The Benidorm Bulletin — Issue 81 | 11 – 18 October 2026

From the Editor

The big fiestas are over. The gunpowder has cleared from the seafront, the Moors and Christians have hung their costumes back up, and Benidorm has settled into the part of October that I would argue is the best value of the year: the sea still warm, the evenings still long enough, and the town’s kitchens about to show off.

That is the lead. From Friday, restaurants across town serve a fixed rice menu for ten days, and the Tip and the Spanish phrase this week are both about ordering it without looking like a beginner. On Sunday the town turns pink for the Anémona march. And the cocktail competition we sent you round in September has a winner, which is how goat’s cheese ended up in this week’s drinks section.

Something new, too. You have been writing to me, a lot of you, and some of what you write is better than anything I could put here. So from this week there is a corner of the Bulletin that is yours. It is directly below.

Readers Said

The best of your replies this fortnight. Hit reply any time; this is your corner.

Ten Days of Proper Rice

From Friday 16 to Sunday 25 October, restaurants across Benidorm serve a fixed rice menu built on what grows and swims nearby. Nobody has published the list yet, so here is how to make the most of it anyway.

This is the XV Jornadas de los Arroces de la Tierra, the rice fortnight, now in its fifteenth year and run by the council’s tourism department with ABRECA, the town’s hospitality association. Each restaurant that takes part writes its own menu, but the council’s rules say every one must include a starter tied to the local cooking, a rice main course, a pudding and a drink.

The rice comes in three styles, and knowing which is which is half the fun. Seco is dry: cooked thin in a wide, flat pan, which is the paella family. Meloso is creamy, a little looser, closer to a risotto. Caldoso is soupy, served in its own broth with a spoon. Each can be made with fish and seafood from the bay, with meat and sausage from the mountains behind the town, or with whatever the market gardens are producing this month: pumpkin, spinach and the small dried ñora peppers that turn up in half the region’s cooking.

Now the catch. When this went to press, the council had not published this year’s list of restaurants or the price. Last year 24 places took part, with menus from €25 (about £22) a head, and the list included several we have sent you to before, La Cava Aragonesa and Mal Pas among them. Do not assume this year’s line-up is the same. It usually comes out in the last few days before the start.

Why bother, when every seafront terrace already has a paella on the board? Because this is a set price that includes a drink, from kitchens that are competing with each other for a fortnight, in the quiet weeks after the summer crowds. And it runs into the following weekend, so if you are here at any point in the second half of the month, it is yours too.

☀️ What’s On This Week

One fiesta ends, another arrives from Andalusia, the theme park does its worst, and Sunday turns pink.

For the whole month, go to the What’s On page, and for every fiesta date to the end of the year, the fiesta calendar.

And the markets. Foietes is Wednesday only, so the 14th. 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 Almudena’s three nights of prayer from the 22nd to the 24th; the Día de les Penyes on Saturday the 24th; the Almudena procession on Sunday the 25th; and the clocks going back in the early hours of that same Sunday. The rice runs all week.

🍺 Where to Wet Your Whistle

In September we sent you round the cocktail competition: one price everywhere, a QR code on the table, your vote in the draw. The judges have now spoken, and so have you. One correction first. The council said eight bars were taking part and then listed nine, and I printed both numbers as a joke. The local press now says six actually competed, so it was neither.

The winner: Camarote Club, Avenida del Mediterráneo 13, in the middle of town rather than the Old Town. The drink is the Puig d’Amaltea, by the bartender Gonzalo Nicolás Marsicano, and it is rum, vermouth made with olive oil, goat’s cheese and citrus honey, finished with Marcona almond, rosemary and a pinch of salt. Goat’s cheese in a cocktail sounds like a dare. But Amaltea, in the Greek myths, is the goat that fed the infant Zeus, and a puig is a hill in Valencian, so whoever named it knew exactly what they were doing. Nobody has said whether it stays on the list now the competition is over, so ask.

If you are not drinking: La Terrasse, at Port Hotels, won the best alcohol-free cocktail with the Free Port & Sky, by Javier Casabona. Alcohol-free cocktails tend to be an afterthought. This one beat the others in a competition, which makes it worth trying.

And the one you picked. The public vote went to the Selva Verde Sour at Ku Lounge Café on the Levante promenade, made by Daniela Rúa. We recommended Ku in September, and you agreed with us, which is always gratifying.

🎭 Tonight’s Entertainment

The listings sites have the first three nights of the week filed and nothing after Wednesday, which is normal: the venues type it up when they are quiet. What is on them is mostly tributes. So this week, the handful of rooms on those three nights doing something else.

The Dualers, billed as a ska duo, are at The Royal Arrow on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. If you only have one night, this is the one to plan round.

Reggae Night at The Explorers Club on Sunday, and Reggae Man, classic reggae and ska, at Jail Rock on Tuesday. Jail Rock is the one room on the strip that does mod, ska and northern soul rather than the charts, and it does not pretend otherwise.

Leroy Smokes, a soul singer, at Philippines 10 on Sunday and Tuesday, in between that room’s tribute acts.

