A HOTEL has hired a security guard to break up fights as Brits get up before dawn to battle other holidaymakers for sunbeds.
The Sun joined the early morning towel brigade as they started to queue for the prime location by the pool before sunrise in Spain.
Sunset Beach Club hotel in Benalmádena on the Costa Del Sol is one of the worst battlegrounds for spats over sunbeds.
Hundreds of Brits are forced to queue from the early hours if they want to be in with a chance of a lounger.
Wendy Brown, from Colchester in Essex, has been coming to the Sunset Beach Club hotel for 15 years and is always first in the queue for the sunbeds.
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She arrived at 6.30am on Saturday morning just before the sun rose in order to ensure her family had their favourite deck chairs for the day.
Wendy, 44, told The Sun: “When the gates open it’s like a stampede.
It’s got worse over the years. They’ve had to put the gates up and hire a security guard - they never used to have that.
“It’s always rammed. We have always had to get up early - I don’t mind doing it.”
The gate to the pool area at the four-star hotel is locked overnight and only opened at around 9am.
By 8am there were 22 people waiting patiently by the main entrance and another 12 at a side gate armed with brightly coloured towels and beach bags.
Half an hour later there were 47 tourists eager to get to the beds, with more joining every minute.
By the time the bouncer in a bright blue top with SEGURIDAD across the back arrived to unlock the gates at 8.40am there were more than 100 people waiting in the queue which snaked back into the hotel and past the gift shop.
Speaking about when the gate finally opens, Wendy said: “I’ve seen people running and jumping over the beds.
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"Earlier in the week someone dropped their phone on the way to their sunbed during the rush and decided to leave it behind and carry on running, deciding the bed was more valuable.
“You can’t hesitate. You need to know exactly where you are going because that second of doubt could cost you your bed.
“The towels are being chucked so quickly. The security guard has to come down now because I have seen it get so heated.
"I’ve seen a fair few fights when people try to claim beds first or they push in the queue.”
Wendy and her family then take shifts to guard the beds during the day to ensure no one else tries to claim their spot in front of the pool.
Construction worker Chris Williams, 42, came down at 7am with his friend Scott Warburton, 42, to bag beds for the day.
Chris admitted he gets up just as early on holiday as he would for a day’s work in order to join the queue.
He took his flip flops off just before the run and joked that he did not want anything to slow him down.
Chris, from Oxford, said: “There’s a lot of people here who leave their towels for hours and hours. That’s not on.
“If they didn’t have this system you would have people putting down their towels at 5am then going back to bed. At least when they open the gates at 9am it’s not too early.”
Scott, who is staying at the Sunset Beach Club hotel for eight nights, said he had left his wife and kids back in bed in order to get to the queue before it got light.
By 9am all the beds were covered with beach towels but no sunbathers were in sight.
The hotel has a policy that if the beds are unoccupied by 10am then security can take their towels but the guests The Sun spoke to told us it was rarely enforced.
Benalmádena and neighbouring Torremolinos near Malaga have become hotspots for sunbed wars this summer as more Brits jet off for some sunshine on the Costa Del Sol.
Brits have been pictured taking chairs out at the crack of dawn at the Hotel Estival Torrequebrada.
