Costa Blanca Road Trip: Escaping the Package Holiday Resorts

The short version: The Costa Blanca is heavily associated with high-rise package resorts, but escaping the main strips reveals a completely different reality. By renting a car and driving the coast, you can discover hidden Moorish mountain fortresses like Guadalest, skyline-free historic towns like Altea, and bizarre brutalist architecture in Javea. It is a region entirely defined by the brutal architectural battle between surrendering to concrete and fighting it off.

The real Costa Blanca hides Moorish mountain fortresses, brutalist churches, and surreal pink architecture right behind its infamous high-rise tourist strips. When you get forced off the sun lounger by bad weather, you realise this coastline isn’t just about cheap pints and imported sand. It is a long, fascinating argument between towns that surrendered to the concrete and those that fought it off. Here is what the algorithm ignores when it feeds you endless package holiday deals to Alicante.

Is the Costa Blanca worth visiting when it rains?

Yes, the Costa Blanca is absolutely worth visiting when the weather turns bad, because rain forces you away from the packed beach resorts to discover the region’s hidden depth. A quick drive inland reveals a landscape shaped by a fierce architectural war between cities that surrendered to concrete high-rises and historic towns that fought them off.

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When it is 30 degrees and sunny on the Costa Blanca, nobody ever leaves the beach. The eastern edge of Spain has built an entire economy on keeping tourists glued to their sun loungers, meaning almost nobody ever sees what this place is actually made of. As a Scottish traveller escaping rubbish weather back home, I arrived expecting sunshine, only to get forced off the sand by rain and wind. That is exactly when the region gets interesting. Look past the high-rises that dominate the main flight path into Alicante, and you find a landscape defined by one simple choice: surrender to the concrete or fight it. Behind the package resorts, I found a mayor who rode a Vespa to face down a dictator, a quiet fishing village deliberately rebuilt to look like Manhattan, and a church shaped like a concrete ship. Almost every town here has picked a side in the architectural war. My plan was to start right in the thick of the coastal resorts at Calpe and Benidorm, climb inland to the mountain fortresses, and finish out on the raw, stormy edge of the cape at Javea.

Why was Calpe’s 332-metre Peñón de Ifach used as a pirate lookout?

The Peñón de Ifach was historically used as a pirate lookout because its sheer 332-metre height provided a perfect, uninterrupted vantage point over the Mediterranean Sea. Holding the summit gave locals early warning of incoming Barbary pirate raids, making it the most critical defensive structure on this stretch of coastline.

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If Benidorm is the loud night out and Altea is the quiet retreat, Calpe sits comfortably right in between them. It features the exact same huge sandy beaches and massive apartment blocks as the big tourist strips, but draws a slightly more relaxed crowd. The town is universally famous for one defining landmark: a 332-metre-high slab of limestone punching straight out of the Mediterranean Sea called the Peñón de Ifach. It holds the title of the smallest natural park in Spain, but for a long time, its sheer height served a much darker purpose as a lookout tower for spotting incoming pirate raids. The rock is so impossibly sheer that back in 1918, engineers had to blast a tunnel clean through the cliff face just to get climbers safely around to the far side and up to the summit. It dominates the skyline completely, proving that the coastline’s most impressive skyscraper was actually built by nature, centuries before the tourism boom arrived.

Can you visit the pink La Muralla Roja in Calpe?

No, you cannot freely walk into La Muralla Roja to take photos. The complex is strictly private residential property, so the only legal way to access the famous pink courtyards is to book one of the apartments listed for rent on Airbnb.

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The wildest thing in Calpe is not actually the massive natural limestone rock. Sitting on the cliff edge just down the coast is a striking, surreal pink fortress of apartments called La Muralla Roja, or the red wall. Designed in the late 1960s, right at the exact moment the Spanish package holiday boom was violently kicking off, it looks like an impossible optical illusion or a real-life set from Squid Game. However, you cannot just wander into the courtyards to take photos. The complex is strictly private residential property. The only way to legally get inside the walls is to find one of the apartments listed for rent on Airbnb. Fifty years after it was built, surrounded by a coastline completely choked with near-identical, uninspiring holiday flats, it remains the only building anybody still actively goes out of their way to photograph. Just a bit further along the road from the pink walls, you will find Calpe’s salt flats. These days, they are mostly full of flamingos, but this is not just a pretty wetland. The Romans ran a massive industrial salt-fishing operation right on this exact spot over 2,000 years ago. It is hard proof that heavy industry existed on this specific stretch of sand long before the tourists ever arrived. Today, those ancient Roman ruins are completely boxed in and overshadowed by towering 1970s holiday blocks, highlighting the brutal contrast of the region.

