2013
The lift that was never missing
- Rumour
- 20 July 2013
- Lifts according to sales team
- 6
In July 2013 a story went round the world: Intempo had been built without lifts. The tower had supposedly been planned with 20 storeys and then raised to 47, with no room for longer shafts. El País ran the story on 20 July, and specialist websites and the construction press as far away as the US picked it up.
The sales team called it ‘ridiculous’. Sales director Rafael Ballesta spoke of six lifts, three per tower. As proof, they offered section drawings from Florentino Regalado’s structural engineering firm, photos of the lift doors and footage of a ride up to the 45th floor. Behind the rumour was a change of manufacturer from Orona to Kone. It required an extra floor slab with two machine rooms.
Intempo →
Sources: Dezeen, 2013 · Quartz, 2013 · Wikipedia ES – Intempo
2007–2021
Gold for a while
- Construction began
- 2 May 2007
- Completed
- July 2021
The golden sheen that made the unfinished shell such an eye-catcher for years came from a film on the window panes. It reflected the light and darkened the rooms. During the long standstill the tower acquired a nickname: ‘gigante dormido’, the sleeping giant.
Only when the company UNIQ took over and had the project reworked from 2019 did things move again. Intempo was completed in July 2021, a good 14 years after construction began in May 2007.
Intempo →
Sources: El Español, 2021 · El Independiente, 2021 · Wikipedia ES – Intempo
2022
A seagull as building consultant
- Towers in Benidorm
- 5, including Intempo and Neguri Gane
Before every design, the architect Roberto Pérez-Guerras visits the site, preferably at sunrise. In Benidorm a seagull appeared. Because seagulls fly high, he was convinced: the building had to be very tall. He sees Intempo as a door for everyone arriving, with the diamond as its crown. That is how the biography ‘Construyendo fuertes’, launched at Intempo in 2022, tells it.
Not everything from his office got built. For Benidorm, Pérez-Guerras designed a tower whose top 20 storeys were meant to rotate, facing the sea, the mountains or the pool as desired. A mosque above the sea in Libya also stayed on paper, planned as the second-largest Muslim place of worship after Mecca.
Intempo →Neguri Gane →
Sources: Alicante Plaza – Pérez-Guerras · El Español, 2022 · Valencia Plaza – Pérez-Guerras
2010
On two wheels along the wire
- Start
- Tossal de La Cala
- Finish
- Gran Hotel Bali
In October 2010 the Moroccan Mustafa Danguir, known as ‘Danger’, rode a motorcycle along a steel cable. It was stretched from the Tossal de La Cala to the Gran Hotel Bali. The ride earned him a Guinness record. How long the cable was and how high it hung are points on which the sources differ widely.
Gran Hotel Bali →
Sources: Wikipedia EN – Gran Hotel Bali · Hespress, 2010 · El Ciudadano
since 2003
924 steps to the view
- Steps
- 924
- Men’s record
- 4:20 min (2016)
- Women’s record
- 5:31 min
Since 2003, runners have raced up the Bali’s stairs in the ‘Subida Vertical’: 924 steps over 52 floors, around 190 metres of ascent. The Australian Paul Crake won the first edition in 4:35 minutes. His record stood for eleven years, until the firefighter Ángel Llorens reached the top in 4:33 in 2014. In 2016 the German Christian Riedl managed 4:20. The women’s record is held by the Australian Suzy Walsham with 5:31.
Firefighters have their own category. They run in full kit with breathing apparatus on their backs. Anyone no longer breathing through cylinder and mask at the top is disqualified – so just getting there is not enough.
Gran Hotel Bali →
Sources: El Español, 2022 · Wikipedia EN – Gran Hotel Bali · Comunitat Valenciana – Subida Vertical
2002–2009
Chess, table football and parachutes
- Chess festival
- since 2002
- BASE jumping world championship
- since 2009
Hardly had it opened than the Bali became a sporting stage. Since 2002 it has hosted an international chess festival, and every May the Spanish table football championship as well. In 2008 ‘Spain Base 08’ was the first BASE jumping competition at the hotel, and since 2009 the BASE jumping world championship has been held here every year. In 2017 Alicante Plaza called the Bali a pioneer in combining skyscrapers and sport.
