The anticipation is tangible in the streets, in the bars, on the beach, and even in the local shops.
A young Italian man asks a shopkeeper of a small, nondescript convenience store that mostly sells crisps if he has a Lamine Yamal top for sale. Surprisingly the man delves into a bin bag from under the counter and peruses through a bunch of in-no-way-illegitimate football shirts that he is definitely licenced to sell, before producing a red Spain shirt. Another happy customer.
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In the street, a group of topless Englishmen are singing about Scotland getting battered. Everywhere you look, people are drinking, shouting, singing. It’s loud, it’s boisterous and it’s lively. Some people are stumbling and slurring their words. Music is blaring. The Athletic is offered cocaine by one man and an invite to a strip club by another.
It’s 2pm. There are seven hours until kick-off. Welcome to Benidorm.
Outside of Berlin, you would be hard-pressed to find a higher concentration of English and Spanish fans than in the partly picturesque, partly a-scene-from-every-English-town-centre-at-3am-on-a-Friday-night seaside resort of Benidorm, on Spain’s east coast.
That is more by accident than design for this particular occasion — the Euro 2024 final — because, well, English or British people are always here. It’s the most popular place in the entire world for Brits to visit on their holidays (ahead of Tenerife and Dubai).
More than 800,000 British people flew to Benidorm last year and quite a few more live here, making up five per cent of the area’s permanent population.
It has been popular since the package holiday boom of the 1970s and 80s, it spawned an ITV sitcom that ran for 11 years and 10 series and is a haven not just for drinkers and stag and hen dos, but for families looking for a sunny week or two away.
Why? It gets 300 days of sun a year, the alcohol is cheap, the beaches are nice, the alcohol is cheap, it has nice resorts, the alcohol is cheap, there’s a buzzing nightlife and the alcohol is cheap.
Look in the right places (they’re not hard to find) and you can buy pints for €1.50, which works out as £1.26 ($1.63), compared to, what, at least a fiver in most UK towns and cities, or £17.95 for half a lager in London.
These drink prices may or may not (may) have contributed to the carnage already caused by Brits abroad in Benidorm during the Euros.
After the 0-0 draw with Slovenia that saw England qualify for the knockouts, England fans chanting ‘Ten German Bombers’ and stopping a local driving his car were attacked by said local who began punching them one by one.
GO DEEPER'Ten German Bombers' - the chant that could shame England fans at Euro 2024Watching the quarter-final win over Switzerland in Benidorm was described as “hell on earth” by a Daily Star journalist — admittedly, for a sweaty lack of air con in 30C heat more than anything else, but still.
And for the semi-final against the Netherlands, the area was described as “bedlam” by one Spanish publication. Cool. Sounds great.
After England beat the Dutch, the Anglo-Espana memes were instant. “England v Spain, the winner keeps Ibiza,” said one. Insert Benidorm, Gibraltar or Tenerife at your leisure.
There is cultural heritage at stake. Chorizo and chicken traybakes, salsa dance classes in east London, reruns of Eldorado, San Miguel, Madri, etc. Does the winner keep Julio Iglesias? The loser gets his son Enrique? And what on earth happens to Guillem Balague? This is serious.
Appreciating the potential volatility of the situation, national police have been drafted in to keep the peace. Drones will be used to monitor potential trouble hotspots, certain roads will be closed off to motorists and several bars must sell pints in plastic glasses from 6pm onwards.
England Fans takeover Benidorm 🏴🏴
👍🏻🏴🏴 pic.twitter.com/Ncq85StgwQ
— WeGotitBack 🏴🇬🇧🇺🇸 (@NotFarLeftAtAll) July 14, 2024
The extra reinforcement mostly centres on the English zone, aka zona Inglesa, in the eastern area of Benidorm. Here you will find a stream of English and Irish pubs and bars with names such as Rovers Return, Queens Arms, The Shamrock, Dublin House or Greeny’s (where you can get a bucket of Estrella for €7).
They are all in one street (Calle Gerona) and today they are teeming with England flags, balloons and banners. Tourist shops sell England regalia alongside their usual T-shirts with lewd slogans emblazoned on them. With kebab houses, burger bars, strip clubs, big screen TVs and pools, the bright lights and debauchery of Calle Gerona might be, depending on your viewpoint, the perfect night out, or hell on earth. It’s basically Clacton-on-Sea with good weather.
If you’re still not au fait with the Benidorm vibe, here is a five-minute snapshot of observations at around 7.30pm (kick-off is at 9pm).
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A guy in an England shirt with a megaphone walks down the street singing “It’s coming home”, to which a group of about 20 people at The Railway bar respond and join in. At Broadway bar over the road, a group of lads are chanting “You can stick your f****** roses up your arse” at two elderly women hopelessly traipsing through the street trying to sell flowers.
England fans congregated on Calle Gerona (The Athletic/Tim Spiers)
The Oasis song Champagne Supernova blares out from another bar up the road. The roses gang are now shouting “w***er, w***er, w***er,” at a lone Spanish man who is giving some back to them, cupping his ear. They continue to call him a w***er. The man drops his shorts and furiously helicopter propellers his penis in their direction.
Back at The Railway, women dancing on podiums are gyrating with their bare backsides hanging in the air. A man walks past offering “charlie” to any takers. Another man on stilts sets off a red flare to loud cheers. Richard Keys is talking about wing-backs on the big screen.
