Recently published in English for the first time, Esther García Llovet’s story pays tribute to the resort regarded by many as ‘the worst place in Spain’

Despite spending the summers of her youth in Fuengirola, watching the foreign tourists at play and devouring the English-language paperbacks she found in a little bookshop in the Andalucían town, nothing could prepare Esther García Llovet for the spectacular unreality of the place that inspired her noir novel Spanish Beauty.

“Benidorm is something of a myth in Spain – and a myth that no one goes to because there’s this stigma that Benidorm is the worst place in Spain,” says the writer.