Gran Hotel Bali →
Sources: Wikipedia EN – Gran Hotel Bali · Wikipedia ES – Gran Hotel Bali · Alicante Plaza, 2017
1919–1929
Harbour stones from the Bali site
- Mole built
- 1919–1929
- Transport
- tipper wagons drawn by animals
Long before a 186-metre hotel went up there, stone was quarried in the area. For the harbour mole, built from 1919 to 1929, the material came from a quarry near today’s Gran Hotel Bali. Tipper wagons on rails, drawn by animals, carried the stones to the harbour. The quarry remained in use until around the middle of the 20th century.
Gran Hotel Bali →
Sources: Histobenidorm, 2014
1965
Consuls for Lapland
- Campaign
- Operación Laponia
- Partner
- Finnair
- Appointed
- 5 June 1965
With ‘Operación Laponia’ in 1965, Benidorm set out to woo visitors from the north. For it, the airline Finnair chose a family from Lapland, the Nourgan family. On 27 May 1965 Mayor Pedro Zaragoza set off from Alicante for Helsinki. Dressed in traditional costume and carrying a sign reading ‘We’re going to Benidorm’, the family travelled via Barcelona and Madrid to the Mediterranean, arriving in Benidorm on 3 June.
According to the local blog Astrolabio, the reception and dinner were held at the Hotel Les Dunes, and a lunch at the Hotel Brisa. At the farewell dinner on 5 June the town appointed its guests ‘Consuls General of Benidorm in Lapland’ and presented a plaque for the consulate; the University of Alicante names the father, Hans, as honorary consul. The campaign was meant to promote a congress of Finnish travel agents, which met in Benidorm in October 1965.
Sources: Universidad de Alicante – Pedro Zaragoza, Hito 11 · Astrolabio (Juan J. F. Díaz), 2013 · Miriam Ponce, Así se lee Benidorm (Universidad de Alicante), 2022
1963–2025
Dolphins on the wall
- Motif
- four dolphins
- Demolition
- spring 2025
The four geometric dolphins on the north façade of the Gran Hotel Delfín were designed and painted in 1963 by the hotel’s founder, Felipe Pastor, himself a former fresco painter. Because the picture was painted directly onto the wall, it could not be removed. When Grupo Bahía leased the hotel for 20 years in 2012, it had to promise to preserve it.
A sketch with a colour grid for a restoration also survived. In spring 2025 the mural disappeared when the hotel was demolished. The developer of the Gran Delfín, Goya Real Estate, announced that it would adapt the dolphin motif for the new building.
Gran Delfín →
Sources: Alicante Plaza, 2023 · Alicante Plaza, 2025 · Histobenidorm, 2015
2018–2022
A BMW with every flat
- Apartments
- 39
- Record sale
- €2.8 million (2022)
The Delfín Tower has only 39 apartments, and each came with an electric car: a BMW i3, plus an e-bike from the same brand. The owners’ association rules out holiday lets. Apartments may only be let for at least six months. In March 2022 a 380-square-metre apartment here changed hands for €2.8 million. According to idealista, it was the most expensive apartment sale in Benidorm’s history.
Delfín Tower →
Sources: Alicante Plaza, 2018 · El Español, 2022 · idealista, 2022
2017
A price tag on the tower
- Height
- 140 m
- Completed
- 2008
Kronos was completed in 2008, but almost ten years later hardly any apartments had been sold. In 2017 Sareb, the company set up to wind down banks’ property assets, offered them as new and never lived in. The marketing agent Activium hung a sign on the side of the 140-metre tower that even showed the price of a one-bedroom apartment. It worked. Within a year all the units had been sold. In March 2018 Alicante Plaza reported that 136 apartments were to go to an English fund.
Edificio Kronos →
Sources: Alicante Plaza, 2017 · Alicante Plaza, 2018
2016–2018
Curling by the Mediterranean
- Communal space
- over 13,000 m²
- Pools
- 3
Between the two 92-metre towers of Sunset Drive in La Cala lie more than 13,000 square metres of communal space: three pools, a swim-up bar, a treehouse for children, courts for padel, tennis and pétanque – and a curling rink. Whether it is played on ice or on a synthetic surface, the developer TM’s brochure does not say.
