A British woman claimed there were too many “rude” Spanish people at her Benidorm resort.
Pensioner Freda Jackson and her friend decided to head off to warmer climes on a trip to Alicante, Spain.
But their dreams of a sun-soaked Spanish trip quickly turned into a disaster, with Freda left in tears after the hotel “focused and catered for the Spanish”. She believed they should “go somewhere else” for their holidays, reports The Mirror.
Speaking in 2018, Freda, a retired care assistant, then 81, said: “The hotel was full of Spanish holidaymakers and they really got on our nerves because they were just so rude.
“One evening a Spanish guy nearly knocked me flying and he just walked off without even apologising.
“The entertainment in the hotel was all focused and catered for the Spanish – why can’t the Spanish go somewhere else for their holidays?”
They had booked to stay at the Poseidon Playa, located on the outskirts of Benidorm, in April 2017.
But Freda, from Blackburn, Lancashire, said that the hotel wasn’t suitable for her mobility issues and that the pair had been placed on the 14th floor.
They were later moved to the hotel’s second floor – but that it was still 42 steps down to the hotel’s swimming pool.
Freda and her friend paid £1,133 for the holiday and demanded a full refund or a free trip after describing their holiday as a “disaster from start to finish”.
She submitted a letter of complaint to Thomas Cook who initially offered her and her friend a £75 holiday voucher as compensation.
Freda declined the offer and the travel company gave an improved offer of £566 to be split between Freda and her friend.
The story of Freda’s trip went viral – and afterwards, the pensioner said she had been wrongly painted as a “racist” and insisted her comments had been “taken out of context”.
She claimed she never said Spanish tourists should go somewhere else – instead complained that the hotel didn’t “cater to English people”.
She added: “I didn’t slag the Spanish off at all.”
Brits have long visited Benidorm – and recently UK tourists have been sharing their experiences of their first visits to the resort.
They have left hilarious stories about them on review sites, with one visitor remembering “European girls whipping you with belts”.