Does Calpe still have a historic old town?

Yes, Calpe has successfully retained its original old town, tucked away in the shadow of the modern coastal high-rises. While the historic maze of streets features charming architecture like the flag-painted Spanish steps, it has largely been abandoned by locals and feels completely empty during the off-season.

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During the summer months, Calpe’s imported, artificially soft sand beaches are absolutely packed with holidaymakers. But on a windy, overcast day, the fine sand just gets violently picked up by the wind and blown straight into your face, leaving you completely alone with the fishermen and searching for immediate shelter. Tucked right underneath the shadow of those massive coastal high-rises, Calpe has somehow managed to hang onto its original old town. Walking the streets out of season, it feels like a total ghost town. The main plaza, which would be aggressively lively and packed with outdoor restaurant tables during peak summer, sits completely empty. There is a distinct, eerie quiet to walking the narrow alleys without the heavy crowds. As much as masses of tourists can be annoying, they do organically create an atmosphere that is missing when the cafes have no customers. The architectural highlight hidden in this maze is the iconic Spanish steps, painted with the national flag, offering a rare bit of historic charm that survived the modern building boom. One clever neighbouring street even hung crocheted art over the alleyway to steal some of the photographic fame away from the steps. The perspective of the streets is weirdly distorted, and it becomes glaringly obvious that most locals do not actually live in the old town anymore. Having it entirely to yourself is a strangely peaceful experience, completely at odds with the concrete jungle sitting just a few streets over.

Why does Benidorm’s concrete skyscraper skyline actually make sense?

Benidorm’s massive vertical skyline makes sense because it was a deliberate, hyper-efficient master plan designed by Mayor Pedro Zaragoza in the 1950s. By forcing developers to build upwards instead of outwards, he guaranteed a sea view for nearly every hotel room while keeping the ground open for public avenues, pools, and gardens.

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I never thought I would say this, but I was entirely wrong about Benidorm. I have never historically had a single nice thing to say about it, but that was completely based on perception rather than actual first-hand experience. Driving into the city limits, the sheer scale of the place forces a massive perspective shift. Benidorm does actually have a designated old town area, though the buildings certainly do not look historically ancient. What strikes you instantly is the sheer, towering skyline. The vertical density makes it feel like a proper, legitimate city, almost giving off an exaggerated Rio de Janeiro vibe against the mountains. The physical geography of the place is undeniably stunning. The sand on the beach is pristine, the water is clear, and the natural setting ringed by protective mountains is genuinely beautiful. Looking up, you can faintly make out a large cross positioned high on the hill, which locals claim was built specifically to cleanse the city from the accumulated sins of all the tourists below. Surprisingly, wandering the waterfront, you actually hear locals speaking Spanish on the streets, something I fully expected to be completely drowned out by English holidaymakers. The natural environment is absolutely top-tier. The problem with Benidorm is not the geography or the water; it is simply a matter of who and what occupies the space between the mountains and the sea.

What is it like visiting Calle Gerona in Benidorm?

Visiting Calle Gerona is a chaotic, sensory overload, as it serves as the absolute epicenter of Benidorm’s British tourist scene. The neon-lit strip is a dense wall of sports bars, daytime karaoke performances, and cheap pints, designed purely as a highly efficient factory for party-focused package holidays.

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Step back from the picturesque beachfront, and the reality of the package holiday machine hits you instantly. The side streets leading away from the water are a solid, unbroken wall of British-themed pubs, sports bars, and fast-food joints. Walking into Calle Gerona, which holds the undisputed title for the highest concentration of bars heavily catering to British tourists, is an assault on the senses. Even at five in the afternoon on a quiet day, you share the pavement with endless fleets of rented mobility scooters, aggressive daytime karaoke performances by unpaid entertainers, and groups of rough-looking lads just killing time until the night out begins again. Within just five minutes of walking down this specific street, I was offered drugs twice. It is impossible to call anything beyond the immediate waterfront pretty. The towering high-rise buildings crowding these neon-lit streets are brutally ugly close up. However, the sheer unapologetic nature of it is fascinating. I completely understand the mechanical appeal of it. If I were travelling with a group of friends for a long weekend squarely focused on parting and drinking heavily, this is exactly where we would go. You sleep off the hangover by the beautiful beach during the day, and you disappear into the cheap pints on Calle Gerona at night. It is a highly efficient factory for a very specific type of holiday, functioning exactly as intended.

