Those were exactly the reasons we moved as well, and an general dumbness of the people where we came from. You can no longer voice your opinion, there is always someone that feels hurt.
In general it is a lot better here, and where we live is close to Benidorm so we're able to be there in about 10/15 minutes, but it is also nice and quiet here when we want that.
People here are suffering from a carefully constructed psychosis... however I'm unable to definitely say it's deliberate or simply followed the natural development of customer society.
I recall we mostly went shopping in San Juan de Alicante, there used to be a couple of the big hipermercados there as Benidorm really was a seasonal sort of poblacion where scarcely anybody lived winters, back in the day.
The only bad thing I can say about Spain is that it has become more "European" over the last decades ;)