The Benidorm Bulletin — Issue 80 | 4 – 11 October 2026

From the Editor

October is the month people talk themselves out of. The summer crowds have gone home, the nights are drawing in, and a lot of people assume the town has quietly put itself away for the winter. It has not. It starts this week with two public holidays four days apart, and the town’s own calendar barely pauses between now and November.

That is the lead: what shuts, what stays open, and how to find a chemist when yours has its shutter down. The bar picks this week are chosen by the days they say they open, which turned out to be harder to find than it should be. Terra Mítica has answered the Halloween question for us, the Spanish phrase is the one you will need on the Thursday night, and Hot Topic is about plain-clothes police on the beach.

And if you have a photograph of Altea, Calpe, Guadalest or Villajoyosa on your phone, last week’s ask still stands. Reply and attach it.

Two Bank Holidays in Four Days

Friday 9 and Monday 12 October are both public holidays. They are not the same kind of holiday, and they do not shut the same things.

Friday 9 October is the Valencian region’s own day, the Día de la Comunitat Valenciana. Monday 12 October is Spain’s: officially the Fiesta Nacional de España, and listed on the council’s calendar as the Día de la Hispanidad. One is a regional holiday and one is national, and for anybody trying to buy milk the difference matters more than you would think.

Here is the part nobody tells you. From 1 July to 30 September, Benidorm counts as a tourist zone, and its shops can open on any Sunday or holiday they like. That freedom ended last Wednesday. For the rest of the autumn the bigger shops need the regional government’s permission to open on a holiday, and the regional government has given it for one of these days and not the other.

On Friday the 9th, the town’s own commerce rules name the day as one on which the summer freedom does not apply, and it is not on the region’s list of permitted opening days either. So expect the big supermarkets and larger shops to be shut. Small shops, under 300 square metres, can open whenever they please, which is why the little supermercado round the corner may well be trading as normal.

On Monday the 12th, the region does allow shops to open. That means they may, not that they must. The chains usually say what they are doing a week or so beforehand, and nothing had been announced when this went to press.

Bars and restaurants are a different matter. The opening rules are about shops, and a Spanish bank holiday is when half the country goes out for lunch. Expect the town busier, not quieter: the Friday gives everybody in the region a long weekend, and the Monday gives the rest of Spain one.

Both days, and everything else this month, are on the fiesta calendar.

☀️ What’s On This Week

The end of one fiesta, the start of another out in the countryside, a produce fair and the two holidays.

For the whole month, go to the What’s On page, which I keep up to date as the programmes come out rather than writing it once and leaving it.

And the markets, which the holidays miss. Foietes is Wednesday only, Rincón de Loix Wednesday and Sunday, and the Rastro at El Cisne Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. Nothing in Benidorm runs on a Friday or a Monday, so neither holiday touches them. Wednesday the 7th is business as usual. The details are on the market days page.

Coming Up: the Rocío Chico, Benidorm’s small version of the great Andalusian pilgrimage, from the 16th to the 18th; the flower offering to the Almudena on the 18th and her procession on the 25th; and the Día de les Penyes on Saturday the 24th, the town’s social clubs starting the run-up to November. The whole year is on the festivals hub.

🍺 Where to Wet Your Whistle

I set out to find three Old Town bars I could promise would be open on the 9th and the 12th. I could not. None of them publishes bank-holiday hours, and I am not going to guess. So this week there are two, picked on the days each one says it opens, and a question for you.

For Friday the 9th: the Pig & Whistle, Calle del Pal 5, next door to Kaffe Klee. It has been pulling pints since 1971, and it opens from midday Wednesday to Sunday, until four in the morning on a Friday. There is live music most nights, though they do not publish the times; the regulars include Heartbreaker Live, Dalton, Essence of Elvis and Foxy Roxy. It is closed on Mondays, so it cannot help you on the 12th. Our review.

For Monday the 12th: NOVA Cocktail Bar, beside the church of Sant Jaume at the top of the Old Town. Our own page says it opens daily from midday to one in the morning, and also admits we looked the hours up rather than counted them, so take that as likely rather than certain. The espresso martini is the thing to order, and the card gets you two cocktails for €12 at any hour. The full review is here.

And the third one is yours. If you have ever found a bar open on a Spanish bank holiday and been glad of it, reply and tell me which. Next October’s issue will be better for it.

🎭 Tonight’s Entertainment

The listings sites had not filed a single act for October when this was written, so this week is built on the residencies: the bars that run the same pattern every week and tell you what it is. None of the four below names a closing day. On a long weekend, that is worth knowing.

All four are on every live-music venue in the Old Town, room by room and night by night.

Jolly Roger, Avenida Alcoy 13, opens at ten in the morning, and the acts start at eight in the evening and change every hour until one, or two on a Friday and Saturday. Tributes, mostly. Children are welcome until nine; after that it is adults only.

Heartbreak, next door at number 11, has music from half past one in the afternoon until nearly three in the morning. Monday to Thursday it breaks between about five and nine; Friday to Sunday it runs straight through. It is rock, and it is loud.

Daytona Rock, at number 15, has live music every day, with the first act at midday five days a week. Tuesday and Wednesday are the quiet ones: two acts only, and nothing before four.

Tiki Town, on the seafront, has live music most days from roughly one until three, which fills the gap before the rock bars on Avenida Alcoy get going. It is the one to pick if you want a band and the sea in the same view.

