Sun, sea and Soviet system-building

摘要

The decline of the British seaside town since people could afford to visit non-rainy resorts has excited occasional architectural comment. Critical rehabilitations of such previously despised places as Margate, Morecambe, Blackpool and Bexhill for their Victorian and modernist heritage have had some effect. But during that time, few have given much attention to the places that replaced them since the 1960s - overwhelmingly, coastal Spanish resorts, the sort described by John Cooper Clarke thusly: "They packed us into the white hotel/you could still smell the Polycell/wet white paint in the air-conditioned cells/ the waiter smelled of fake Chanel/says if I like, I can call him 'Miguel'." Benidorm is not a place so far immortalised by the 20th Century Society.