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Did British expats in Benidorm, Spain just protest migration to the UK?

A new video shows what appears to be British expats in Benidorm, Spain protesting against… migration to the UK:


So what’s going on here then?

Benidorm protest — Stop (some) of the boats

Many have commented on the scenes, including the following individuals:

Looking into it, those marching seem to have been taking part in Benidorm’s Fancy Dress festival:


Some of those who know what’s going on have made comments like the following:

Diving deeper, we found this from the Olive Press, which describes itself as “Spain’s leading expat newspaper” (emphasis added):

OVER 30,000 people- mainly British expats and tourists– lined Benidorm’s streets on Thursday for the annual ‘Fancy Dress Party’.

The event organised by hospitality associations in the Rincon de Loix ‘English Zone’ of the city and backed by the local council, has been going strong for over 30 years.

We couldn’t find any mention of the festival having a theme besides ‘fancy dress’, but there are many pictures from the event in this Daily Mail article. As you can see, people seem to have dressed in whatever outfit they fancied.

So we can say a couple of things:

  • They definitely could have been expats.
  • If they weren’t expats, they were British tourists who decided the ideal venue for their anti-foreigner protest was a foreign country.

Some are actually saying it wasn’t a protest because it happened at a festival. We’ll be honest, we think that’s like saying Just Stop Oil’s Van Gogh protest was a work of art because it happened in a gallery:

So all in all, the Benidorm protest wasn’t quite as clean-cut as people thought. At the same time, it was still a mob of pissed-up shit houses doing British nationalism on Spanish soil.

Featured image via Raise the Colours

By Willem Moore

This post was originally published on Canary.