☀️ Weather Watch — October

The long-run averages for October are the same as last week’s, because it is the same month. What is worth adding is the rain. On the state forecaster’s figures for Alicante, September and October are the two wettest months of the year, and October’s 47 millimetres fall on only four or five days. When it rains here in autumn, it does not drizzle. It arrives all at once and then goes away again.

What to pack: summer clothes for the day, a proper layer for the evening, and something waterproof you will probably never unfold. Have a wet-day plan in your head before you need it, because on a bank holiday everybody else will be having the same idea at the same time.

❓ You Asked…

Q: Is Benidorm worth it for Halloween?

For grown-ups, this year, yes, and for a reason that did not exist a year ago. Terra Mítica has announced Halloween Horror Nights: four Saturday nights, the 3rd, 10th, 17th and 24th of October, from nine until midnight in the Iberia area of the park. Three walk-through passages, two immersive experiences, one “extreme” horror house, two shows and a DJ.

It is not for small children, and the park says so: nobody under 14 is admitted, and 14 and 15-year-olds need an adult with them. Tickets are sold on the park’s own website. The announcement did not give a price, so neither can I.

Halloween itself falls on a Saturday this year. Beyond the theme park, nobody had announced anything for the night when this went to press, and I am not going to describe a party that has not been advertised. The town’s own calendar is busy with something else entirely: that week belongs to the Almudena and the Día de les Penyes.

🔥 Hot Topic

Undercover Police for a Can of Beer?

On 18 September the council asked the Spanish government’s office in Alicante for permission to put plain-clothes police on the beaches. The target is the unlicensed sellers: the cold beer out of the cool bag, the massage on the sand. Jesús Carrobles, the councillor responsible for security, put it simply. A uniform can be seen coming from a long way off, and by the time the officers arrive, the seller has packed up and gone.

The figures, reported by TodoAlicante, are these. So far this year the police have issued 964 penalties for selling drinks and goods on the beach, up 7.6 per cent on last year, and 86 for massages and other unauthorised trading, down 60 per cent. The fines add up to about €315,000. A great many of the people fined declare they have nothing to pay it with.

I think the plan is a sledgehammer, and I do not think it will work. Nearly a thousand fines, a large share of them never collected, is not a deterrent. It is paperwork. Plain clothes would catch more sellers and collect roughly the same amount of money, and the man with the cool bag would be back the next morning, because the business does not depend on the police. It depends on us.

That is the uncomfortable bit. The sellers are there because people buy. A cold can brought to your sunbed in the middle of the afternoon, when the nearest bar is two hundred yards of hot sand away, is a service, however unlicensed, and plenty of perfectly law-abiding holidaymakers have handed over the money for one without a second thought. If the town wants the trade gone, it will have to persuade the customers, not just outwit the sellers.

So, honestly: have you ever bought one? Reply and tell me. I will not print your surname.

💡 Tip of the Week

What to Buy at the Fair That Will Survive the Flight Home

The Fira de Productes de la Terra is the best chance all year to buy something made here rather than something made for here. The trouble is getting it home. So, stall by stall, in the order of least trouble:

Baskets, ceramics and chocolate are the easy ones. Chocolate, biscuits and bread are on the UK government’s list of foods you can bring back freely. Ceramics only need wrapping, and a basket is a very good thing to carry the ceramics home in.

Mistela, the sweet local wine, is the one people get wrong at security. It is a liquid, a bottle of it is a great deal more than 100 millilitres, and unless you are certain your airport says otherwise, it goes in the hold bag, wrapped in a jumper, not in your hand luggage.

The cured meats and cheese are the ones to eat while you are here. Since April 2025, travellers have not been allowed to bring pork, beef, lamb or goat products, or dairy, from the EU into Great Britain for their own use, whatever the packaging, and as far as I can find that ban still stands. Check the government’s own page on bringing food into Great Britain before you pack a sausage. The fines are real, and so is the bin at the airport.

🤔 Did You Know?

The 9th of October is not an arbitrary date. On 9 October 1238, King Jaume I of Aragon rode into the city of Valencia, taking it from its Muslim rulers, and the region has marked the day ever since.

In Valencia itself they mark it with a handkerchief. On the same day, the feast of Sant Donís, a man traditionally gives the woman he loves a mocadorà: small marzipan fruits wrapped up in a silk handkerchief. The custom goes back to the eighteenth century, when marking the day was banned outright, and people took to celebrating it with sweets instead. I could not find any evidence that Benidorm keeps it, so treat it as a Valencia custom, not a local one.

Benidorm marks the day in its own way, with a formal council session, traditionally held up at the Castell. This year the town’s cultural distinction goes to Fanny Sarrió Martín, a restorer who has worked on church paintings and sculptures in the town, and on the heritage damaged in the floods of October 2024. It is a pleasing choice. In a town famous for building upwards as fast as it can, the prize this year goes to somebody whose job is keeping the old things standing.

Community Noticeboard

⭐ Were you at Moros y Cristianos? Reply with a photograph of the parade, not of anybody’s children close up, and it may go on the Moros y Cristianos page. First-name credit, or none if you prefer.

⭐ Been to Altea, Calpe, Guadalest or Villajoyosa? The day-trips page still has no photographs of any of them. The view, not your family, please.

⭐ Still counting down? Tap Share this near the bottom and post the picture in the group. Open your countdown.

⭐ Coming out with a wheelchair or a scooter? The accessible Benidorm page covers what works, what does not and what it costs.

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

This week: two bank holidays and what they shut, two bars that say they will be open, four rooms with music every day, a theme park that has answered the Halloween question, and a phrase for the night before. Next week: the Rocío Chico, and the start of the rice fortnight.

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