Luck has woven Benidorm’s tourist heritage with the stories from Torremolinos and El Ejido. The effort of Wim Kuipers, a Dutch businessman and patron, to safeguard the historical memory of these Andalusian towns yielded a discovery about the city’s past: how a British tourist perceived Benidorm during the 1960s. This finding enriches the municipality’s collection of documentaries about how tourism began to shape the area.
Kuipers has spent more than forty years protecting the historical legacy of both Torremolinos and El Ejido. In his drive to document the tourism history of these towns, he found an album containing up to 86 photos from a British family vacation along the Spanish Mediterranean. Within the album, several pages capture scenes from Benidorm during a period when locals describe life as being in flux. Between 1959 and 1962, as explained by the Historic Heritage Councilor, Ana Pellicer.
Benidorm of the 50s and 60s for purpose
The discovery captivated the Dutch collector, who felt a certain fate in the assortment of photos. The images reveal personal moments and scenes from Benidorm. The English family reportedly stayed at the Rosaleda hotel and visited the municipal market during their visit. They stayed at Martínez Oriola and Costera del Barco streets, enjoyed the Poniente beach, strolled along Tomás Ortúñez Street and Carreró dels Gats, and visited the port.
One of the images donated to Benidorm by the collector
Wim Kuipers reached out to the archive, deciding that this material should be presented with care. It represents a generous gesture born from a duty to preserve heritage, for which gratitude is felt by the city.
Travel back in time with Cristina Boissiè in Benidorm
With these efforts, the Benidorm Municipal Archive continues to expand its photographic collection. The set comprises 86 black and white photographs taken by a British tourist in the early years of the city’s tourism expansion. Pellicer noted that the collection offers unpublished images of Benidorm that help document the city’s development across decades and rescue recent history. Beyond its informative value, the donation carries a narrative of luck and sacrifice, with Kuipers emerging as a central figure whose story deserves telling.
Benidorm Trip in the 50s
This donation by Kuipers is not the first to hold significant historical value. It follows a contribution made at the end of 2021 by a German citizen, Maximiliam Greeven, who provided the City Council with video footage of family holidays in Benidorm in the late 50s, as well as a substantial legacy from Cristina Boissie. Pellicer noted that all these funds contribute to increasing documents and materials related to Benidorm’s past century, supporting the study and analysis of the city’s evolution into a tourism destination.
The material donated by Wim Kuipers is currently available for researchers to consult, and in the near future a new management and consultation program for the archive is being implemented.