Why does Benidorm have so many skyscrapers?

Benidorm’s towering skyline is the result of a ruthless 1950s master plan by mayor Pedro Zaragoza. He legally forced developers to build upwards instead of outwards, ensuring almost every hotel room had a sea view while leaving the ground level open for public pools and gardens.

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The brutal ugliness of Benidorm’s towering skyline is not an accident; it is a ruthlessly deliberate piece of urban planning. In the 1950s, a visionary local politician named Pedro Zaragoza radically transformed the town. Nicknamed the bikini mayor, he famously defied local Catholic rules and legally permitted women to wear bikinis on his town’s beaches. When the local church aggressively threatened to excommunicate him over the swimwear laws, Zaragoza hopped on a Vespa and rode all the way to Madrid to plead his case directly to the dictator General Franco in person, and he won. He applied that exact same nerve to the town’s architecture. Zaragoza actively forced developers to build up instead of out. By stacking the hotel rooms vertically, he ensured almost every single window got a sea view, while leaving the ground level completely open for pools, lush gardens, and wide avenues. Benidorm was never designed to be a pretty, quaint village. Zaragoza set out with a master plan to build the Manhattan of the Mediterranean, giving millions of working-class families exactly what they paid for in an incredibly efficient vertical footprint.

Why are there no skyscrapers in Altea?

There are no skyscrapers in Altea because the town implemented incredibly strict height caps during the 1960s tourism boom. By legally banning high-rises and fiercely protecting its historic Moorish layout, Altea threw up a shield against the bulldozers and became a bohemian refuge from the surrounding concrete.

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If Benidorm’s answer to the Spanish tourism boom was to aggressively build up and own the concrete, the neighbouring town of Altea chose the exact opposite approach. Located just a few miles up the same stretch of coastline, dealing with the same decade and the same economic boom, Altea threw up a massive legal shield against the bulldozers. While Zaragoza was writing master plans to force developers into the sky, Altea was busy writing strict laws to keep them firmly out. The town implemented rigid height caps and fiercely protected its historic old town area. Standing at an elevated viewpoint looking out towards Calpe, the difference is immediately obvious. The apartment blocks here are still relatively modern, but they are strictly capped at five or six stories. There are zero massive towers dominating the skyline. Altea even boasts its own distinct microclimate, briefly offering up the first actual sunshine I had seen in days. The town feels entirely separate from the concrete jungle sitting just down the road, deliberately preserving its scale.

Is Altea worth visiting on the Costa Blanca?

Yes, Altea is absolutely worth visiting if you want to escape the coastal high-rises. Unlike neighbouring towns, Altea implemented strict height caps to protect its historic Moorish maze of streets and iconic blue-domed church, making it a perfectly preserved bohemian refuge.

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Walking up into Altea’s elevated historic centre feels remarkably different from the generic coastal strips. The streets are laid out in a traditional Moorish design, a deliberate, complex maze originally built centuries ago to thoroughly confuse incoming invaders, which now successfully serves to confuse wandering tourists. The paving stones are distinct, almost Portuguese in their intricate, albeit slippery, styling. Because Altea threw up a legal wall to protect this specific aesthetic, the town naturally became a highly sought-after refuge. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, bohemian artists and writers actively fled here, deliberately escaping the ugly concrete monoliths going up just a few miles down the coast. The crown jewel of the maze is the town’s church, universally recognised as the icon of Altea thanks to its striking, vibrant blue dome. While the exterior is spectacular against the coastal backdrop, the inside is slightly disappointing purely because it does not continue the blue theme. From the high viewpoints near the church plaza, you can look straight down the coast and clearly see the towering high-rises of Benidorm looming in the distance. The contrast is staggering. Both towns made their permanent architectural choices fifty years ago, and both are still completely living with those decisions today. Looking at the beautiful water and pristine beaches below, it is incredibly easy to see why Altea fought so ruthlessly to keep its skyline intact.

