for a glass of wine as well, which is the part people tend to miss. It has become a bit of a pilgrimage since the videos went round, so it is not a secret, but the price has held through this summer and the kitchen does proper homemade food alongside some frankly alarming eating challenges. Two‑for‑one on spirits at weekends. As ever, prices are the bar’s to change, so read the board.

The cocktail: the Sky Bar on the 52nd floor of the Gran Hotel Bali, because if there is a week to drink something expensive at altitude, this is it. The Bali is the tallest hotel in Europe at 186 metres and the bar sits near the top of it. Capacity is limited and it is reservation only, open 21:30 to 00:30. Worth knowing separately: the hotel’s 43rd‑floor viewing platform is open to people who are not staying there, at €10 a head. Ring ahead about Wednesday, because everyone else in Benidorm has had the same thought.

The meal: Ulia, on the front line of Poniente on Avenida Vicente Llorca Alós, where they have been doing rice for more than forty years. Go for the arroz a banda or the seafood paella, ask for a table by the windows, and be aware that the reviews are genuinely mixed: when Ulia is on song the rice is as good as anything on that beach, and when it is rushed the service slips. Book, go early, and do not be in a hurry.

🎭 Tonight’s Entertainment

If this reaches you on Sunday, the boards are already up.

Tonight’s better bets are a ska and reggae night at The Royal Arrow, billed as The Dualers, and a Jersey Boys show at Sinatra’s, which is the sort of thing that room was built for. Greeny’s Cabaret Club has a Bon Jovi tribute, The Explorers Club is running a reggae night, and comedian Tony Scott is at Rockerfellas if you would rather laugh than sing along.

Into the week: a David Bowie tribute at Jail Rock on Wednesday, UB42 at The Royal Arrow the same night, and Rod Stewart opening the evening at the Morgan Tavern. Wednesday is eclipse night, so the sensible order is high ground first, strip afterwards. Everything on the front starts late enough that you will miss nothing.

And the Old Town’s own evening remains the smaller, cheaper, closer version of all this. The bars around the Plaça de la Constitució put their acts on a board outside and nobody publishes a schedule in advance, because they do not need to. Walk up after nine, read the boards, pick.

Before you head out: line‑ups change nightly across the whole resort. The board outside the venue and its own Facebook page are the final word, always.

☀️ Weather Watch — Mid August 2026

The middle third of August is the hottest stretch Benidorm gets, and this week runs true to it. Highs around 30 to 31°C, nights that barely bother dropping below 24°C, and the usual ten hours of sun a day.

What to pack: the usual light everything, plus one thing you would not normally think of. If you are going up anywhere on Wednesday evening for the eclipse, take water and take more of it than you think, because the walk up is in the last of the day’s heat and the paths have no shade. Sea temperature is around 26°C, which is bath‑warm and the best free cooling system in the resort.

❓ You Asked…

Q: What shuts on Saturday 15 August?

Less than you would fear. It is a national holiday, but it is one of the ones on which trading is allowed rather than banned, so the decision is each business’s own. In a resort in mid‑August the bars, restaurants, beach kiosks and tourist shops will be open and rammed. The big supermarkets usually open on a short day, often something like nine until two or three, and it varies by branch. Small independent shops and anything run by a family are the ones that quietly close. The practical advice: if you need a chemist, a bank or a supermarket shop, do it on the Friday.

Q: At 99.5 per cent, can I take the glasses off for a second at the peak?

No. This is the single most important line in this issue. Inside the path of totality, where the sun is 100 per cent covered, there is a brief window when it is safe to look, and that is what you see in the photographs of people with their glasses off. Benidorm is not in that path. That remaining half of one per cent is still direct sunlight and it will still burn your retina, and it does it painlessly, so you get no warning that anything is happening. Glasses on from 19:39 until it is behind the hills. Children especially.

🔥 Hot Topic

Should You Drive North for the Real Thing?

This is the argument going on in every bar in the resort this week, and it is a genuine one. Ninety‑nine and a half per cent sounds like a rounding error away from the whole thing. It is not. Totality is a different phenomenon altogether: the sky goes properly dark, the corona comes out, stars appear, and people who have seen it tend to go a bit strange when they describe it. At 99.5 per cent you get none of that. You get an odd, dimmed, silvery evening.

The nearest totality worth the drive is Valencia city, about an hour and a half up the A‑7 on a normal day, where the sun goes fully out at 20:32 for something in the order of a minute. So the honest answer to “is it better up there” is yes, considerably.

And yet I would stay put, and here is why. This eclipse happens at sunset with the sun almost on the horizon, which means everybody chasing it needs the same handful of west‑facing spots, on the same evening, in the middle of the biggest holiday week of the Spanish year. Every hotel room on that stretch went months ago. The roads north on Wednesday afternoon will be a car park and the roads south at ten at night will be worse. A minute of totality is a wonderful thing to have seen. It is a less wonderful thing to spend seven hours in traffic for, with three children, having gambled the lot on a cloud bank over Valencia.

There is also next year. On 2 August 2027 the south of Spain gets a total eclipse with well over six minutes of totality, which is nearly three times what Wednesday offers anyone. Plan that one properly, book it early, and enjoy Wednesday for what it is: a strange silver evening in Benidorm with the birds gone quiet. That is not a consolation prize.

💡 Tip of the Week

How to Tell a Real Pair of Eclipse Glasses from a Souvenir

There will be people selling eclipse glasses on the promenade this week and some of what they are selling will be tinted plastic. The test is straightforward. Genuine ones carry ISO 12312‑2 printed on the glasses, the packaging or the instructions. Put them on indoors and you should see essentially nothing, not a dim room. Point them at a bright household bulb and you should see only a faint disc. If you can make out the furniture, they are sunglasses.

Check them for scratches and pinholes before Wednesday, because a scratched filter is worse than none at all: it lets a bright point through while your pupil is wide open. If you cannot get hold of a proper pair, do it the primary‑school way. Pierce a small hole in a piece of card, stand with your back to the sun, and let it project the crescent onto a second sheet. It sounds feeble. It works, it is completely safe, and by twenty past eight it will have a small crowd round it.

🤔 Did You Know?

The last time mainland Spain saw a total solar eclipse on this scale was 30 August 1905, on a path across the north of the country not far off Wednesday’s. Benidorm then was a fishing village of a few thousand people with no hotels to speak of, half a century before the plan that built it upwards. Whoever stood on that shore in 1905 and watched the light go was looking at a completely different town.

And then, having waited a hundred and twenty‑one years, Spain gets three in a row: total again on 2 August 2027, and an annular one, the ring of fire, on 26 January 2028. The universe is not usually this obliging about scheduling.

Community Noticeboard

⭐ Thank you, Wee Mo — for the Uncle Ron’s tip‑off. If you have found something worth the walk, tell us and we will put it in front of everyone.

⭐ Get the card on your phone before you fly — open it once at home, add it to your home screen, and it will be waiting when you land.

⭐ Eclipse photographs — if you get a decent one on Wednesday, send it over. We will run the best of them on the Facebook page on Thursday.

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

A silver evening on Wednesday, a verbena at the castle on Saturday, and a card in your pocket that gets you a couple of quid off a round. Next week: how the eclipse actually looked from up here, the last Concerts al Castell, and the run‑up to the island swim.

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