Benidorm: how a fishing town planned its skyline

Benidorm's skyline looks improbable from the road into the Marina Baixa: a dense line of towers rises between the mountains and two long beaches. It can be mistaken for unchecked construction, yet its basic form was planned. The fishing and farming municipality of the mid-twentieth century chose tourism as an economic future, laid out new streets and repeatedly adjusted its building rules. The result is a vertical city whose older centre remains visible on the headland between Levante and Poniente.

Before the towers

The original settlement gathered around the rocky point now occupied by the old centre and the church of Sant Jaume i Santa Anna. Boats worked from the sheltered shore and tuna fishing formed part of the local economy. The council's climate plan describes the later change plainly: Benidorm moved from a fishing and agricultural municipality to a major tourist centre. That transition did not erase the headland. Its compact streets, Mirador del Castell and small Mal Pas beach still separate the two broad sweeps of sand.

Water supply, roads and basic urban services were immediate constraints on growth. Municipal records of the 1930s and 1940s show the council improving streets and pursuing new water sources before mass tourism arrived. When Pedro Zaragoza became mayor in the 1950s, the town was therefore not beginning with towers. It was trying to build the practical framework for a different economy.

A plan that kept changing

Benidorm approved its first general urban plan in April 1956. The municipal history of the planning process records revisions beginning in March 1957, changes to ordinances that November and another revision in 1958. New alignments and levels were fixed for the Levante expansion while partial plans translated the larger scheme into streets and plots. A consolidated text in 1963 gathered the original plan and successive changes into one working set of rules.

That sequence matters more than a single heroic date. The first scheme was not simply a blueprint for today's skyline. Officials, landowners and designers tested different forms while tourism accelerated. Later rules allowed a fixed volume of building to rise on a smaller footprint. The University of Zaragoza study of Benidorm's residential towers dates their construction from 1963 and identifies two broad generations: steel-framed towers up to the mid-1980s, then taller buildings made possible by high-strength concrete.

Space between buildings

Height is only half the model. Keeping the same permitted floor area while narrowing a building can leave more of its plot open to daylight, gardens, pools and circulation. The academic study notes that both generations of towers retained substantial shared open space. Seen from street level, this produces alternating strips of tower, forecourt and planting rather than continuous perimeter blocks. It also concentrates many residents and visitors within walking distance of shops, buses and the shore.

The arrangement has costs. Summer shade changes quickly between tall buildings, busy roads divide some neighbourhoods and water demand remains a fundamental planning issue. Benidorm's own climate adaptation plan treats compactness as one part of a much larger environmental challenge rather than proof that density solves everything. The skyline is best understood as a deliberate trade-off: intense use of a limited urban strip, with services and shared ground required to make that intensity workable.

Reading the skyline from the shore

A useful walk begins in the old centre, where the lanes and church retain a human scale. From the Mirador del Castell, Levante curves east towards Serra Gelada while Poniente extends west towards la Vila Joiosa. Descending to either promenade turns the distant silhouette into individual streets and buildings. Poniente's sinuous, planted promenade is a particularly clear piece of civic design at the boundary between towers and sand.

Benidorm makes more sense beside its neighbours. Altea gathers white houses around a hilltop church, while la Vila Joiosa brings coloured houses close to the old shoreline. All three meet the Mediterranean within the Marina Baixa, but Benidorm chose the most concentrated and vertical urban form.

Sources and review

Reviewed in September 2026 using the Ajuntament de Benidorm's municipal history of the 1930s and 1940s for the pre-tourism infrastructure context, its history of the 1950s and 1960s planning process for the 1956 plan and its revisions, the council's climate adaptation plan for the economic transition and compact-city context, the municipal city guide for the old centre and shoreline and Andrés Martínez-Medina's University of Zaragoza study of Benidorm's skyscrapers for tower chronology and form. Access, works and local arrangements change, so check current council information before a visit.