Is the hidden mountain fortress of Guadalest worth visiting?

Yes, Guadalest is well worth a detour for its spectacular 11th-century Moorish fort perched on a sheer rocky cliff that forms a natural mountain choke point. While the modern village inside has admittedly evolved into a heavily commercialized tourist trap, walking through its unique rock-carved entrance tunnel is an essential experience.

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To truly understand what towns like Altea were fiercely defending against the concrete, you have to turn your back entirely on the Mediterranean Sea and aggressively head up into the inland mountains. Driving into the rocky interior, the landscape shifts dramatically. Tucked away in these peaks is Guadalest, a town that looks completely unassuming from the approach roads until you finally see it from an elevated angle. From the air, it is immediately obvious exactly why the Moors picked this incredibly specific spot back in the 11th century. The fortress sits on a massive natural choke point; if you hold this imposing, sheer rock, you completely control access to the entire valley below. Guadalest looks like a deeply imposing, sharp, Lord of the Rings-style castle balancing perfectly on a terrifying rocky drop. The architecture of access is completely wild. You do not just simply walk up a hill or around the mountain to enter the old town; you actually have to walk straight through the solid rock via a single, deliberately carved defensive tunnel. The moment you emerge, it feels remarkably similar to San Marino, smaller and not quite as high, but sharing that exact same isolated, suspended-in-the-sky atmosphere. The town is genuinely fascinating, with older buildings and local shops literally built directly into the surrounding rock face. However, there is no ignoring the fact that the modern iteration of Guadalest leans heavily into being a tourist trap. Once inside, you are greeted by endless souvenir shops, a bizarrely placed local school, and even an opportunistic torture museum trying to capitalise on the medieval vibe. Despite the heavily commercialised shops, the sheer geology of the location, the imposing castle walls, and the bizarre rock-carved architecture make it an essential detour. It proves that the history of this region goes much deeper than 1970s holiday brochures.

Why did Polop turn its ancient castle ruins into a mountain cemetery?

In the 19th century, the locals of Polop made the highly unusual decision to repurpose their crumbling, ancient Moorish fortress into a municipal cemetery. Today, it stands as an atmospheric graveyard perched high on the rock, ignoring the tourist resorts below while honoring the site’s defensive history.

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Dropping back down from the high mountain choke points, the inland route passes straight through Polop. This small town is anchored by another ruined Moorish fortress sitting high above the streets. The defensive history of this region is everywhere, but Polop took a highly unusual approach to preserving its ruins. Back in the 19th century, the locals repurposed the ancient, crumbling castle footprint into a municipal cemetery. Today, it stands as an incredibly atmospheric ancient graveyard perched securely on top of the rock, quietly ignoring the sprawling tourist resorts down below. It serves as a brief, sobering reminder of how long people have been fortifying these specific hills against outsiders.

Why is Javea’s old town located inland?

Javea’s perfectly preserved historic centre sits two miles inland because it was deliberately built to hide from the shoreline. For centuries, living directly on the Spanish coast meant living under the constant threat of being kidnapped by raiding Barbary pirates.

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Returning to the coast to visit Javea highlights a very grim reality about the Mediterranean’s history. The defining feature of Javea’s beautifully preserved old town is that it does not actually sit anywhere near the water. It was deliberately built a full two miles inland, hiding from the shoreline. For a very long time, living directly on the Spanish coast meant living under the constant, terrifying threat of being violently kidnapped by marauding Barbary pirates. Because of that historical fear, the original town center feels safe, enclosed, and completely free of any towering concrete high-rises. It has successfully retained an immense amount of its original historic charm. The streets are deeply atmospheric, packed with cafes and restaurants that heavily rely on outdoor seating. Unfortunately, Spanish locals absolutely hate the rain, so at the slightest hint of a downpour, the beautiful plazas completely empty out. It is a stunning, historically rich town, but trying to enjoy its cafe culture during a coastal storm leaves you completely stranded indoors.

What is Javea’s coastal harbour area like?

Javea’s coastal harbour is a palm-tree-lined waterfront with a gravelly beach that caters to a much quieter crowd than the massive resorts. Even during winter storms, the working harbour and crashing waves give the edge of the coast a raw, lively atmosphere completely detached from the package holiday scene.