Mick the Flute, flute and vocals, at the Western Saloon on Monday. It is the early one, which suits anybody who would like to be in bed before the tributes have finished.

I have not printed the start times, 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. Every Old Town room is on the live-music page.

☀️ Weather Watch — Mid-October

The figure to notice this fortnight is the sea. On the long-run averages the night falls to about 15°C, while the water is still around 22°C, which means that by evening the Mediterranean is warmer than the air above it. The afternoons are still mid-twenties. If you have only ever swum here in June, the sea in October will surprise you.

What to pack: the swimming things you were going to leave at home, a proper layer for after dark, and a towel you do not mind getting sandy at six in the evening, because that is when the sea is at its best.

❓ You Asked…

Q: Can you recommend a clean, modern apartment for four? And where on your Facebook can I ask other people?

Three of you asked a version of this in the space of a week, so it gets an answer for everybody. The honest one first: I will not recommend an apartment I cannot vouch for, and nobody can vouch for an apartment they have only seen in photographs. A bad recommendation for a bar costs you a drink. A bad recommendation for an apartment costs you a week.

Which is exactly why the second half of the question is the right one. Our Facebook Page is where we post, and readers can comment there but cannot start a conversation of their own. The Group is the place for that: post your dates, how many of you there are, and what matters to you, and the people who have actually stayed somewhere will tell you. Join the Group here.

And if you have stayed somewhere you would happily go back to, reply and tell me where. If enough of you name the same place, that is a recommendation worth printing.

🔥 Hot Topic

Scooters on the Pavement: More Signs, or a Ban?

At the end of September the council put up new signs banning electric scooters from the pedestrian streets, and sent more police patrols to the spots with the most complaints. The figures it gave, reported by Ahora Marina Baixa, are these. More than 1,100 scooter fines so far this year: 251 for riding without insurance, 149 for helmets, 132 for riding on pavements and in pedestrian areas, 49 for carrying a passenger and 38 for wearing headphones. Jesús Carrobles, the councillor for public safety, said pavement riding is one of the most common offences and probably the one that people complain about most.

Since 1 October it has also been compulsory across Spain for every e-scooter rider to wear a helmet, with a €200 fine for not doing so. One thing worth saying clearly, because readers ask: none of this applies to mobility scooters, which are not counted as the same kind of vehicle.

My view is that signs will not do it. One hundred and thirty-two fines in nine months for riding where you should be walking is not enforcement, it is a raffle, and the Old Town’s lanes are too narrow to share at fifteen miles an hour with anybody, signs or no signs. If the council means it, the hire scooters should simply not be allowed to start or finish a journey inside the pedestrian zone. Make it impossible, not merely forbidden.

The other side is fair, though. Plenty of people use them sensibly, and for somebody staying up the hill they are cheaper than a taxi. So where are you on this? Have you been clipped by one, or do you ride one yourself? Reply and tell me.

💡 Tip of the Week

How to Order Rice as if You Have Done It Before

Eat it at lunchtime. In this part of Spain rice is a midday meal, and a table of locals ordering paella at nine at night is a rare sight. Plenty of restaurants will serve it in the evening for visitors, but the kitchens are at their best at two in the afternoon.

Order for two, and order early. Most restaurants price rice per person with a minimum of two, because the pan is cooked for the table, not the plate. It is made from scratch, so expect twenty to twenty-five minutes, and order a starter to fill the gap rather than complaining about the wait.

Scrape the bottom. The slightly crisp, toasted layer stuck to the pan is the socarrat, and in a good paella it is the best part. Scraping for it is allowed. Scraping for it with the serving spoon while the others are still talking is practically expected.

And do not ask for chorizo. There is no rule against it, but in the Valencian region, where paella comes from, people are touchy on the subject, and you will be remembered for it.

🤔 Did You Know?

Benidorm is about to collect a national prize for its food. Hostelería de España, which speaks for more than 300,000 bars, restaurants and hotels across the country, has given the town one of this year’s national hospitality awards, in the category for institutions, for fifteen years of Benidorm Gastronómico.

That is the programme the rice fortnight belongs to, run by the council with the local association ABRECA. It is six events a year: spoon dishes in late winter, tuna in April, tapas in June, cocktails in September, rice in October, and a new one at the end of November, the Menjars del Nostre Poble, the dishes of our town, from the 26th to the 29th.

The prize is presented on 18 November at a theatre in Segovia. A town that most of Britain associates with the full English is being honoured nationally for its cooking. Nobody who has eaten in the Old Town will be the least bit surprised.

Community Noticeboard

⭐ Thank you for the photographs. More than a dozen of you sent Altea, Calpe, Guadalest, Villajoyosa, Alicante and the Moros parade after the last two issues. They are going through the checks before they go on the site, with first-name credits as promised.

⭐ Answered my two questions about the Bulletin? Thank you. If the email passed you by, just reply to this one: which part do you read first, and what is missing?

⭐ Walking on Sunday? Send me a photograph of the pink, not of anybody’s face close up.

⭐ 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.