SITUATED by the Mediterranean, Benidorm has experienced a surge of tourists in September. Beating the summer deadline with classes to go back home in England, English tourists take flights to this coastal city of skyscrapers to enjoy, frolic in tan themselves in the sun. Benidorm has been a tourist destination for decades now thanks to a very aggressive advertisement campaign by the Spanish authorities.

For example, all beach resorts and hotels in Benidorm must pass the very stringent blue flag accreditation of the European Union. The blue flag accreditation simply means that the hotel has passed periodic quality inspections with focus on its environmental practices. For example, tap water must be of topmost quality. Second, parking spaces in these hotels must not be littered with off-road vehicles for the simple reason that their tire tracks carry mud. The Spanish are that meticulous and tidy after all. They perceive that cleanliness is health and health is wealth. As everybody who has gone to the Mediterranean has attested, Benidorm is populated with people who are sometimes elderly but still very energetic. That’s why most of the hotels and resorts in Benidorm and everywhere else in Mediterranean Spain for that matter are espousing Mediterranean seafood. To do this, Benidorm is also promoting investors to put up culinary colleges. These culinary colleges may offer short courses of up to a month which cater solely on the preparation, nutrition and food technology about anything Mediterranean from redfish to grouper to lobsters. This is the essence of a community college after all. Graduates from these colleges are eventually hired by the Benidorm hospitality community.

Last month, occupancy of Benidorm hotels and resorts surged up to 95 percent. Most of the occupants of these hotels during this period are English youngsters who were afraid that the torrential rains and flooding that have invaded their country last month would come back. They hate it back there in their home island of Britain because the archipelago is so large that most of them stay inland during most of their lives. They’d rather escape here during summer where temperature can rise from 18 to 23 degrees Celsius, enough to enjoy bathing one’s body in the sun but not as hot as it is in the tropics.

But with winter approaching, Benidorm doesn’t even come close to be a ghost town thanks to the visionary in 1960s Pedro Zaragoza Orts. It was Mayor Orts who made the strategic developmental planning in the 1960s and who exhorted everyone to invite investors to churn up skyscrapers. That is why Benidorm today is not just known all over Spain but all over Europe as well as a city with very many tall buildings – structures here are even taller than the ones existing in Madrid.

With Benidorm’s unexpected performance as the tourist destination of the year last summer, it has even elevated Spain’s status as the ultimate summer tourism spot of Europe, again beating Portugal and Italy. And it will continue to remain that way as long as there are visionaries like the ones found in Benidorm.