These truly are the last days of Rome. And Sweet Caroline is the soundtrack.
GO DEEPER'So good, so good': How Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline became England fans' anthem of choiceA week is a long time in politics and a 20-minute walk is a world away in Benidorm, as they say.
Stroll west for one mile to the Julio Iglesias Auditorium (which may or may not be the location for his giving/keeping ceremony after the final) and you find a sea of red shirts and relative tranquillity.
This is an amphitheatre in L’Aiguera Park, the very non-English part of town where Spaniards have converged to watch the final, some 4,000 of them.
It’s a picturesque green arena which plays host to cultural events and concerns (Status Quo were here last month) and tonight a giant screen has been erected to show the final.
There were few England fans in sight at L’Aiguera Park (The Athletic/Tim Spiers)
It’s an altogether calmer, more wholesome vibe. If the English zone has a Trainspotting feel, then this is more trainspotting. Not that they don’t boo the English national anthem or sing a few songs but, in terms of frivolity, the most exciting thing that happens is when they throw a straw hat around the crowd.
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There’s a convivial atmosphere for the first half; lots of families and lots of youngsters, but not much to cheer. Whenever Jude Bellingham has a burst with the ball, there is pure angst. “Tackle him immediately,” they shout, in Spanish.
This being Spain, in a half of few chances, the most animated they are by a distance is for refereeing decisions, those given and those not. Harry Kane being booked gets the biggest cheer of the first 45 minutes.
“Definitely, no,” Benidorm resident Alex says when The Athletic asks if he considered watching the game on the other side of town. “I like my face.”
Well quite, it’s a lovely face. Does he resent the English takeover of Benidorm?
“No, most of them are nice and friendly, there are just a few who drink too much and cause problems. Tourism is good for the city but, of course, there are places I would not visit late at night. Mostly there is no trouble and Spanish and English and German people all get on well, but football can make things different.”
A drone buzzes over the amphitheatre as if to stress Alex’s point. Although, in terms of police, there is a minimal presence here despite the large number of people.
In fact, the main job police will have in L’Aiguera Park is not to throw people out, but to keep them out; by 8.20pm the place (which is free to enter) was packed and the gates were shut. Hundreds of mostly younger people still converge directly outside to hear the commentary from the big speakers, or in the hope they will be let in if some people leave.
Where are the extra police then? Well, they’re in the English zone, of course, driving ominously slowly at 10mph perusing the streets where they think it might kick off.
That doesn’t happen after Nico Williams gives Spain the lead; there is only despondency at watching England fall behind. No pint-throwing, just stunned silence.
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The street is lightly flooded in some areas with alcohol spillages, there are shards of glass sprinkled sporadically on the road (the glass ban isn’t going well) and every single bar is full, meaning people spill out onto the streets to peer over terraces and get a good view of one of the dozens of big screens which face onto the street from bar frontages.
People whose job it is to coax drinkers into bars are standing watching the match. The workers at Play Girls, a strip joint, are taking a break, too, perched on stools outside.
And then Cole Palmer scores and the place loses its collective mind. Pints are lobbed (this feels more excusable when the beer is so cheap) and people frenetically jump up and down and hug each other — the usual football shenanigans for English fans, but just in 33C heat at night. And in Spain.
“You can stick your f***ing tapas up your arse,” they gleefully sing. Brits abroad. One of a kind. The equivalent of hundreds of Spaniards in Skegness singing derogatorily about Yorkshire pudding (“puedes meterte el pudín de Yorkshire en el culo”) is harder to envisage.
Things are set up perfectly for a grandstand finish and another England comeback win… but there is Mikel Oyarzabal ruining everyone’s fun with 86 minutes on the clock, 2-1. For all the unfiltered unruliness on a backdrop of at least eight hours of drinking for many of them, the split crowds of dozens and hundreds at the many English bars on Calle Gerona are well-behaved. There is no smashing or throwing of drinks, no chucking things at screens, just, again, the sound of silence and hearts being broken.
Until, that is, the full-time whistle, when the sight of pretty much any Spaniard in, well, Spain, is too much for some Englishmen to bear.
A Spanish cameraman is spat at, a television presenter in a Spain shirt is shouted at by an English woman who tells her she is in the wrong part of town, so they duly end their attempted broadcast, two elderly Spanish people innocently applauding their country’s victory are made to feel unwelcome by glares and shouts in their direction, so they quickly leave. A couple of younger guys in Spain shirts brave the walk down the street and there are aggressive chants of “you dirty Spanish b*******”.
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It’s all pretty grim. There’s a man on the floor who appears to have been knocked out during a scrap. His mate has blood dribbling down his cheek. Police with riot gear surround the scene until an ambulance arrives.
Two young lads — one English, one Spanish — show how it should be done by sharing a conciliatory chat. “You best team,” the English lad says. “Lamal (sic) good,” he adds with a thumbs up. He might be talking about the Kajagoogoo singer but, to be honest, this isn’t the time to ask.
There are horns blaring in the distance… two minutes up the road you’re back in Spain, where the celebrations are starting. Every single car that drives through has its horn repeatedly and incessantly beeped.
Further west, the party is really getting started: a group of mostly young Spanish fans, all in red, all singing. They sing about Marc Cucurella, they sing Viva Espana, and they light red flares. It’s a beautiful scene.
Benidorm, or at least this part, is theirs. And so is Julio Iglesias.
(Top photos: The Athletic; design: Eamonn Dalton)