Sunset Drive →
Sources: TM Grupo Inmobiliario – Sunset Drive brochure
2020
Swimming on the 26th floor
- Foundation slab
- 1.80 m
- Concrete
- over 2,500 m³
In the Benidorm Beach tower there is a 60-square-metre communal pool on the 26th floor, with a spa and gym above it on the 27th. The developer Alibuilding promotes it as the highest pool in a residential building in Spain.
The tower rests on a foundation slab 1.80 metres thick. It was poured on a single day, 15 June 2020: more than 2,500 cubic metres of concrete from around 300 mixer loads. ‘Skyscrapers are returning to Benidorm,’ said Alibuilding director José Antonio Izquierdo.
Benidorm Beach →
Sources: Construnario, 2020 · Alicante Plaza – start of construction, Benidorm Beach
2025
Stargazing on the 63rd floor
- Planned height
- 230 m
- Load on the foundations
- 85,000 t
Right at the top of the future TM Tower, on the 63rd floor, a sky bar with an observatory is planned, developed with the MUDIC science museum. The tower was unveiled on 18 September 2025 to almost 400 guests, according to TM. To finish, a drone show traced its silhouette in the sky. TM calculates a load of 85,000 tonnes on the foundations. That is ‘a little more than eight Eiffel Towers’, Raquel Nadal of TM explained in May 2026.
TM Tower →
Sources: TM Grupo Inmobiliario, 2025 · El Debate, 2026
2007
Number three, but right at the top
- Height
- 158 m
- Tip above sea level
- 237 m
At 158 metres, the Torre Lúgano is only the town’s third-tallest completed building. But its base sits 82 metres above the sea on the slope of the Sierra Helada. So its tip reaches 237 metres above the water, the highest point of the entire skyline. And the tower needs little ground: its footprint measures 48 by 13 metres, on a plot of almost 60,000 square metres.
Torre Lúgano →
Sources: CTBUH – Torre Lúgano · Sika – Torre Lugano reference, 2024 · Hispanopedia – Torre Lúgano
2002
Basque on the Costa Blanca
- Height
- 148 m
- Developer
- José Ignacio de la Serna
Neguri Gane is named after Neguri, the villa district in Getxo near Bilbao where the city’s industrialists lived. The developer also came from the Basque Country: José Ignacio de la Serna from the province of Bizkaia, who later also started Intempo.
With the round concrete tower he took the title of Benidorm’s tallest building from the Torre Levante. Neguri Gane remained Spain’s tallest residential building until the Torre Lúgano was completed in 2007.
Neguri Gane →Torre Levante →Intempo →
Sources: Hispanopedia – Neguri Gane · Wikipedia EN – Neguri Gane · Valencia Plaza, 2015
1963–2007
Skyscrapers with serial numbers
- First tower
- Torre Coblanca
- Highest number
- Coblanca 41 (2007)
The Torre Coblanca was the first work of the construction firm Coblanca, which is why firm and tower share the same name. It became a house brand: the Coblanca buildings count their way through the town, up to Coblanca 41 in 2007. It is similar with the ‘Gemelos’, the twins, towers built in pairs up to Gemelos 28. So the number in the name tells you the developer, not the street number. The roof of the first Coblanca also has a famous model: its pergola is modelled on Gio Ponti’s Pirelli Tower in Milan.
Torre Coblanca →Coblanca 41 →Gemelos 26 →
Sources: Universidad de Alicante (RUA) – Torre Coblanca · Hispanopedia – Torre Coblanca
1783
A name from 1783
- Second name
- Edificios Xixo
- Recorded since
- 1783
The Sol de Poniente towers are also known as ‘Edificios Xixo’. That is not a marketing name but an old place name. According to the Diccionari de Benidorm, it goes back to a person’s nickname and has been recorded since 1783. It is pronounced roughly ‘shee-sho’. The stream bed and the Avenida de Xixo carry it too.
Sol de Poniente →
Sources: Diccionari de Benidorm – Xixo · Hispanopedia – Sol de Poniente · Benidorm Film Office – Avenida de Xixo
1963
Upright, not flat
How do you explain the Benidorm model? The story told in Benidorm is that, while the plan was being revised around 1963, an architect laid a cigarette packet on the table, once flat and once on end: the volume stays the same, but on end it needs far less ground. None of the sources says who it was; some versions turn the cigarette packet into a matchbox. The sociologist Mario Gaviria later showed that in practice building volume grew all the same.
