That Benidorm is the most popular tourist destination in the United Kingdom is shown by the numbers of travelers and overnight stays. That its privileged position does not seem to be in danger is also indicated by studies that measure the interest of potential visitors, even on the social networks most frequented by young people.

That is what at least one report released by Travel Republic says, an online travel agency that has evaluated the tourist destinations that have been trending so far this year that is about to end. And Benidorm takes the cake, with 150 million views on TikTok and more than 550,000 searches.

These days, many of the searches focus on the possibility of spending Christmas or New Year’s Eve in the city of skyscrapers, which offers some unbeatable deals for Brits fleeing its freezing winter: by flying from Bristol you can pay just £34 return for four nights. Of course, some dates are beginning to be problematic: Booking reports that 97% of the city’s registered hotels no longer have rooms for New Year’s Eve.

But all this overwhelming success of Benidorm would not be explained without the attraction that the first tourists found in that coastal town of the Marina Baixa that bore little resemblance to the great tourist resort of our days.

Precisely tomorrow, the City Hall assembly hall will host the presentation of the book ‘Three American Women in Benidorm’, which compiles more than 60 images taken by three American photographers between the years 1957 and 1970.

Patty Stratton, her mother, Kate W. Stratton, and her friend Carol Baldwin “during their stay in our city, they could not resist immortalizing that Benidorm that was in the process of transformation and now those images, which for decades have been part of the collection of the Llorca Stratton family, come to light in this book along with unpublished photographs of Patty herself,” explains the Councilor for Historical and Cultural Heritage, Ana Pellicer.

The councilor points out that “we are talking about three women with artistic and technical training, interested in capturing the changing world that surrounded them.” “This curiosity – he adds – is what now allows us to delve into the daily life of a Benidorm from many decades ago, but which we recognize perfectly in spaces such as Plaça de la Senyoria, El Castell, El Carreró dels Gats and other streets of the old town. or the beaches.”

The person in charge of Historical and Cultural Heritage emphasizes that in ‘Three American Women in Benidorm’ “the figure of women has a fundamental weight. It is not only that the images that make up the book have been captured by three authors, but also that many of the photographs feature women. “They are the center of the action and the camera’s attention.”