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The actual lively part of Javea is located all the way down at the beach, far away from the historic pirate-safe zone. The waterfront area is a lovely, palm-tree-lined stretch that completely wraps around into the local working harbour. The beach itself is slightly gravelly rather than fine imported sand, making it much more resilient to the coastal wind. Even with an active weather warning and large, aggressive waves crashing into the harbour walls, the area manages to maintain a highly attractive, slightly subdued charm. It is easy to see how lovely the waterfront would be under normal conditions, lined with busy restaurants and cafes catering to a much quieter crowd than Benidorm. Up above the harbour, there is an excellent viewpoint that looks out over the rough water. The weather might drive the locals inside, but for a Scottish traveller used to heavy rain, the dramatic, mildly moist conditions and massive crashing waves actually make the coastal edge feel far more alive and raw.

Why did Javea build a brutalist concrete church shaped like a ship?

Javea built its bizarre brutalist church out of raw concrete in the 1960s as a bold architectural tribute to its local fishing heritage. Located in the port area, the building’s striking exterior was intentionally engineered to resemble the hull of a ship, defiantly clashing with the region’s traditional whitewashed arches.

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Exploring the Javea waterfront leads to the most jarring architectural surprise on the entire Costa Blanca. Tucked into the port area is a deeply weird, wildly unusual brutalist structure that turns out to be a fully functioning church. In a wider region completely obsessed with traditional whitewashed arches and quaint little blue domes, dropping a giant, raw slab of aggressive concrete directly into the middle of a historic port town takes serious nerve. The building is deliberately shaped to resemble the hull of a ship, a heavy-handed nod to the local fishermen it was built to serve. You follow the standard tourist signs pointing towards a local church, expecting another quiet, historic building, and instead, you are confronted with this towering, completely out-of-place concrete vessel. It is an incredibly impressive piece of brutalist architecture that wildly clashes with its surroundings, proving once again that the architectural choices on this coastline are never boring.

Where to stay in Altea and Javea

Choosing a base here means avoiding the high-rise coastal traps and opting for towns that managed to retain their architectural character. In Altea, the most compelling stays are tucked into the steep, whitewashed lanes of the historic old town. You will find independent boutique hotels and converted townhouses with rooftop terraces that look right past the iconic blue-domed church and down to the water, keeping you completely detached from the package-holiday chaos further down the coast.

Javea forces a choice between two distinct vibes, both blissfully free of mega-resort clutter. You can embed yourself in the atmospheric inland old quarter, where traditional stone buildings host minimalist, design-led guesthouses, or you can opt for a modern, character-driven stay closer to the working harbor and the sea wall. Whichever town you pick, the accommodation style here favors local ownership and authentic materials over massive all-inclusive buffets and uninspired chain architecture.

Browse my Altea and Javea hotel picks on Expedia →

The verdict: Is the Costa Blanca worth visiting beyond the package resorts?

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The ultimate truth about the Costa Blanca is that it is not just one monolithic tourist trap. Bad weather forces you to look closer, and what you find is a massive, coastline-spanning argument about concrete. You have the towns like Benidorm and Calpe that aggressively surrendered to it to build highly efficient holiday machines, and places like Altea and Javea that fiercely fought it off to protect their history. Hidden in between are staggering Moorish mountain fortresses and bizarre brutalist fishermen’s churches. If all you want is to fly in and lie motionless on a sandy beach, sticking to the main tourist strips works perfectly. But if you rent a car, lean into the bad weather, and drive away from the high-rises, you get the half of the coast they leave out of the marketing brochures. It is quieter, it is significantly stranger, and best of all, you do not have to listen to a group of drunk men singing Sweet Caroline. It is genuinely worth exploring.

Final thoughts

The Costa Blanca completely defies its own miserable, mass-market reputation. It is a region entirely defined by extremes, between the mayor who forced Benidorm into the sky and the towns that outlawed the bulldozers to protect their cobbled alleys. Whether you are staring up at Calpe’s pink fortress, wandering through a mountain tunnel into Guadalest, or hiding from the rain in a brutalist concrete ship, there is undeniable beauty behind the package holiday facade. Check out the full video above to see the coastal drives and stormy architecture for yourself.

Watch the full video on YouTube