BOOKS

Book Launch News: From Benidorm to Madrid

The non-fiction book which began as a series of articles in this publication is now a physical reality

Note to self: get some varifocal specs before the next book reading (Photo courtesy of author)

According to local legend, in 1953 Mayor Pedro Zaragoza Orts hopped astride his Vespa and rode all the way to Madrid to convince Generalísimo Franco to allow bikinis on Benidorm beach, as a way to boost foreign tourism.

Decades later, I made the same journey — by AVE train rather than Vespa — to promote my book about the transformation of Benidorm from impoverished fishing village to Spain’s leading resort town.

My publishers, Ybernia, had organised the launch at the city’s top English-language bookshop, The Secret Kingdoms, with wine and nibbles courtesy of affable owner David Price, readings from the book by my good self, and an interview by Jayne Marshall, editor of The Madrid Review.

However small in scale the event might have been (although we did have to unfold a few extra chairs for the larger-than-expected audience of 20-odd), it felt on a completely different level from my previous experience of self-publishing and writing online.

A proper published author, with someone else doing the promotional legwork on my behalf!

In truth, it all began here on Iberospherical, with a few articles written a couple of years ago as I began to explore the surprisingly rich and varied history of Benidorm, a high-rise resort of which people in Britain have a very one-dimensional image.

There was, I found, much more to it than cheap booze and badly behaved stag and hen parties.

Medieval battles fought by legendary knights El Cid and Roland in the surrounding mountains, visits by poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, pioneering women chess players, iconic nightclubs in the form of UFOs that hosted gigs by James Brown and Led Zeppelin…

As well as the Vespa story and all the rest of Pedro Zaragoza’s promotional mythmaking that got the whole ball rolling back in the 1950s.

The audience at the launch event seemed intrigued and entertained, and we sold 15 books, which isn’t a bad start. Anyone wanting to join those satisfied punters will find the book right here:

[embed]Looking Down on Benidorm (Is It Really That Bad?) - Ybernia - books in English, libros en español Javier Bardem doing karaoke in his undies? A conundrum that could only be answered by a city as unique and unexpected…www.ybernia.com

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