DONKEYS wandering across empty squares and beaches that today’s sunbathers would struggle to recognise: this is Torremolinos as it looked in the 1960s and the city’s most famous adopted son is letting residents enjoy the trip down memory lane.
The images are part of a free exhibition at the town hall, drawn from the collection of a Dutchman who has watched the resort transform over more than six decades.
Wim Kuipers arrived in 1963, when Torremolinos was still part of Malaga, and never left. He is believed to be the longest-standing Dutch resident in Andalucia, a title he says the Dutch consul confirmed.
Torremolinos, Años 60 Desde el Aire (Torremolinos, the 1960s from the Air) runs on the first floor of the town hall until October 30. The aerial shots take in farmland, the coastline and the first stages of the tourism boom that changed the area forever.
Many of the buildings have since disappeared or been absorbed into the modern town.
Kuipers didn’t just watch this development happen though, he was one of the people that helped put the once-backwater beach town on the map.
After training at hotel schools in Lausanne and Maastricht, he ran the Al-Andalus, one of the few luxury hotels between Torremolinos and Benalmadena at the time.
He made the city so successful that other hotels in the area liked to claim a Torremolinos address because the name was such a draw.
It was the era of the newly opened Pez Espada and the long-gone Tres Carabelas.
Kuipers went on to grow the Eurotours agency from 15 beds to more than 1,500, set up the Wima estate agency and co-found the Santa Elena Clinic.
He also ran La Florida, once the biggest restaurant on the coast, where he hosted a string of film stars. He sent more than half a million Costa del Sol postcards to clients and friends around the world.
His collection of photographs is now more than 4,000 and he still adds to it daily, checking an app every morning for anything worth buying.
His generosity has earned him recognition well beyond Torremolinos, which has named him an adopted son. El Ejido in Almeria named a square after him after he donated vintage photos of the Guardias Viejas Castle and the town’s spa.
Benidorm’s municipal archive holds a set of early images of the resort’s first steps into tourism, taken by an English traveller and acquired by Kuipers.
Kuipers has also suggested he may bequeath his collection to the place that has given him everything.
Opening the exhibition, Mayor Margarita del Cid said Kuipers had begun “a love affair with our town that endures to this day”.
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