Benidorm, The War of the Bikini

If Pedro Zaragoza Orts is remembered for the Beni-York skyscraper he is even more famous for the so called ‘War of the Bikini’. In the later years of the 1950s the icon of holiday liberty was the saucy two piece swimsuit but in staunchly religious Spain, still held in the firm two-handed grip of church and state, this scanty garment was seen as a threat to the very basis of Catholic society. According to the official version a French engineer called Louis Réard and the fashion designer Jacques Heim invented the swimsuit that was a little more than a provocative brassiere front with a tiny g-string back. It was allegedly named after Bikini Atoll, the site of nuclear weapon tests on the reasoning that the burst of excitement it would cause on the beach or at the lido would be like a nuclear explosion. Plenty of fallout and very hot!

And it certainly had this effect in Spain and although occasionally allowable on the sandy beaches, it had to be covered up in all other areas; on the promenades and in the plazas and in the shops and the bars and cafés for fear of causing any offence. In one famous incident, a British tourist, sitting in a bar opposite a beach wearing only a bikini, was told by a Guardia Civil officer that she wasn’t allowed to wear it there. After an argument she hit him, and her strike for social justice cost her a hefty fine of forty thousand pesetas. Zaragoza needed tourists and tourists wanted the bikini and with more northern European tourists arriving each year in search of an all over suntan the Mayor knew that the banning of the two piece swimsuit simply couldn’t be sustained or allowed to threaten his ambitious plans.

Zaragoza took a gamble and signed a municipal order which permitted the wearing of the bikini in public areas and in this single act he effectively jump started the Spanish tourist industry. Zaragoza said: “People had to feel free to be able to wear what they wanted, within reason, if it helped them to enjoy themselves as they would come back and tell their friends about the place.” In deeply religious Catholic Spain not everyone was so understanding or welcoming of the bikini however and in retaliation the Archbishop of Valencia began the excommunication process against him.

Excommunication was a serious matter in 1959 and his political supporters began to abandon him so one day he got up early and drove for nine hours on a little Vespa scooter to Madrid to lobby Franco himself. The Generalissimo was suitably impressed with his determination and gave him his support, Zaragoza returned to Benidorm and the Church backed down and the approval of the bikini became a defining moment in the history of modern Spain ultimately changing the course of Spanish tourism and causing a social revolution in an austere country groaning under the yoke of the National Catholic regime. Zaragoza went on to become Franco’s Director of Tourism and a Parliamentary Deputy.

Not many people would have described Franco as a liberalising social reformer and perhaps he just liked to look at ladies breasts but not long after this lots of women on holiday in Benidorm dispensed with the bikini bra altogether and brazenly sunbathed topless and Benidorm postcards had pictures of naked ladies on them to prove it.

One thing I am certain of is that this wouldn’t have made a great deal of difference to my Nan because I am not sure that she ever possessed a swimming costume, never mind a two-piece! She was a bit old-fashioned and the human body in the naked form was only permitted behind closed doors with the curtains closed and preferably after dark. If she ever went in the sea I imagine it would have been in one of those Victorian one piece bathing costumes of the previous century. Grandad too wasn’t one for showing bits of his body normally kept under his bus conductor’s dark blue uniform and didn’t even concede to a pair of shorts, preferring instead to wear his colonial style slacks even during the day. When he came home his impressive suntan stopped at the line of his open neck shirt and his rolled up sleeves.



For people who had never been abroad before Benidorm must have been an exciting place in the early 1960s. Palm fringed boulevards, Sangria by the jug full and, unrestrained by optics, generous measures of whiskey and gin, rum and vodka. Eating outside at a pavement café and ordering drinks and not paying for them until leaving and scattering unfamiliar coins on the table as a tip for the waiter. There was permanent sunshine, a delightful warm sea and unfamiliar food, although actually I seem to doubt that they would be introduced to traditional Spanish food on these holidays because to be fair anything remotely ethnic may have come as shock because like most English people they weren’t really ready for tortilla and gazpacho, tapas or paella. They certainly didn’t return home to experiment with any new Iberian gastronomic ideas and I suspect they probably kept as close as they could to food they were familiar with.

Benidorm is a fascinating place, often unfairly maligned or sneered at but my grandparents liked it and I have been there myself in 1977 for a fortnight’s holiday and then again on a day trip in 2008 just out of curiosity. It has grown into a mature and unique high rise resort with blue flag beaches and an ambition to achieve UNESCO World Heritage Status and I hope it achieves it.

Women at Checkouts

On Sunday I went to the supermarket shortly after opening at ten o’clock to buy a newspaper and a few other bits and pieces (alcohol mostly) and I was surprised to find the store exceptionally busy. I whizzed around the aisles making my selections and made my way to the check outs to discover a queue at every one and it was just my luck to choose the slow moving one because in front of me was a line of women none of whom were in a particular hurry.

Women are terrible at supermarket checkouts and this reminded me of one of my favourite Bill Bryson observations:

‘Although the store had only just opened there were long queues at the tills. I took a place in line behind eight other shoppers. They were all women and they all did the same mystifying thing: they acted surprised when it came time to pay. This is something that has been puzzling me for years. Women will stand there watching their items being rung up, and then when the till lady says, ‘that’s £4.20, love,’ or whatever, they suddenly look as if they have never done this sort of thing before. They go, ‘Oh!’ and start rooting in a flustered fashion in their handbag for their purse as if no-one had told them that this might happen.’

This queue was especially bad where each in turn waited for the request for payment before going through their shopping bag to get their handbag and then going through their handbag to get their purse and then taking an age agonising over method of payment. That’s after trying to find the Club Card that it hasn’t occurred to them might be a good idea to get ready either and then remembering from the recesses of their memory that they have got some vouchers hidden away somewhere in the back of the purse.

If that isn’t bad enough the ones that really irritate me are those who insist on trying to find exactly the right change, ‘just a minute’ they say ‘I think I might have the right money here’ (something which is highly unlikely!) and then rummage about assembling a handful of loose change from inside the lining of the purse, dropping it on the floor and searching for it, counting it out twice, just to make sure, discarding the odd Franc or Peseta that’s been in there for twenty years or so and then, after predictably failing to put the right amount of cash together, apologising for not having quite enough before going to a separate compartment in the purse to find another note. Why can’t they just pay with a £10 note in the first place? It is so much easier, believe me!

I watched with mounting frustration as all of the other queues seemed to be moving quicker than mine and cursed my poor judgment in selecting this one but then there was only one more shopper in front of me with only a couple of dozen items or so, so I decided against moving across to an alternative line. The goods started going through and the scanner was bleeping away at a reassuringly steady speed but before he had finished she stopped him and said that she wanted to pay for the goods in two separate transactions. Why do people do that? Ok, she might have been getting some shopping for a neighbour or her mother or something but couldn’t she just work it out when she got home? Anyway, we went through the whole surprise and purse fumbling routine and when she received her change she unbelievably put everything away, the purse in the handbag and the handbag in the shopping bag and I just knew exactly what was going to happen next. The remaining items were scanned through and the clerk asked for payment. She stared blankly at him for a second or two as if the entire contents of her brain had been wiped clear by standing to close to the laser beam in the price scanner and then went through the entire routine again right down to trying to scrape together the exact amount in change.

The interesting thing is that this woman will do exactly the same thing the next time she shops because women have a complete mental block about checkouts. Men are much better at this sort of thing because as they shop they mentally tot up the likely total of the goods and then at the checkout have approximately the right amount of money ready to hand over in an instant and this makes the whole process much more efficient. My solution to this supermarket checkout hold up problem is that women should be obliged to take a test in basic common sense before being allowed to use them.