A different story has come down about the planner Francisco ‘Paco’ Muñoz: he is said to have submitted his draft plan with ‘cuatro rayajos’, four scribbles. Mayor Pedro Zaragoza accepted it and made Muñoz municipal architect, in an honorary capacity, since the council had no money for a salary. The architect Óscar Tusquets later expressed surprise that in Benidorm lifts and stairs did not count towards floor area.
Sources: Valencia Plaza – Benidorm, érase una vez un plan · Astrolabio (Juan J. F. Díaz), 2016 · Juan-José Chiner Vives, Los orígenes de la ciudad vertical, 2006 · Mª Nieves Higueras López, Benidorm, estudio de su modelo urbanístico (Proyecto Fin de Grado), 2012
1955
Too wide for seven cars
- Vehicles in 1955
- 7
The first draft of the development plan was rejected by the provincial planning commission, at the urging of the mayors of Alicante and Elche. The reason: the planned streets were wider than some main roads in Madrid and Alicante. In 1955 Benidorm’s vehicle register listed just seven vehicles, lorries and cars combined. The planners had to make many streets narrower, above all the Avenida del Mediterráneo.
Zaragoza himself later said he had wanted 80 metres for one of the avenidas; the landowners thought 10 metres was enough, and 40 were built.
Sources: Astrolabio (Juan J. F. Díaz), 2012 · Miriam Ponce, Así se lee Benidorm (Universidad de Alicante), 2022
1956
Beans on the grand boulevard
- Width of the avenida
- 40 m
When the Avenida del Mediterráneo was staked out, 40 metres wide, its route ran straight through a bean field. The farmer kept pulling the surveyors’ pegs out of his field at night. The story was told in a 1996 interview by the surveyor Guillermo Campos, who measured out streets and gardens for the 1956 plan.
Campos also recalled that before designing the Levante promenade the council had studied plans of Berlin, Biarritz and the Côte d'Azur.
Sources: Astrolabio (Juan J. F. Díaz), 2016
1962–1963
Hotels only – for one year
- Hotel reserve
- from 10,000 m²
- Hotel bonus
- +30% volume
In 1962 Benidorm created a hotel reserve: in one zone of the garden city, plots of over 10,000 square metres could not be subdivided and could only be used for hotels, with 3 cubic metres of building volume per square metre. As early as 1963 the rule was lifted again, and the zone became ordinary garden city.
Another incentive from 1962 lasted longer: four- and five-star hotels could build 30 per cent more volume if their plot was twice the prescribed size. According to a 2012 dissertation, some establishments built the extra in advance and then did not get the higher category.
Sources: Mª Nieves Higueras López, Benidorm, estudio de su modelo urbanístico (Proyecto Fin de Grado), 2012 · Pedro Touceda Gutiérrez, Reconstrucción del desarrollo urbano de Benidorm (TFG, ETSAM-UPM), 2024
2003
The skyscraper lying down
- Length
- 97.2 m
- Span
- 64.8 m
- Names in the glass
- around 62,000
In the city of towers, of all buildings it is the town hall that lies horizontal: a glass block 97.2 metres long and 12 metres high that floats like a toppled skyscraper, a ‘rascacielos tumbado’, above the square at the entrance to the Parc de l'Aigüera. Two steel trusses carry it on just four concrete piers. Between the piers they span 64.8 metres, and to the west they cantilever 21.6 metres.
The idea of the municipal architect José Luis Camarasa had a practical reason: the car park beneath the square, with over 600 spaces, had to stay open during construction, and the way into the park had to remain clear. Four large cranes lifted the steel trusses onto the piers within a week. It was built by Dragados and ECISA. Etched into the façade glass are the names of the roughly 62,000 residents registered in January 2002.
