Benidorm Market (Levante)

Benidorm market — the Levante market — is held on Wednesdays and Sundays from 8:00 to 14:00 on the Rincón de Loix esplanade, with more than three hundred stalls. It is the largest and the most touristy in the town, and one of the biggest in the province of Alicante.

Two sessions a week have made it a fixture that mixes the regular local shopper with the flow of visitors along the coast. That scale and that mix of crowds are hard to match anywhere else in the Marina Baixa.

What is sold. Casual fashion has an enormous presence, new and end-of-line: T-shirts, trousers, dresses, swimwear and underwear, with bargain stalls in the 1 to 5 euro range. In footwear there is something for every age, leather included. Among the accessories, leather bags sit alongside imitations of well-known brands, sunglasses and costume jewellery, so it pays to look carefully at what you are buying. Fresh produce is brought in by the growers themselves: fruit, vegetables, bread, pastries and freshly squeezed orange juice. Household goods and souvenirs complete the site, along with several bars and churro stalls for a mid-morning stop.

Going. In high season the crowds make it hard to move between stalls, so arriving before 10:00 makes a real difference to both comfort and temperature. Parking around the site is free but scarce from mid-morning: anyone coming by car does well to turn up at opening time. Most stalls work in cash, though some take cards. Given the numbers, keeping your bag in front of you and your pockets closed is elementary sense.

Benidorm also has the Foietes market on Wednesdays and the El Cisne flea market, for antiques and collectables, on Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays. In the Poniente area, at Cala de Finestrat, there is a market on Tuesdays and Saturdays.