Spanish Beauty, Esther Garcia Llovet
Sangria. Fry-ups. Scorched skin. Factor 50. Estrella Galicia. Reggaeton. Nightclubs. Sea salt. Calamares fritos con limón. Shots. Hangovers. Veneers. T-shirt tans. Hair of the dog. Put it all together and you have the recipe for a night out in Benidorm or, better yet, Esther García Llovet’s Spanish Beauty, translated by Richard Village.
Spanish Beauty takes place in the seedy underbelly of Benidorm, where we meet our narrator, Michaela, a dazzingly corrupt police officer on a mission. In the search for her estranged British father and, by extension, a cigarette lighter that once belonged to the British gangster Reggie Kray, Michaela stumbles upon Russian mobs and local crooks as she unearths the sinister undercurrents of the city.
Like our narrator, Michaela, I grew up between Alicante, near Benidorm the UK, before spending my teenage years in in Andalucía and Gibraltar. My itinerant upbringing only made reading this book all the more special, as I could really immerse myself in its familiar Mediterranean environment. That is not to say British readers will find its contents isolating—on the contrary, a cemented understanding of British culture is truly what makes the novel shine.
Synthesised with the mystery of the lighter and Michaela’s absent parents, García Llovet paints a portrait of a pulsating city plagued by tourism and drugs that is as corrupt as they come. The story is told unconventionally, in an array of vignette-like chapters that jump from the present day to Michaela’s childhood. One cannot help but feel that Benidorm’s parasitic depravity at the hands of The Sun-reading British residents speaks to the ongoing discourse of the long-standing effects of mass tourism in Spain. Michaela herself states: “We don’t make history any longer. We make sangria.” Spanish Beauty, then, offers a chance to come up for air, as it holds a mirror to the Mediterranean while also offering a refreshing commentary, with dry-humoured, witty observations and an eccentric cast of characters.
Richard Village’s translation is nothing short of excellent. With a turn of phrase that never fails to make you laugh, shudder, and contort your face in response to the vivid descriptions of ‘the city that never sleeps…the city where the bars are open till the day after tomorrow’. His delightfully immersive translation is equal parts captivating as it is disturbing, and I highly recommend Spanish Beauty to those who are looking to have a lot of fun within a compact novel.
As Spanish Beauty makes clear, it’s not always sunny in Benidorm. The bleakness that encompasses Michaela’s profession makes for a dark-humoured noir crime novel that forces us to look at the gritty and the raw, as it deconstructs the traditional elements of the contemporary mystery novel. Many of the novel’s vignettes commence with a gloriously atmospheric description of Benidorm, who we come to know as a complex and vibrant character in and of itself. By the time we reach the end of Michaela’s journey, our narrator seems to have been changed forever, and yet the city of Benidorm and its foreign inhabitants stay the same. An unfaltering, unfiltered, and unforgiving read.
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