Sources: Jordi Vilà García, dissertation (TFG), 2019 · Arquitectura Viva – Ayuntamiento de Benidorm · Ajuntament de Benidorm – Parc de l'Aigüera
2020
Fashion among the giants
- Towers
- 6
- Days of shooting
- 1
For the series ‘Benidorm Vertical’, the Benidorm photographer María José Lozano and Salvador Mira staged a fashion shoot in front of the town’s six tallest towers: Intempo, Bali, Torre Lúgano, Neguri Gane, Kronos and Don Jorge. It was all shot in a single day. The New York fashion magazine Kaygod printed the pictures in 2020, and a second, Nephilim, announced them. The idea: to show that Benidorm’s skyline can hold its own next to New York or Dubai.
Intempo →Gran Hotel Bali →Edificio Don Jorge →
Sources: Alicante Plaza, 2020
1993
Slimmer than any other
- Height
- 116 m
- Slenderness ratio
- about 1:13
The architecture critic Luis Fernández-Galiano called Costa Blanca I Spain’s most slender structure. The figures of the structural engineer Florentino Regalado explain why: the load-bearing shear walls are only 8.50 metres wide, and the slenderness ratio is about 1 to 13. At 116 metres tall, the tower therefore stands on a very narrow base. Regalado also calculated the Torre Levante of 1985. There, according to his account, the bracing walls were kept small because the ground-floor shop space was worth so much.
Costa Blanca I →Torre Levante →
Sources: Arquitectura Viva – Benidorm en positivo · Revista de Obras Públicas, 2014
1965
No hotels on the island
- Green zone since
- May 1965
In the mid-1960s foreign investors announced plans to build hotels on the Isla de Benidorm. The town got in first: in May 1965 it declared the island a green zone, and in 1966 the provincial planning commission confirmed the decision. Since then only the municipality may build there, and only for public purposes.
According to the local history blog Astrolabio, the island was at the time on a state list of property for sale, and the enquiries came from interested parties in Madrid. In 1970 the town dedicated the island to all Spanish journalists, as the ‘Isla de los Periodistas’.
Sources: Mª Nieves Higueras López, Benidorm, estudio de su modelo urbanístico (Proyecto Fin de Grado), 2012 · Pedro Touceda Gutiérrez, Reconstrucción del desarrollo urbano de Benidorm (TFG, ETSAM-UPM), 2024 · Astrolabio (Juan J. F. Díaz), 2016 · Astrolabio (Juan J. F. Díaz), 2015
1950s/60s
Bottled sunshine
On its promotional trips around Europe and as far as America, Benidorm took gifts along: turrón and a wine bottled in Monóvar with the label ‘Sol de Benidorm embotellado’, Benidorm sunshine in a bottle. With the gifts in their luggage, the town’s envoys talked to tour operators and banks about new visitors and loans for hotels.
Sources: Tomás Mazón, Benidorm. Un destino turístico de altura, Gran Tour nº 2, 2010
Hotel Victoria
The first pool was an irrigation tank
- Rooms
- 34
- Client
- José Moncho Mayor
Today almost every hotel in Benidorm has a pool. According to the municipal archive’s hotel catalogue, the first was at the Hotel Victoria on the road to Valencia, laid out in a tank that had previously irrigated the fields. It was years before hotel pools caught on in the town.
The hotel had 34 rooms and belonged to José Moncho Mayor. A 1957 project for it is by Francisco Muñoz Llorens, the author of the 1956 development plan. Whether today’s RH Victoria on Vía Emilio Ortuño goes back to the same establishment is not documented.
Hotel RH Victoria →
Sources: Juan-José Chiner Vives (ed.), Los hoteles del paraíso 1954–1964, 2005 · Histobenidorm, 2013
1950s/60s
A discount when the sun stays away
- Discount
- 25% (Nov.–Mar.)
- Rooms
- 20
The Hotel L'Illa on the Playa de Levante, formerly the ‘Pocho Inn’, promised in its brochure: from November to March, 25 per cent off board on days when the sun does not shine. In the evenings it advertised guitar nights with ‘Pocho’, after whom the house was named.
A 2012 dissertation tells the story even more generously: in the late 1950s, it says, the hotel charged no board at all for any day without sun.
Sources: Juan-José Chiner Vives (ed.), Los hoteles del paraíso 1954–1964, 2005 · Mª Nieves Higueras López, Benidorm, estudio de su modelo urbanístico (Proyecto Fin de Grado), 2012